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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 Jakob sense one day?

2. What do Athos and Jakob gather?

3. Where is Jakob's fifteen-year-old sister?

4. What does Athos teach Jakob to cook?

5. What does Jakob say every moment is?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Jakob learn English, and of what is he proud as he is mastering the language?

2. What does Jakob think concerning the dead?

3. Why do Athos and Jakob identify with explorers of Antarctica?

4. What does Jakob sense from his hiding place as his family is killed?

5. How does the relationship between Alex and Jakob evolve?

6. Describe Alex.

7. Who is Athos and what does he pass on to Jakob?

8. Where is Jakob Beer at the opening of the novel, and what is he doing?

9. What incident does Ioannis relate, and of what does it remind Jakob?

10. What does Jakob do after he witnesses the invasion of his home?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Athos tells about ancient Biskupin culture and his work to preserve the ruins. After the war, he learns that the Nazis had destroyed the excavations and killed Athos's colleagues shortly after he spirited Jakob to safety. It is the basis for Athos's belief that Jakob is responsible for saving him, more so than vice versa. Jakob meditates on how prisoners are forced to dig up the mass graves of early victims of Nazism as the perpetrators seek to cover up evidence. He pictures workers forced, like the stone carriers of Golleschau, to do the unthinkable: handle the gory remains of the dead.

1. Why do you think it is significant that the Nazis destroyed archeological ruins or historical sites? Discuss in depth the implications and what you believe may or may not have been lost in such destruction. Use examples from your own life and "Fugitive Pieces" to support your answer.

2. Discuss what you think might be the reasons Athos believes Jakob saved his life. Do you agree? Why or why not? Use examples from your own life and "Fugitive Pieces" to support your answer.

3. Discuss the mental and emotional tolls that must have been taken on the workers forced to do the handling of so many murdered Jews. Use examples from your own life and "Fugitive Pieces" to support your answer.

Essay Topic 2

Sometimes a book has more of a character-driven plot rather than action driven, and sometimes it is the other way around. Some books seem to balance the two. Discuss the following:

1. What do you think it means to say that a plot is character driven? Action driven?

2. How do you think a plot differs if it is character driven versus action driven?

3. Which type of plot do you find more interesting? Why?

4. Do you think it is possible to have a plot where action and character development share equal time? Why or why not.

5. What type of plot do you think "Fugitive Pieces" is? Explain your response.

Essay Topic 3

History and memory share time and space and every moment is really two moments. Examples are how the Nazis and the Lublin scholars view the destruction of holy books, how Nazis and mothers in Lódz react to the soldiers "catching" infants on their bayonets, and how a woman in Birkenau carries a photograph of her husband and daughter under her tongue in order not to be separated from them. Jakob cannot resist reading the horrors of history because he needs to know where Bella actually dies.

1. Explain your ideas as to why history and memory might be two different moments. Use examples from your own life and "Fugitive Pieces" to support your answer.

2. Explain the type of internal change must occur in a soldier in order for a decent or ordinary person to become the type of individual who would toss an infant on his bayonet. Include what people in society today might learn from such a transformation. Use examples from your own life and the text to support your answer.

3. Explain, in depth, how Jakob reading of the Holocaust horrors is related to Jakob not knowing what happened to his sister. Use examples from your own life and "Fugitive Pieces" to support your answer.

(see the answer keys)

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