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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 Potashnikov receive for dinner at the end of "Carpenters"?

2. What did the narrator, in "Sententious," claim that each day brought?

3. What did the narrator always fail to do in time for dinner? ("Sententious.")

4. What did the narrator compare the hills to in "A Pushover Job"?

5. How did the narrator, in "Sententious," perceive the tent in which he slept?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why was the Siberian dwarf cedar called a "weatherman" by the narrator?

2. What prosthetics were collected by the guards in "Prosthetic Appliances"?

3. What question did the new arrivals ask of the old convicts in "Major Pugachov's Last Battle"?

4. Why were camp officials perplexed by the convicts avoidance of the bathhouse?

5. In "The Bathhouse," why was lice a relative concept to most convicts?

6. What hypothesis was tested in the story "Quiet"?

7. Why did the convicts that had been in the camps take their bread back to their barracks? ("Major Pugachov's Last Battle")

8. What plans did Bagretsov have for the underwear that he took off of the corpse?

9. What was the "circle" that was created regarding the relationship between work and food in "Shock Therapy"?

10. What happened to Grigoriev and Potashnikov after the foreman found out that they were not carpenters?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Based upon the text, what three things do you think that the forced-laborers in Kolyma needed to survive? Find three different needs and explain why they were necessary for survival in Kolyma.

Essay Topic 2

In "Quiet," an particular irony was set up. One of the camp administrators believed that "a man will eat and in gratitude work better for the state." In what circumstances did this statement prove to be false? In what circumstances did this statement prove to be true? What was the determining factor in the truth behind the statement?

Essay Topic 3

Based off of the text as a whole, describe the kind of life that a man in the Kloyma forced-labor camps lived. What did their days consist of? What were their fears? What was expected of them? How were they treated?

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