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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 did Hesse work on from 1931 to 1942?

2. Where was Hesse's poem "On Toward Peace" published in altered form?

3. Where did Hesse spend the summer of 1945?

4. Whom did Hesse fall afoul of by protesting the alteration of his poem?

5. How was "Siddhartha" received?

Short Essay Questions

1. What prizes did Hesse win in 1946?

2. What was Hesse's experience with psychoanalysis?

3. How was Hesse supporting himself and his family?

4. How did Hesse react to the critic who attacked him in Germany?

5. Describe the period known as "Hesse's exile."

6. What physical problems was Hesse having at the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s?

7. What effect did the deteriorating state of things in Germany have on Hesse?

8. How did Hesse react to the end of the war in Europe?

9. What was Hesse's social position by the mid-to-late 1920s?

10. Describe Hesse's last years and death.

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Describe Hesse's life as a reader. Which authors drew him? Which authors did he return to again and again? What did his favorite books do for him? From whom did Hesse learn to write? Which authors did he write his books to? Whose influences did he struggle to elude? Whose influences did he fail to escape from?

Essay Topic 2

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?

Essay Topic 3

What nationality is Hesse? In what aspects of his life did a certain nationality hold certain meaning? In what ways does Hesse transcend nationality? With which nationalities did Hesse identify? How did he use his nationality? What did identifying with a nationality do for him? What did escaping from nationality do for him?

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