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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 the landlord call the old man?

2. How does Ylayali hide her shyness at her opened corset?

3. What does the narrator do as he walks out backwards?

4. For what does Ylayali reach that tells the narrator she wants him to leave?

5. What is the landlady doing while the narrator is trying to write in the family-room?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does the narrator act towards Ylayali once they are upstairs?

2. How does Queeny say he knows Ylayali?

3. Why exactly does the narrator refuse the Chief's offer of an advance?

4. How does the narrator react to seeing Ylayali with 'The Duke'?

5. Why does the narrator still try to force himself upon Ylayali?

6. Why do you think Ylayali is disappointed in the narrator?

7. What ails the narrator at the start of Part 3?

8. What happens when the narrator is finally kicked out?

9. Why does the narrator not speak to the woman in black when he first sees her outside his apartment?

10. Why is the narrator moved into the family room?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Discuss the values of the late 1800s. In what way are the characters products of their time? Does the book express the changes in either Norway or America at the time?

Essay Topic 2

How does the narrator's pride doom him to failure? What does his working on a ship at the end of the novel show about his pride? What devices does Knut Hamsun use to explore the narrator's pride?

Essay Topic 3

Look at the structure of the book. How does the author drive the narrative? How does the book's structure express the book's themes?

(see the answer keys)

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