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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 are the conditions on which Charlotte offers herself to the Major?

2. What specific form of memorializing does Charlotte admit having an aversion to?

3. What is Charlotte and Eduard's son to be named?

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

5. What specific question of Eduard's is Ottilie able to answer with a nod in the affirmative?

Short Essay Questions

1. Summarize the reason for the solicitor's visit to Charlotte, which is related at the beginning of Part II.

2. What are Charlotte's views of memorials?

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

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

5. Describe the circumstances of Ottilie's death.

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

7. What plans does the architect have for the church?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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?

Essay Topic 2

Apply the principle of "elective affinities," as discussed by Eduard, Charlotte, and the Captain in Part I, Chapter 4, to the novel in its entirety. Provide a short summary of the essence of the idea of elective affinities: what is it, and in which disciplines is it particularly useful? How do Eduard, Charlotte, and the Captain understand and explain this principle? Where do you find this principle most present in the various relationships between the four protagonists? Do you find aspects of elective affinities present in any of the minor characters, or in any of the portions of the novel that are not strictly related to the plot (such as letters, journals, and other stories)?

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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