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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. Rather than condemning the four men about whom he writes, how does Milosz open Chapter 8?

2. After two years, Delta returned again to favor, and how did his future look?

3. When man is faced with constant death and when life seems meaningless, how does dialectical materialism seem?

4. Why did Beta's writing assert that communism was salvation?

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

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. 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?

4. 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?

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

6. 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?

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

8. 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?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Throughout the book, the converts to communism decry the evils of capitalism, even going so far as to say capitalism led directly to Hitlerism (pg. 128, Beta's assertion). Is this necessarily true? If communism leads, as history has proven, to a dictatorship, then where does capitalism lead?

Essay Topic 2

Beta's stories portray man as an animal, barely held in check by the restraints of civilization. How is this demonstrated in Poland during World War II? Given the progression of Poland through capitalism, Nazism, and communism, was man's good or animal side stronger? Which one triumphed? Also, use examples from the book of people acting out of goodness.

Essay Topic 3

Given the examples only of these four men, what is your impression of communism? Is it possible to get a good idea of both communist ideals and its reality by reading about their lives? Use examples from their chapters to illustrate your thoughts.

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