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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 main piece of evidence in the trial?

2. What does Frau Schmitz do for a living?

3. In what month do the relocated trials take place?

4. What illness does the narrator suffer from in Chapter 1?

5. What day of the week does Michael have a break from the trials and his studies?

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe Hanna's life, as she tells it to Michael in Chapter 9.

2. Describe the memory the narrator discusses in Chapter 7, when he is four years old. Why is it significant?

3. What does Michael do, in Chapter 17, when he realizes Hanna has disappeared?

4. What does Michael do while staying home alone during the last week of vacation, in Chapter 12?

5. How does Michael justify thinking of Hanna as a horse in Chapter 14?

6. Describe Michael's feelings about his last years in school and his first years in university, as he relates them in Part 2, Chapter 1.

7. Why is the evidence actually favorable to the defendants, as explained in Chapter 7?

8. Describe the Frau Schmitz's apartment.

9. Describe what happened the night the church was bombed, as explained in Chapter 8,

10. What does Michael do in the weeks after he and Hanna have their first fight?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In the last chapter of the novel Michael talks about freeing himself from the story of he and Hanna. How has Michael's guilt changed from the initial stages of their relationship to after Hanna's death? How might writing their story free Michael from that guilt? Can he ever be free? Why or why not? How does Michael "make peace" with their story?

Essay Topic 2

In Part 1, Chapter 5 Michael says that he recognizes a life pattern in himself, and that "often enough in my life I have done things I had not decided to do." What does Michael mean by this? Describe and give examples of the disconnect Michael feels between making a decision and completing an action. How does this act as a foreshadowing of Michael's later behavior?

Essay Topic 3

Throughout the trial, Michael talks about the feelings of numbness that overcome him. In Part 2, Chapter 4, Michael uses an analogy to convey his numbed feeling; a "hand pinching an arm numbed by an injection". Why might the author use this analogy? Why does Michael liken his feelings to those of another person, under anesthesia? How does this allow Michael to be active, but also removed from the novel?

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