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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. How did Gamma express his anti-Semitic views?

2. In the context of Chapter 8, peasants are divided into three categories so that what happens?

3. What kind of mentality do peasants have, according to the state?

4. In cycles that lasted several days, what would Delta do?

5. Why are workers told that it is a crime to strike?

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

3. 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?

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

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

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

7. How could Delta, who was not racist, write such violently anti-Semitic material?

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

9. How are the peasants, in several ways, the most helpless class of people?

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

Though many human interactions are characterized by some degree of acting, the citizens of Soviet countries are forced to take this to an extreme. What does this tell us about the relationship between communist ideals and the individual? What should the role of government be in an individual's life? To what degree is this a perversion of how it should be? Or is this justified in the name of communist ideals?

Essay Topic 2

Why is art outside the public mind important? Milosz says that when man thinks only in the collective body, he can no longer think other than what is necessary. In other words, personal observations and thoughts are cut off. Why, then, does he place such importance on creating art other than what is strictly necessary?

Essay Topic 3

The reader sees, through many examples, that communism seeks to further its rule at all cost, even if that cost be millions of lives. Is this necessary for the continuance of communism, or is there another way? To what extent should a government assert itself on the lives of its citizens in order to survive?

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