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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. How many Jews were deported from Vel d'Hiv' in July 1942?

2. What language are the girl's parent's speaking?

3. What is Mame Tézac suffering?

4. What does Julia know instinctively about Mame Tézac's apartment?

5. How old is the girl's brother?

Short Essay Questions

1. What are conditions like at the location where the buses take the girl and her mother?

2. When and where does "Sarah's Key" take place?

3. Where do the girl and Rachel go after Beaune-la-Rolande?

4. What does the girl do when the girls are separated from their mothers?

5. How does the narrator characterize Julia and Zoe?

6. What happens when the girl and her parents arrive at Beaune-la-Rolande?

7. Describe the girl and her parents' departure for Beaune-la-Rolande.

8. Describe Julia Jaramond's relationship with her husband.

9. How does the narrator describe the site of Vel d'Hiv'?

10. What does pregnancy mean for Julia?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Julia is dismayed by the ignorance surrounding Drancy and Vel d'Hiv', and she finds small plaques commemorating what took place there, but mostly she finds that people have moved on, and either do not remember or do not care about the past. What do you think is an appropriate form of memorializing the events of the roundup and the Holocaust? When is it appropriate for a place to 'move on' and when is it appropriate that should time remain stopped at the moment of the atrocities?

Essay Topic 2

How are Julia's pregnancy and her search for Sarah related? Is the pregnancy--and Bertrand's opposition to it--an opportunity for her to look into Sarah's story? Is Sarah's story a counterweight to balance her discomfort about her marriage?

Essay Topic 3

How well made is "Sarah's Key" as a novel? Is it tight, with artful use of theme, motif, metaphor and imagery? Or does it wander, with images and themes coming up and disappearing over time? Does the novel's construction seem deliberate and artful or something else?

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