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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 letter describe Sarah's feelings about peace?

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

3. What does Gaspard DuFaure ask Julia?

4. What does Bertrand tell Julia about having a child?

5. What do Julia and Guillaume find at their destination?

Short Essay Questions

1. Where doe Julia travel to in the U.S. in her search for Sarah?

2. How does Julia's pregnancy affect her feelings about Sarah's history?

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

4. Describe Sarah's return to her apartment.

5. What does Franck Lévy tell Julia Jaramond about the Tézacs' apartment?

6. Describe the meeting with William Rainsferd.

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

8. Describe Julia interaction with Eduard.

9. What is Bertrand's response when he hears that Julia is not aborting the baby?

10. Describe Julia arrival at the Rainsferds house.

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What is the significance of Bertrand's mid-life crisis? Is it a convenient mechanism for removing him from Julia's live, to make room for William Rainsferd, or is it a metaphor for the inability to arrive at a mature acceptance of life's painful complexities?

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

What is the importance of cultural identity in "Sarah's Key"? Certain characters are persecuted for their purported identities as Jews, but how do characters create or preserve their identities in a positive sense? What does identity add to people's lives? What are they willing to give up to preserve it? How does Judaism, Frenchness, Americanness, etc. figure in the novel?

(see the answer keys)

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