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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 primary topic of the eighth letter?
2. In what year is Rilke's sixth letter written?
3. Why has it taken so long for Rilke to reply to the young poet with his seventh letter?
4. What holiday is Rilke marking with his sixth letter?
5. Rilke says that as time passes, women will stop doing what?
Short Essay Questions
1. How does Rilke respond to the young poet's expression of fear that the young poet has lost God?
2. Explain what Rilke means when in letter eight he says that sadness "are the moments when something new has entered into us".
3. What can be inferred about the mental and emotional state of the young poet from Rilke's reply in letter six?
4. In letter five, Rilke comments on Rome and says that the first few days one is in Rome have "an oppressively sad effect" because everything in Rome is old and looking backward toward the past. How does this sentiment reflect Rilke's life philosophies as he has expressed them thus far in the book?
5. Rilke says that young people can't understand love. What reason does he give?
6. Rilke indicates that humans have distanced themselves from the spiritual realm, from God, and from each other. How has this distancing occurred?
7. What can be inferred about the young poet's feelings toward his own solitude from Rilke's seventh letter?
8. Rilke implies that security and comfort are negative. Why?
9. What is Rilke's view of God?
10. What does Rilke mean when, in letter seven, he says that in the future, femininity will not be "merely an opposite of the masculine, but. something in itself"?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
How is Rilke's advice to the young poet applicable for 21st century writers? How is his advice not applicable for 21st century writers?
Essay Topic 2
Throughout the letters, and especially in letter eight, Rilke suggests that people are not truly living their lives--that their experiences are dulled from familiarity and security. What type of living is Rilke advocating? What is this type of living like?
Essay Topic 3
In letter eight, Rilke compares the sense of security to which individuals cling to the horrors that exist in the homes of the characters of Edgar Allan Poe's stories. Analyze one of Poe's stories or longer poems using the life philosophies of Rilke as a lens through which to view the horrors of Poe's work as personal delusions and securities.
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This section contains 852 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) |
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