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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 he spent time in Moscow, what kinds of reports did Delta send back?
(a) Ones that glowed with enthusiasm.
(b) Ones that portrayed the city as gloomy.
(c) Ones that said exactly what the party wanted to hear.
(d) Ones that spoke haltingly of Russian progress.

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

3. In Chapter 8, Milosz explains that the totalitarian states places such emotional strain on its citizens that what occurs?
(a) They cannot survive long as individuals.
(b) They will cease to think for themselves.
(c) The people cannot be responsible for their actions.
(d) The strain itself determines their actions.

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

5. In cycles that lasted several days, what would Delta do?
(a) Walk the streets.
(b) Write his poems.
(c) Take drugs.
(d) Drink alcohol.

Short Answer Questions

1. How did Delta return to his wife in Poland?

2. How was Delta's cheerful poetry treated?

3. In Chapter 8, how does the party treat whatever is not expressed?

4. In Milosz's understanding, the class of the bourgeois is comprised of what people?

5. What was the title of Delta's most unusual poem, which spoke in terms best understood in a dream?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. 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?

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

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

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

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

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

9. Gamma did not even try to save his family when they were deported to Siberia. How is this a vivid example of the communist attitude toward individual lives?

10. 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?

(see the answer keys)

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