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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. Where did the man Gamma grow up?
(a) The country.
(b) An eighteenth-century palace.
(c) A party member's home.
(d) The city.

2. Beta wrote poems characterized by what?
(a) Leaning on the poet's weak faith in an effort to flee death.
(b) Crying out to God for deliverance.
(c) Lack of faith and the facing of death as reality.
(d) Taking bitter joy in the despair of the poet's surroundings.

3. 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) Turning themselves in as prisoners of war.
(b) Hiding with the underground resistance.
(c) Swimming across the river.
(d) Hiding in the surrounding forests.

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

5. 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.

Short Answer Questions

1. When someone asked about his family and origins, how would Delta answer?

2. In communist thought, where is there no division?

3. When Delta's writing no longer pleased the party, what happened?

4. Often when Milosz sees women walking through the streets of Paris, what does he remember?

5. Catholic Communists gradually lose everything except what aspect?

Short Essay Questions

1. 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?

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

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

4. How was Delta's poetry some of the most insightful work being written at the time?

5. "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?

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

7. How did Beta's circumstances lead him to a poetry that constantly moved? Why was it restless?

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

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

10. Beta's anger toward mankind became directed toward a fear of self-deception. How did this happen?

(see the answer keys)

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