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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 year does Luzhin's father begin to write a novel whose main character is a chess-playing boy like his son?

2. When Luzhin's fiancee's father meets Luzhin, what does he offer the chess champion?

3. What is Luzhin's problem in school?

4. Whose chess set does Luzhin get interested in?

5. What does Luzhin's father suspect his son of looking for in illustrated magazines?

Short Essay Questions

1. How doe Luzhin's fiancee seem like a dream to him?

2. What is on Luzhin's father's mind during his first chess games with his son?

3. How does Luzhin respond to his fiancee's parents' home?

4. Who does Luzhin nearly run into on the first day he skips school?

5. What problem does Luzhin have getting to his game with his final rival?

6. How is Luzhin affected by spectators at his chess games?

7. How does Luzhin's father feel when he finally hears that his son is a prodigy?

8. Why does Luzhin hide during his father's party?

9. What ability does Luzhin compare his ability to read chess notation with?

10. What does Luzhin ask his fiancee to do, on the second day she comes to his Berlin chess tournament?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Discuss art and reflections of reality in the novel.

1) How is Luzhin's father's writing a reflection of reality? How is it a projection of his father's desires, a world of wish fulfillment? How does his writing compare to reality?

2) How do Luzhin's drawings reflect reality, and how do they reflect his perception of reality?

3) How is Luzhin's chess playing an art, and how is it not an art? How does it relate and compare to music? How does it reflect reality? How does it show Luzhin's perception of reality and his own wish fulfillment?

Essay Topic 2

Discuss social norms and expectations in the novel.

1) How does Luzhin fit into society, and how do the norms and expectations of society affect him?

2) How are the normal, everyday tasks that people undertake different for Luzhin? How does this affect his ability to fit into society?

3) How do Luzhin's in-laws represent social norms and expectations, and how do they perceive Luzhin?

Essay Topic 3

Discuss the structure of the novel.

1) What divides the novel into sections or parts? What roles do these parts play over the course of the novel?

2) How does Luzhin develop over the course of the novel? How does he change?

3) Why does the novel begin in Luzhin's boyhood?

(see the answer keys)

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