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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 equipment arrived from America and, therefore, convicts learned a new word?

2. What, in "Chief of Political Control," was summoning the hospital director?

3. How long had the bodies been in the mass grave? ("Land-Lease.")

4. What provided unexpected joy for the narrator in "The Lawyers' Plot"?

5. In the notebook in "A Child's Drawings", what were all the houses surrounded by?

Short Essay Questions

1. What bliss did the narrator find while in Irkutsk? ("The Train.")

2. Why was the narrator afraid to get off of the train at any station other than the Moscow station? ("The Train.")

3. What about the Senior Supervisor-Ministry of Internal Affairs' name impressed the narrator in "The Lawyer's Plot"?

4. Why did Gusev break the window in the basement of the former monastery? ("My First Tooth.")

5. Why did the narrator in "My First Tooth" state that it was easier to bear something after you write it down? ("My First Tooth.")

6. Why was Golubev called to Stukov's home in "Magic"?

7. What "magical powers" did Stukov have? ("Magic")

8. How did the narrator come to remember the story "Esperanto"?

9. What game did the lieutenant and the narrator play during "The Train"?

10. Why did Praga, in "Esperanto," hack his clothing to rags?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The author learned many different things during his time spent in Kolyma. Choose two different lessons that the author learned and discuss why these were important. What was the lesson? How was the lesson learned? How did this affect the life of the author after the experience?

Essay Topic 2

Magic seemed to be the only way that some men made it out of the camps of Kolyma alive. Discuss three examples throughout the text where "magic" seemed to be responsible for survival. (Think of how "magic" was depicted in the story "Magic" to help answer this question.)

Essay Topic 3

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.

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