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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. 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.

2. As the Polish fought the Germans for control of Warsaw near the end of the war, how did a few people manage to survive?
(a) Swimming across the river.
(b) Hiding with the underground resistance.
(c) Turning themselves in as prisoners of war.
(d) Hiding in the surrounding forests.

3. As he got older, how did Gamma feel about his life?
(a) He had wasted his youth in service of the party.
(b) He had not devoted enough energy to the party.
(c) He had become too comfortable with his accomplishments.
(d) He had wasted his youth on reckless living.

4. In Chapter 8, how does the party treat whatever is not expressed?
(a) It is not important.
(b) It does not exist.
(c) It is most dangerous.
(d) It is not dangerous.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. When man is faced with constant death and when life seems meaningless, how does dialectical materialism seem?

2. After being captured as a Polish soldier, what happened to Delta?

3. When he spent time in Moscow, what kinds of reports did Delta send back?

4. As Milosz witnessed, why was becoming a communist a difficult decision?

5. How does Milosz describe Delta's poetry?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does the party's definition of a reactionary reduce him to a comic level?

2. Milosz opens Chapter VI with a description of Vilna as it existed during his childhood. Is this simply to introduce Gamma or is there another reason?

3. Delta, in wandering the roads in France, met people from many different nations. How did this universal migration prepare the way even more for communist rule?

4. How were Beta's stories a fitting insight into his nihilist worldview?

5. Milosz states that the goals of the workers are far different from those of the state. How is this so?

6. How could Delta, who was not racist, write such violently anti-Semitic material?

7. 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?

8. Eventually Delta's poems became something of a dream, unreal. How was this inevitable?

9. "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?

10. Milosz writes that Delta could not (or would not) distinguish between truth and fable, even in his personal life. Is this the kind of mind the Party would have wanted?

(see the answer keys)

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