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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How does the film begin?
(a) With Jaromil reciting his most famous poem.
(b) With Maman recounting childhood memories with Jaromil.
(c) With a home recording of Jaromil as a child.
(d) With pictures of Jaromil as a child.

2. What happens during the second half of Jaromil's poetry recitation?
(a) The audience gives him a standing ovation so he has to stop reading.
(b) Lights come on and a camera starts rolling.
(c) The pretty cinematographer throws a rose to him.
(d) He loses his place on the page and becomes flustered.

3. Just outside the prison, why does the girl hate to see the horses and riders?
(a) She feels far below them and pitiful by comparison.
(b) She thinks they are out to capture people, possibly her.
(c) She takes it as a bad omen.
(d) She has always been afraid of horses.

4. Who is most upset that the bus stop was moved two blocks away from the villa?
(a) The man with the wooden leg.
(b) The middle-aged woman.
(c) The organizer of the poetry recitation.
(d) The pretty cinematographer.

5. What does Lermontov assert is the highest quality in life?
(a) Loyalty.
(b) Love.
(c) Purity.
(d) Honor.

Short Answer Questions

1. What contest does the party guest suggest to Jaromil?

2. Why does Jaromil agree to read in the presentation of poets?

3. While watching the beautiful cinematographer on the bus, what does Jaromil realize?

4. Who was the first man the redheaded girl slept with?

5. What disguise does Jaromil use for treating the redhead with cruelty?

Short Essay Questions

1. When the girl visits the middle-aged man, she is wearing winter clothes. What does this detail reveal about the timing in the story?

2. After not sleeping with the cinematographer, Jaromil considers his underwear for a long time, in light of the women involved. What does he decide? How does this single piece of clothing drive so much of what he does?

3. How does the author insert his own thoughts into Part 6, Chapter 1? What effect does this have on this entire part?

4. After a period of estrangement from Maman, why is Jaromil ready to make peace with her? How do the two of them have very different perceptions of this reconciliation?

5. How is the girl a different person from when she went into the prison? How is she more like Jaromil had been?

6. According to Jaromil, why did he run from the window where he first saw the redheaded girl? How does this move the story forward and reveal Jaromil's personality at the same time?

7. What is Maman's opinion about the redheaded girl? How does her reaction perpetuate the cycle of her own relationship with Jaromil?

8. "History does not always make a dramatic entrance, it often seeps through every-day life like dirty dishwater. In our story, History makes its appearance in the guise of underwear" (Part 5, Chapter 8, pg 239). What does this mean in the context of Jaromil's story?

9. As it is painfully revealed in Part 5, Chapters 4 - 6, why do Maman and Jaromil struggle to live together? What does this say about their relationship as mother and son?

10. Maman is disillusioned about the cinematography girl after the girl does not invite her to the party. How does this show the similarity between Maman and the girl?

(see the answer keys)

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