View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Artie’s father describe Anja’s relationships before marriage?

2. What objection does Artie’s father make about the material Artie is gathering?

3. What period is covered by Chapter 1?

4. What does Artie say was his father’s policy regarding food?

5. What events also took place on Parshas Truma?

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe Vladek’s accommodations at the POW camp.

2. What two worlds are juxtaposed in the opening scene?

3. How does Artie’s father characterize himself in the time before he met Anja?

4. What is Anja’s involvement in the politics in Czechoslovakia?

5. What happens to Vladek and Anja in 1939?

6. What is life like at the sanitarium for Vladek and Anja?

7. What explains Vladek’s decision to marry Anja and not Lucia Greenberg?

8. What consequences do Anja’s political activities have?

9. How was Vladek kept out of the Polish army the first time, and why did he end up going into the army the next year?

10. How does Vladek get back to Sosnowiec?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Evaluate your own reading of Maus—did you resist it, or were you compelled by the story? What does your reading tell you about yourself and your interests? Use specific examples from the book to describe yourself as a reader.

Essay Topic 2

Most of the action of Maus takes place in Poland as Vladek recounts his experiences there, but Artie is American, and the story also takes place in Rego Park. In what way is Maus an American book?

Essay Topic 3

Identify the most important plot points in Maus. What is at stake in each of these moments? What possibilities do these moments present, and how are those possibilities channeled into specific actions or events? How does the plot chart its course among other alternative or possible plots?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 913 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample