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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. In the context of Chapter 8, peasants are divided into three categories so that what happens?
(a) Mutual hatred grows among them.
(b) The Center can better govern them.
(c) They form ties outside their social class.
(d) Work is done most efficiently.

2. Rather than condemning the four men about whom he writes, how does Milosz open Chapter 8?
(a) Saying they were enslaved by their ways of thinking.
(b) Saying they were misguided by their education.
(c) Saying the situation was too senseless to see the truth.
(d) Saying they were victims of historical circumstance

3. As Beta relates, when Greek prisoners cannot march because they are too weak, how are they first punished?
(a) With sticks tied to their legs.
(b) With three days' hard labor.
(c) With death.
(d) With beatings.

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

5. Beta remained bitter because he was unable to see what?
(a) Man in relation to his fellow man.
(b) Society's reasons for action.
(c) Individual man apart from society.
(d) The purpose of action within a community.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Milosz describe Delta's poetry?

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

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

4. What kind of mentality do peasants have, according to the state?

5. Apart from his poetry, what was Delta's personality?

Short Essay Questions

1. Under communist rule, education is from a strictly materialistic view. Why is this necessary to maintain proper thought among the citizens?

2. Beta saw life only in terms of society rather than in terms of individual man. How was this his downfall?

3. How was Delta able to play the game that the center demanded of him--and be better at it?

4. Why is Gamma called "the slave of history"? Whose interests does he serve?

5. In Chapter VIII, Milosz takes on the tone of a communist to describe the evils of the various classes. How is this more powerful than a mere description?

6. How were Beta and the people of his generation fallen into dark hopelessness?

7. "Still, it was not easy to become a communist, for communism meant a complete revision of one's concepts of nationality " (pg. 147). How was this true?

8. Milosz calls Beta's reaction to the concentration camp life sadistic. How is this true?

9. Why does Milosz go to such pains to describe Gamma, when the other writers found in his book are given only a few sentences of description?

10. Nearly six years of Nazi rule had radically changed people's ideas of private property. Did this help or harm the communist idea of common property?

(see the answer keys)

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