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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the general substance of Ottilie's first journal entry?

2. How does Charlotte respond to the Major's hopeful question about their future together?

3. What is Eduard's state of mind after Ottilie refuses to be his?

4. When Eduard leaves the place where he had been waiting for the Major, where does he go?

5. Upon what date does the completion of the restoration of the building occur?

Short Essay Questions

1. Whom does Eduard meet when he walks through his own estate, and what is the significance of their meeting?

2. What is the schoolmaster's general philosophy on teaching?

3. What is the substance of Eduard's proposition to the Major, and the Major's response to it?

4. Briefly summarize the story the foreign visitor tells to Charlotte and Ottilie.

5. How does Charlotte and Ottilie's relationship change after Otto's death?

6. Where does Eduard go to meet Ottilie, and what are the circumstances of their meeting?

7. What is the nature of the "pendulum experiment" that one of the foreign visitors proposes, why does he propose it, and what are its results?

8. What does Ottilie decide to embark upon as a career, and why?

9. In Part II, Chapter 9, where does Charlotte decide to live for a short time, and why?

10. What is problematic about Luciane's interactions with other people, and what is one example of this?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Examine Ottilie's journal entries, which appear in Part II, Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 9. How do they offer insight into Ottilie's character? What is the significance of the style she writes in? What type of language does she use? What subject matter does she consider? Why might the narrator decide to place them where he does (at the ends of several chapters in Part II)? What is the significance of the context of each letter? Do these letters function to give Ottilie a new role in the novel? Discuss these letters' significance to the themes of fate and of personal agency in the novel, as these themes relate to Ottilie herself. Concentrate on Ottilie's specific word choice, subject matter, context, metaphorical or figurative language, and tone.

Essay Topic 2

Discuss the role of Herr Mittler and the theme of mediation in the novel. What is Herr Mittler's role, and how does he "play his part" by interacting in specific ways with the other characters? How does the narrator act as a mediator between the reader and the characters, plot, and moral of the story? Mediation means to "come between" things--are there any other mediating forces in the novel, besides Mittler, such as other characters, events, settings, objects, ideas, and so on?

Essay Topic 3

Examine the significance of Ottilie's death, the circumstances surrounding it, and her specific method of death. What are the indirect and direct causes of her death, and what event or events precipitate her death? Can "starving" be related to any other instance, theme, interaction between characters, or symbol in the novel? Was Ottilie's death and her method of killing herself foreshadowed anywhere else in the novel? Who, if anyone, can be considered culpable in Ottilie's death, if it was a suicide? How does the method of Ottilie's death reflect her characteristic reliance on fate and on her own inaction (or the actions of others) throughout the rest of the novel?

(see the answer keys)

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