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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 house guest's suggested remedy for children who do not follow in their parents' footsteps?

2. What is the long-term plan of the new house guest?

3. Where does Eduard wait, at least for a little while, while the Major relays Eduard's plan to Charlotte?

4. Whose appearance do the painted decorations of the restored building seem to have?

5. What does Charlotte warn Ottilie about, during their discussion of Ottilie's preferred vocation?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. Briefly describe Luciane, Charlotte's daughter from her first marriage.

3. What amusement does the Count suggest should occupy Luciane's energies?

4. What does Eduard plan with the Major regarding their relationships with Charlotte and Ottilie?

5. What event at the end of Part II, Chapter 8, is saturated with both happiness and grave foreboding, and how?

6. 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?

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

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

9. How does Charlotte respond to the tragedy involving Ottilie and Otto?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Examine the role of the sciences which are mentioned or utilized in the novel: mathematics, chemistry, geography, history, natural science, architecture, and derivations of alchemy. What are the main and minor characters' views on the sciences? How are these sciences used in the novel? In the context of the early 19th century, what were the roles of various branches of science, and how were the sciences viewed in European culture? Where do you see connections between the actual cultural and historical context of this novel, and the references to the sciences within it?

Essay Topic 2

Consider the form, style, and content of the novel as a whole. What is the style of narrative discourse in which Goethe generally writes? What type of narrator is Goethe's narrator, and how does he use this figure as a mediation between the story and the reader? What are the effects on the narrative when the narrator occasionally switches verb tense? How does the occasional interspersion of letters and journal entries affect the "flow" of the novel, the reader's perspective of the characters, and the plot itself? How does this story fit into the genre of the novel?

Essay Topic 3

Examine the role of human beings in shaping the natural landscape. What do the four protagonists use the land for? How do they view their use of it, and the general purpose the landscape has? Describe their relationship to the land in terms of the utilitarian, the picturesque, the beautiful, and/or the sublime? What does nature seem to symbolize for each character, and what is the significance of this symbolism? How might a reader interpret the protagonists' use of and relation to the land as a statement by Goethe about human interactions with nature in his own time and place?

(see the answer keys)

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