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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. The purpose of Chapter 2 is to compare and contrast what two groups?
(a) Eastern Europe with Eastern Asia.
(b) Communists and fascists.
(c) Eastern and Western communists.
(d) Communists and capitalists.

2. When the Red Army came into Poland in 1945, how were writers treated?
(a) Left alone as long as they didn't print anti-communist material.
(b) Killed, to show how communism treats individual thinking.
(c) Promoted according to their communist sympathies.
(d) Encouraged, in order to show communism's support of the cultural elite.

3. As seen in Chapter 2, how does the poet of a communist country write?
(a) As an ideal citizen.
(b) Exactly what the state tells him.
(c) As himself.
(d) For the marching soldiers.

4. How do the inhabitants of communist countries appear?
(a) Mostly Aryan, following the decimation of the Jewish population in World War II.
(b) Uniformly short and stocky.
(c) Predominantly tall and well-dressed.
(d) Diverse according to their racial heritages.

5. After the war, how was Alpha was received by Polish communists?
(a) With open arms.
(b) Skeptically.
(c) With hostility.
(d) On the condition he write what they wanted.

6. Milosz says that an individual has no more significance to the muse of history than what object?
(a) An instrument in an orchestra.
(b) A cog in a machine.
(c) A weed in a field.
(d) An atom in space.

7. What school of thought gave Alpha the tragic language he needed?
(a) Agnosticism.
(b) Catholicism.
(c) Capitalism.
(d) Fascism.

8. When did Alpha became a more religious writer?
(a) When he scoffed all Catholic writers.
(b) When he supported the underground Catholic church.
(c) When he turned his back on Christianity.
(d) When he became more fully involved in the church.

9. As explained in Chapter 1, if a man asks the questions to which the absurd leads him, he reaches what emotional state?
(a) Hatred of the proletariat.
(b) Despair for society.
(c) Hatred of the bourgeois.
(d) Hatred of himself.

10. According to the center, contradictions ___________ in the minds of its citizens.
(a) Do not exist.
(b) Are taught according to policy.
(c) Are allowed to remain.
(d) Are stamped out immediately.

11. Chapter 2 opens with the picture of the Eastern communists looking to the West with what emotion/s?
(a) Anger and confusion.
(b) Disillusionment.
(c) A mixture of hope and despair.
(d) Unabashed hope.

12. In Witkiewicz's novel, the characters ultimately become:
(a) Bolshevik.
(b) Schizophrenics.
(c) Hypochondriacs.
(d) Catatonic.

13. What do the Party dialecticians assert about art?
(a) Individual art outside the party lines has no lasting value.
(b) Poets may write what content they choose as long as it follows the same form.
(c) Individual art has intrinsic value.
(d) The state only slightly moderates art.

14. In Chapter 4, once the Nazis took over a country, how did they treat the printing presses?
(a) They destroyed the printing presses and offices.
(b) Almost nothing was printed in that country's language.
(c) Printing continued as normal.
(d) They took over the presses to print large volumes of propaganda.

15. What event did Alpha and Milosz narrowly miss one day as they were returning from the train station?
(a) The outbreak of a street fight.
(b) Being captured in the first man-hunt for Auschwitz.
(c) Being searched by Nazi squads.
(d) Being run over by a truck full of Jews bound for Auschwitz.

Short Answer Questions

1. Aesthetic Ketman spreads because the citizens crave what aspect of daily life?

2. In Witkeiwicz's novel, if man is attuned to the absurd, what does he see?

3. The people who practice metaphysical Ketman are often former ____________ .

4. Peasants, in Milosz's understanding, assert what about their lives?

5. The center planned that all Eastern European countries would speak which language?

(see the answer keys)

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