View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What was the name of the prisoner who was allowed to drive the tractor? ("Land-Lease.")

2. What occupation did Golubev's boss ask if any of the new prisoners had held? ("Magic.")

3. In "Magic," what object was tapping on the window?

4. What did Praga, in "Esperanto," do to his clothing?

5. What, in "My First Tooth," was rented to put convicts into?

Short Essay Questions

1. In "A Child's Drawing," why did the convicts stand in groups of five when guards were dividing out work assignments?

2. According to the narrator in "The Lawyer's Plot," what were the three ways out of the mine?

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

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

5. What was Kudinov's reasoning for why the convict work gang #4 stood idol on November 12th? ("The Injector.")

6. Why was Sazonov directed to the poorer hut in "My First Tooth"?

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

8. Why was Stukov contemptuous and delighted by the shifty-eyed man's admittance about his being an informant? ("Magic")

9. What was written on the cell ceiling of the monastery basement? ("My First Tooth.")

10. What did convicts receive as payment for keeping their mouths shut about guards beating them? ("The Chief of Political Control.")

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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 2

What impact does the fact that the text is written in first-person have on you as a reader? Why is a first-person narration important in these types of histories? What would be lost if the stories were complied as third-person narratives?

Essay Topic 3

In "A Piece of Meat," the narrator stated that "the rudimentary organ turned out not to be rudimentary at all, but essential, functioning, life-saving." Find, and discuss, three examples where a rudimentary object turned out to be "essential, functioning and life-saving."

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 849 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample