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 were contained in the "magical jars" in the story "Land-Lease"?

2. According to "The Lawyers' Plot", what does "smertin" mean?

3. What was the hospital director doing with the doctors at the opening of "Chief of Political Control"?

4. Who was Golubev's bosses favorite? ("Magic.")

5. Why was Peter Zayats beaten by the guards in "My First Tooth"?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why were the convicts unable to eat the horse meat in "Esperanto"?

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

3. What did the bulldozer, in "Land-Lease," come to be used for?

4. What was the narrator shocked by about the blade of the bulldozer? ("Land-Lease.")

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

6. Why did Golubev watch Stukov's "game" with pleasure? ("Magic.")

7. Why did the narrator decide that he had not been lucky in getting called to Romanov's home? ("The Lawyer's Plot.")

8. What happened at the end of "Esperanto" to the narrator"?

9. What happened to the Spam that was sent to the camps from America? ("Land-Lease.")

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In "Prosthetic Appliances," the narrator described the dehumanizing actions that guards put laborers through. Men were required to give up even their most intimate needs. Discuss how some men in Kolyma refused to give up what meant the most to them and what happened because of this refusal.

Essay Topic 2

Describe the impact that the text had on you. Did you feel as though the text was a stretch of the truth? Did you feel as though the information given by the author was truthful and realistic? Support your focus with textual evidence.

Essay Topic 3

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.)

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 858 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample