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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. Why does Jaromil like the girl in the white coat who works at the store?
2. According to the poet's father, where was the poet conceived?
3. To Jaromil, what determines a woman's beauty?
4. Why does Maman push away her husband's hand when he wants to make love?
5. Why does Jaromil begin taking lesson from the art teacher?
Short Essay Questions
1. How does Part 4 begin? What are the literary advantages to this?
2. What does the artist want most of all for Maman? Why is this difficult for her?
3. At the ski lodge, Xavier kisses the old woman while luring the girl outside in the snow. In this scene, how do the women exchange places in life? How is this emphasized by the colors they wear?
4. At the debate in Part 3, Chapter 15, what arguments does Jaromil make about progress? Given his own life, how are these views ironic?
5. Given the first three paragraphs of Part 2, what leads the reader to believe that this character is Jaromil? What clues tell the reader that it is someone else?
6. While Jaromil is still a child, how does Maman prepare him for success as a writer? How does her preparation, paradoxically, also prepare him for failure?
7. When Jaromil returns at midnight after walking the university girl home, Maman becomes hysterical because she was worried about him. What does this scene show about these two people's perception of love?
8. "It was sad, but beautiful, too: for a moment, Jaromil lost the feeling of being a mere child" (Part 3, Chapter 25, pg 150). What causes this moment? Will it last?
9. When the Communists stage a coup, Jaromil and his uncle fight about the justice of the action. What does this fight reveal about Jaromil's place in the world, particularly in the political realm?
10. What role does Jaromil want the artist to play in his life? How does the artist fall short of these expectations?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
Does the story of Xavier's time in the yellow house border on the fantastic? What makes the story plausible and what makes it fantastical?
Essay Topic 2
What is the significance in very few names? Who has a name and what importance does this convey?
Essay Topic 3
What implications are there in Xavier's dance with the older woman? Are details of her age seen as something beautiful? How does this dance show Xavier's triumph over a girl his own age? What about over his own age? How is his love for the blond girl incomplete without his demonstration of love for the old woman?
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This section contains 1,893 words (approx. 7 pages at 300 words per page) |
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