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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.
Short Answer Questions
1. Harboring contempt for Russia is what type of Ketman?
2. Why does the state take advantage of professional Ketman?
3. In Milosz's experience, how does a man change under communist rule?
4. According to Witkiewicz, what role does religion play in modern society?
5. Walking in the ruined city in 1945, what emotion did Alpha feel primarily?
Short Essay Questions
1. Is Ketman necessary to the citizen of the New Faith? Why?
2. What is historic fatalism and how does it affect even a man's most personal interactions?
3. .How did Alpha become a more religious writer when he turned away from Christianity?
4. If an artist disagrees with the dialectical method, he debates the question with a panel of Party authorities and always, undoubtedly loses. Why is this so?
5. Although only a couple presses were kept intact, in order to print Nazi propaganda, the underground writing flourished. Why?
6. Why is cosmopolitanism linked to nationalist concerns? What does the center gain by connecting these?
7. What is the difference between Eastern and Western Communists?
8. From several references to Tito throughout Chapters 2 and 3, what can the reader infer about him? What does the center gain by making an example of him?
9. Why does aesthetic Ketman flourish, when nothing of the sort is necessary in other countries?
10. What significance is there in the fact that Murti-Bing comes in pill form?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
Milosz repeatedly returns to the idea that religion is dead. Is this true? If so, how is it replaced in modern society? Keep in mind his argument that man craves the mysterious, and so religion is necessarily replaced.
Essay Topic 2
The book is fraught with nationalist tendencies, including the pride Milosz feels for his native city Vilna. What does this tell the reader about Milosz's idea of place? How does he act on (or, conversely, react to) these national tendencies? In the end, is he loyal to Poland?
Essay Topic 3
Milosz called Beta's war stories terrifying because they were told simply and truthfully, almost brutally. How is it possible to tell such stories with so little emotion? To what degree is empathy a necessary quality of stories? Is it possible for the reader, removed by many decades and a culture, to experience a similar lack of sympathy?
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This section contains 1,096 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) |
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