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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 is the date when Immaculee learns of the president's plane being shot down?

2. What news station gives the report heard by the women in the bathroom that the RPF had made its way to the capital of Kigali?

3. What is the pastor's relation to Immaculee's boyfriend, John?

4. What colors are the beads of the rosary on which Immaculee daily prays while in the bathroom?

5. At what age does Immaculee graduate from her mother's schoolhouse?

Short Essay Questions

1. Against what does Immaculee recount arguing in "Struggling to Forgive"?

2. What realization does Immaculee have which finally enables her to forgive the killers?

3. What is the ethnic atmosphere in which Immaculee finds herself at Lycee High School?

4. How does the Hutu government initially justify the killing of Tutsi people?

5. How is Immaculee embarrassed on her first day at junior high school?

6. How does Immaculee spend most of her time in the bathroom?

7. What dominates the feelings of the University students regarding the Interahamwe and their activities in Butare?

8. What is the opinion of Sembeba, the pastor's son, concerning the Tutsi?

9. What characterizes the women's stay in the bathroom, as related in "Confronting My Anger"?

10. What does Immaculee's father do to ensure she receives a high school education, and why is it significant?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Left to Tell, as the story of one woman's survival of violent atrocities, can be seen as a conflict between two opposite forces: hate, embodied in the mindless, ravening Hutu Interahamwe killers, who dehumanize themselves through their own actions; and love, embodied in the gentleness and forgiveness of Immaculee Ilibagiza, who reaches a fuller human potential through her actions. Analyze this contrast in a comprehensive essay which takes into account the whole of the story. What is hate? What is love? How are they contraries? In what sorts of actions does each consist? How do actions of the former sort reduce one's humanity? How do actions of the latter type increase it? In what way does Immaculee embody love? In what way do the killers embody hate?

Essay Topic 2

The group upon whose doorstop most of the blame for the actual killings during the genocide has been laid is the Interahamwe. Analyze the culpability of the group, as well as its essence, in a carefully written analytical essay. Who are the Interahamwe? What sort of people comprise the Interahamwe? What characterizes these people? In what sort of actions and pleasures do they indulge? What is their relationship to reasonable proceedings? What does this indicate about the essence of the Interahamwe? In what way does this mitigate their culpability? How is this yet far from absolving the members of the Interahamwe?

Essay Topic 3

Throughout the story of Left to Tell, and sometimes amid the very worst of the horrors, Immaculee recounts instances of great generosity and charity. Discuss the significance of such benevolence in the midst of tragedy in a well-developed analytical essay. Why are some people still so generous? What does this indicate about such people? How does generosity breed more generosity? How is charity similar? How does charity affect those who are its recipients? How does it affect society as a whole? What roles do generosity and charity play in both the events during the holocaust and immediately following it?

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