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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. What term does Arrow use to describe herself when she is performing effectively in her role as a sniper?

2. Though Dragan does not know his immediate family's precise location, he believes they are in which country?

3. How often must Kenan walk to the brewery to fetch water for his family?

4. When Dragan is introduced in Chapter One, he thinks about the Winter Olympics that were held in Sarajevo in which year?

5. For what purpose is Dragan walking toward his workplace in Chapter One?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the significance of Albinoni’s adagio from the cellist’s perspective and why?

2. What does the tram symbolize in Kenan's memory of the siege's first day?

3. How does Arrow determine the location of the sniper tasked with killing the cellist?

4. Discuss the meaning of the Leon Trotsky quote Galloway includes as an epigraph.

5. Discuss an instance when Galloway uses the sound motif in Chapter Two.

6. What theft does Arrow consider to be the most egregious when it comes to what the men on the hill have stolen from her and her fellow Sarajevans?

7. What situation is Dragan in when the reader rejoins him in Chapter Two?

8. What does Dragan do for a living and what is his family situation?

9. For what reason does the cellist need protection and from whom?

10. In what way does Galloway use word choice to suggest the anxiety Kenan feels as he walks through his devastated city?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Analyze the ways in which the themes of adaptability and resignation appear within Galloway’s novel The Cellist of Sarajevo. What message is Galloway sending about these two themes over the course of the narrative?

Essay Topic 2

Discuss Galloway's choice to tell the story of The Cellist of Sarajevo using the perspectives of three Sarajavan citizens. What elements of the novel's themes lend themselves to this choice and what are Galloway’s intended effects on the reader?

Essay Topic 3

Choose an object from The Cellist of Sarajevo, such as the cello notes, the bottle of expired pills, or some other symbolic object and discuss its overall meaning and its connection to themes within the text.

(see the answer keys)

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