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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. As he got older, how did Gamma feel about his life?

2. The state methods of teaching give the illusion of what?

3. In communist thought, where is there no division?

4. In Milosz's understanding, the class of the bourgeois is comprised of what people?

5. When Delta's writing no longer pleased the party, what happened?

Short Essay Questions

1. How were Beta's stories a fitting insight into his nihilist worldview?

2. How was Delta's poetry some of the most insightful work being written at the time?

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

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

5. "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?

6. 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?

7. 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?

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

9. 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?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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.

Essay Topic 2

What is the relationship between Western and Eastern communism? How do the citizens of each sphere think about and react to each other? Find specific examples of their current interactions, and project the outcome of these to the future. Will they always look at the world through such disparate viewpoints?

Essay Topic 3

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.

(see the answer keys)

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