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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Why is Lenski working as a tutor?
(a) To put himself through graduate school at the University in St. Petersburg.
(b) He loves teaching children.
(c) He is paying off a debt to Nabokov's father.
(d) To put his son through undergraduate school at Cambridge.

2. Once, upon returning from the park with a poem freshly in his mind, what does he do?
(a) He recites it to his grandmother.
(b) He recites it to his nanny.
(c) He recites it to his sister.
(d) He decides to recite the work to his mother.

3. Why does Max endear himself to the dogs?
(a) He loves dogs.
(b) He is initially afraid of them, so he gives them treats, so they will stay calm.
(c) He would like to own a kennel of his own some day.
(d) So they do not raise the alarm when he comes back from his late night trysts.

4. What is Lenski's idea for the use of Magic-Lantern Projections?
(a) To illustrate petic works with the use of slides.
(b) To play in the light from the lanterns.
(c) To create special effects on the wall.
(d) To create shadow puppets.

5. What does Nabokov confess about Yuri and himself?
(a) They know nothing about America.
(b) The "slums of sex" were unknown to both of them.
(c) The devastation of war is new to them.
(d) They wish they had girlfriends.

6. What is publication like outside of Russia?
(a) Not as good as in Russia.
(b) Often insufficiently lucrative to provide a comfortable existence.
(c) Better than in the United States.
(d) A well-paying, satisfying career.

7. What intrigues the young Nabokov about the novel?
(a) Its deliberate action and concern for honor.
(b) Its mystery and murder.
(c) Its love of America and the wilderness.
(d) The description of nature and the American frontier.

8. What fills Nabokov with surprise, while roller-skating?
(a) Colette is also roller-skating.
(b) His mother skates very well.
(c) He is not very good.
(d) An older American girl comments on his excellent skating.

9. What is happening in the larger cities of Western Europe?
(a) They are not allowing Russians to immigrate to their countries.
(b) They are unhappy about the number of Russians.
(c) Russian writers and artists have a considerable presence.
(d) They are losing Russian immigrants.

10. Why do they hire the village schoolmaster, though he is not technically one of the family's regular tutors?
(a) To give them a crash course in the Russian language.
(b) To give them writing lessons.
(c) To give them French lessons.
(d) To give them mathematics lessons.

11. How does Nabokov's father die?
(a) He has a stroke in Berlin.
(b) He is assassinated in Berlin.
(c) He has a heart attack in Paris.
(d) He commits suicide in Paris.

12. Why does Nabokov feel exiled in Crimea, a Russian territory?
(a) He does not have his family with him.
(b) He misses Tamara.
(c) The environment is so foreign.
(d) He misses his butterflies.

13. What is the subject of this chapter?
(a) Nabokov's tutor, Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov.
(b) Nabokov's uncle, Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov.
(c) Nabokov's brother, Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov.
(d) Nabokov's father, Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov.

14. What happens to Yuri in northern Crimea?
(a) He is married.
(b) He is captured.
(c) He converts to Catholicism.
(d) He is killed.

15. What does he do with a poem before he writes it down?
(a) He discusses his ideas with his father.
(b) He writes it on a chalkboard.
(c) He contructs it entirely in his head.
(d) He reads the poem to his mother.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does the revolution do to most of the Russian writers and artists?

2. How is Nabokov's life at Cambridge, compared to his former existence?

3. What do both Vladimir's writings on technical matters as well as philosophical have in common?

4. What does Vladimir do before hurrying young Nabokov along to school?

5. What happens, when winter comes, to their love affair?

(see the answer keys)

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