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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 does Vladimir Lensky write poetry about?

2. What does Tatyana say in her letter to Eugene Onegin?

3. What does the narrator say of Tatyana?

4. To whom does the narrator read his poetry?

5. What did Eugene Onegin do that angered his new neighbors in the countryside?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the story of Olga and Tatyana's mother's marriage?

2. How does Eugene Onegin receive Tatyana's letter?

3. There are two sets of literary foils, or opposites, that the reader is introduced to in the country. Who are the two sets and how are they opposites?

4. How is Tatyana after being rejected by Eugene Onegin?

5. What chastisement does Eugene Onegin give Tatyana at the end of his response to her letter?

6. As Tatyana waits for an answer to her letter from Eugene, what does Vladimir Lensky tell them? What affect does this have on Tatyana?

7. Describe the activities of a typical day in the life of Eugene Onegin.

8. At the end of chapter two, the narrator introduces one of the topics that relates back to his theme of cycles. What is it, and what event in the story brings it up?

9. In chapter one the narrator is briefly a character in his own story. What interaction does the narrator have with Eugene?

10. How do Eugene and the narrator differ about how they feel about the country? Why do you think the narrator tells us this?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The duel between Eugene and Vladimir is a defining moment in the story. Write about the duel in Eugene Onegin.

Part 1. What is the cause for the duel? Is it a valid reason or more perceived than real?

Part 2. What does his willingness to follow through with the duel tell us about Eugene?

Part 3. How do Vladimir and Eugene spend the night before the duel? What does this tell us about them?

Essay Topic 2

Both of Tatyana's mother and nurse were married by an arranged marriage, and in the end Tatyana herself marries a man that her parents chose. Discuss arranged marriages.

Part 1. Many cultures have histories of arranged marriages. What are their benefits and downsides?

Part 2. How did the arranged marriage work out for Tatyana's mother? Was she better off than if she had married the dandy gambler she had fancied in her youth?

Part 3. If her parents had not pressured her, Tatyana would have stayed single after Eugene rejected her. Was she better off married to the good and powerful man that she married?

Part 4. Looking at both Tatyana and her mother from a societal view instead of a personal one, are they better contributing members of society in the roles their parents have chosen for them or in the roles they would have chosen for themselves? Is this important?

Essay Topic 3

The narrator comments at one point in the novel that the heroes of novels were once consumed with a passion for the right and just, defeating vice and sin, but today novels glorify vices, and vampires and egotists become heroes.

Part 1. Pushkin wrote this comment in the early 1800s. Does it sound like something someone would say today? Where have you heard such accusations before?

Part 2. Give some examples of stories from today, that back up Pushkin's statement.

Part 3. What can be inferred from the timelessness of this statement?

(see the answer keys)

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