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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. After two years, Delta returned again to favor, and how did his future look?
(a) He was returned only for the translation of a Shakespeare poem.
(b) He could be assured that it will last.
(c) He could not be assured that it will last.
(d) He was given a ten-year contract.

2. Why did Beta's writing assert that communism was salvation?
(a) Capitalism led to Hitlerism.
(b) Capitalism could not provide for society's needs.
(c) Man was too weak to save himself.
(d) Man would not think for himself.

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

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

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

Short Answer Questions

1. In the concentration camp, what is Beta's job?

2. How was Delta's cheerful poetry treated?

3. How much time did Beta spend in the concentration camp Auschwitz?

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

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

Short Essay Questions

1. 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?

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

3. 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?

4. 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?

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

6. Rather than blaming these four men for the choices they made, Milosz says they were slaves to history. How is this true?

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

8. "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?

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

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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