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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 agreement does Pahom come to with the landowner?
2. The story opens with two sisters. What does the older sister's husband do for a living?
3. What bothers Pahom the most about the stripping of bark from his trees?
4. What is Pahom's first reaction when he learns that people are moving to a new settlement?
5. Who is the first person that the local landowner offers to sell her land to?
Short Essay Questions
1. What changes the relationship between the woman who owns land near the village and the peasants, and how does the relationship change?
2. How does Pahom's relationship with his community change, and what are two specific pieces of evidence for this change?
3. What sequence of events with Simon follows Pahom's discovery of the stripped trees?
4. In Chapter I, what is ironic about where Pahom is while he listens to his wife and her sister talk?
5. Pahom is most angry at the neighbor who has cut down his trees because whoever it was did not just take one or two trees but instead cut down a whole clump of trees. Why does this make Pahom angry, and what is ironic about his anger?
6. When the devil overhears Pahom's thoughts, what does he vow to do?
7. What sacrifices do Pahom and his family make for the first plot of land that they buy?
8. What prevents the peasants from buying the nearby landowner's land as a group instead of as individuals?
9. In what two ways is Pahom's first decision to buy land different from his later decisions?
10. In Chapter I, what is ironic about the conversation between the two sisters?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
What do you think of the relationship between the two sisters? Does it seem healthy? What might be the cause of the older sister trying to make her younger sister feel bad about her life? How does this tie into the theme of the story?
Essay Topic 2
At the beginning of Chapter II, the reader learns that "Close to the village there lived a lady, a small landowner, who had an estate of about three hundred acres. She had always lived on good terms with the peasants...." Write an essay in which you explain how this detail comments on Pahom's subsequent difficulties with his community.
Essay Topic 3
When Pahom decides to take his neighbors to court, he thinks "I cannot go on overlooking it, or they will destroy all I have." Pahom likely means this sincerely; what undermines this statement for the reader, however? Write an essay in which you both explain at least two ways in which this statement proves to be ironic.
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This section contains 1,108 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) |
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