View a FREE sample

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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Nafisi describe as "the most unforgivable crime in fiction"?
(a) Absence of beauty.
(b) Use of a flawed heroine.
(c) Blindness.
(d) Sexual immorality.

2. What is Hizbollah?
(a) A group of radical Muslims who murdered the Ayatollah Taleghani.
(b) A religious group also known as the Party of Allah, who are determined to put God's laws into practice on earth.
(c) The title of a religious tract that all Iranians must follow according to the regime leaders.
(d) The name of a radical student organization at the University of Tehran.

3. According to Zarrin, when is a novel moral?
(a) When it makes the reader confront the absolutes in his or her belief system.
(b) When the reader is able to relate to the moral choices of the characters.
(c) When the government approves of the content.
(d) When the characters conform to moral laws and values.

4. In the epilogue, Nafisi makes an allusion to which novel?
(a) "The Great Gatsby."
(b) "Invitation to a Beheading."
(c) "Daisy Miller."
(d) "Lolita."

5. What is a perfectly equipped failure?
(a) A person who consciously chooses their own failure to preserve their own sense of integrity.
(b) An individual who never tries to fulfill his or her potential.
(c) A person who gives up their own integrity, but fails to become a success.
(d) A person who has every advantage, yet fails to complete simple tasks.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Nafisi do with help from Mr. Forsati?

2. Who is Mrs. Rezvan?

3. In Part 3, Chapter 4, who asks to meet with Nafisi?

4. Why does Nafisi collect pictures of martyrs during the war?

5. What is the Dear Jane Society?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does Nafisi describe herself as becoming irrelevant?

2. What does Nassrin mean when she talks about the "ordeal of freedom" in Part 4, Chapter 20?

3. What are the similarities between Sanaz's experience in jail and the experience of Cincinnatus in "Invitation to a Beheading"? What are the differences between their experiences?

4. Why does Nafisi refer to the concert she attends as a parody of the real thing?

5. What kind of man is Mr. Bahri?

6. What are the similarities between the lives of the characters in Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" and the lives of Nafisi's students?

7. Why does Nafisi call Catherine in "Washington Square" the inverse of our ideas about what a heroine should be?

8. What does the Islamist Iranian regime have in common with the theme of Fitzgerald's novel "The Great Gatsby"?

9. Why does Nafisi think teaching "The Great Gatsby" was the right choice for that time and place?

10. What does Nafisi mean by her statement that she "left Iran, but Iran did not leave me?"

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,404 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample