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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 does the narrator characterize the trip to Paris?

2. Where does Sirka hide when the police come?

3. What does Bertrand say he's going through?

4. When did Sarah stop corresponding with the DuFaures?

5. How does Julia respond to Bamber's offer?

Short Essay Questions

1. What clue remains unexplored even after Julia finds out that Sarah died?

2. How does the narrator characterize the interactions between Julia and Bamber during their trip to Vel d'Hiv'.

3. Describe Rachel's arrest at the DuFaures'.

4. Describe Sarah's return to her apartment.

5. Describe Julia's trip to Drancy.

6. Describe Julia arrival at the Rainsferds house.

7. Describe the meeting with William Rainsferd.

8. What does Julia decide to do about her pregnancy and her marriage?

9. Describe Julia interaction with Eduard.

10. What does Eduard send to Julia, and what does she learn from it?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Julia Jaramond is an American who has spent twenty-five years in France, and Sarah Starzynski is a Polish Jew living in Paris. Describe the importance, in "Sarah's Key", of nationality and home. Who feels 'at home' and how are these characters different from characters who have a different relationship with place?

Essay Topic 2

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?

Essay Topic 3

Debate the proposition that the parallel de Rosnay draws between the end of a woman's marriage and the death of a child's little brother in the Holocaust is offensive and demeaning to the experience of those who died in Europe in the 1940s. Or is it a way of honoring the depth of human emotion?

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This section contains 828 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample