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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. According to Chapter 8, how does communism define the reactionary?
(a) Reverts to the traditional way of thinking.
(b) Is incapable of seeing how everything is interdependent.
(c) Refuses to agree wholeheartedly with the party.
(d) Acts contrary to party principles.

2. During Gamma's youth, Poland gradually separated along what lines?
(a) The capitalists and communists.
(b) Pro-Semitic and anti-Semitic.
(c) The nationalistic right and socialist left.
(d) The traditional right and Soviet left.

3. How did Delta return to his wife in Poland?
(a) With a girl he'd picked up at the Polish border.
(b) With a girlfriend he'd brought from Brussels.
(c) Without a single penny.
(d) Completely sober.

4. What did Delta, in his enthusiasm, love?
(a) The words of intellectuals.
(b) The literary cafes.
(c) Crowds and festivals.
(d) The whirlpool of human emotions.

5. Why do Party dialecticians change the Method when necessary?
(a) They want to stay one step ahead of the reactionaries.
(b) Reality proves the Method to be unworkable.
(c) They are forced to modernize.
(d) History has destroyed all other formulae which claim to be unerring.

6. What happened when Beta's artistic talent moved to the furthest boundaries of communist dictates?
(a) Words and individual man lost all meaning.
(b) Words could no longer move him to action.
(c) It could not be satisfied, and he left the party.
(d) The words he wrote were the only things he knew.

7. Chapter 6 opens with a picture of Vilna, which is a city of __________ .
(a) Gardens.
(b) Streams.
(c) Beaches.
(d) Forests.

8. Often when Milosz sees women walking through the streets of Paris, what does he remember?
(a) A Jewish girl shot while running for her life.
(b) His dead wife.
(c) An unknown girl run over by an SS truck.
(d) A Polish girl brushing her hair.

9. When a man refuses to become a shock-worker in a factory, what does he soon find?
(a) He is denied the privileges of better work or vacation.
(b) He is demoted until he can learn respect.
(c) He is fired, and cannot provide for his family.
(d) He is imprisoned until his views change.

10. When man is faced with constant death and when life seems meaningless, how does dialectical materialism seem?
(a) Like a refuge.
(b) Mathematical and calculating.
(c) Useless and outmoded.
(d) Mysterious and full of meaning.

11. Because he believed in earthly salvation, what did Beta argue?
(a) Only man can bring about his own happiness.
(b) Promises of heavenly salvation are false.
(c) History has no force in man's present struggles.
(d) Anyone opposing mankind's happiness is evil.

12. At a fairly young age, how did Beta die?
(a) By an unknown assassin.
(b) At the hands of the communists.
(c) At the hands of the Nazis.
(d) By suicide.

13. How did Gamma express his anti-Semitic views?
(a) Violently.
(b) Calmly.
(c) Only to the people he trusted.
(d) To anyone who would listen.

14. The last time Milosz saw Beta, how did the unassuming poet look?
(a) He had become an outspoken adversary of communism.
(b) He had become self-assured and thoroughly political.
(c) He hadn't changed.
(d) He had become even more afraid, following his time in the concentration camp.

15. In Russia, what organization did Gamma and several of his friends create?
(a) The Society of Enlightened Communist Workers.
(b) The Union of Workers.
(c) The Union of Patriots.
(d) The Society for the Well-Being of Mankind.

Short Answer Questions

1. When do Beta's stories show that people are good?

2. In the context of Chapter 8, peasants are divided into three categories so that what happens?

3. In light of Beta's poetry, how does Milosz treat the modern artist's potential?

4. How does Milosz describe Delta's poetry?

5. In the concentration camp, what kind of life does Beta lead?

(see the answer keys)

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