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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 culture did Hesse participate in?

2. What was Hesse's earliest memory?

3. Where was Hesse apprenticed before he was brought home?

4. Where did Hesse begin to visit when he took a new job after Tubingen?

5. After the birth of his son, how did Hesse spend a good deal of time?

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe Hesse's move to Basel.

2. How does Freedman describe Hesse's childhood?

3. Who were Hesse's parents? How did they meet?

4. What does Freedman say about artists' lives, at the beginning of the prologue?

5. Where would Hesse run away from? Where would he run away to?

6. What circles did Hesse enter in Tubingen?

7. What was Hesse's relationship with his family's values as a young man?

8. What is Freedman's stance with regard to the relationship between Hesse's life and works?

9. Describe Hesse's apprenticeship.

10. Why was 1902 an important year for Hesse?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What role did rebellion play in Hesse's life and development as a writer? How important was his brother's running away to music school? What fights did he fight by rebelling, and what fights did he avoid by running away? To what was he opposed? To what was he drawn? How did he learn to use fight or flight as strategies for getting what he wanted? How did these strategies change as he matured?

Essay Topic 2

Hesse experienced periods of depression from time to time throughout his life. What was he depressed about? What did he learn to do to fight his depression? What did he learn from examining the causes of his depression? What was his experience of psychoanalysis like?

Essay Topic 3

Which of Hesse's books is most important in his life? Why is it the book that had the greatest effect on Hesse as a man and as a writer?

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This section contains 740 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample