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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. When a man refuses to become a shock-worker in a factory, what does he soon find?

2. Beta wrote poems characterized by what?

3. As the NKVD began mass deportation, how did Gamma write communist propaganda?

4. In light of Beta's poetry, how does Milosz treat the modern artist's potential?

5. What happened when Beta's artistic talent moved to the furthest boundaries of communist dictates?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. 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?

3. 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?

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

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

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

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

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

9. 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?

10. Nearly six years of Nazi rule had radically changed people's ideas of private property. Did this help or harm the communist idea of common property?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Prompted by Lieutenant Zbyszek's sign in the wilderness of bombed Warsaw, Alpha and Milosz reflect on the man who wrote it. What is Milosz's response, emotionally and mentally, to the sign? Using other examples from the book (e.g., the Jewish girl shot in the street or Delta's life), explain what Milosz presents about the permanence of an individual life.

Essay Topic 2

This question has been growing throughout the book: Why does Milosz write? As you answer, consider the writer's responsibility in the world, and the responsibility of a man who has witnessed great evil. Intellectually and ethically, did Milosz make the right choice to write what he saw?

Essay Topic 3

Through Party propaganda and education, communism suppresses man's ability to think for himself. How do the people presented in The Captive Mind either fight or accept this suppression? Consider only the main subjects of the book, including their writing for the underground or for the party.

(see the answer keys)

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