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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. Luzhin spectacularly wins a chess game in Berlin after sacrificing what three pieces in a row?

2. How does Luzhin think fellow students feel about him?

3. How does Luzhin usually travel to school?

4. Where are Luzhin and his father when Archduke Ferdinand is killed, starting World War I?

5. Where does Luzhin hide during the party?

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe Luzhin's future wife when he meets her in Germany.

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

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

4. Before playing with his son, how does Luzhin's father consider his own chess abilities?

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

6. When Luzhin watches the chess game between his classmates, what move excites him?

7. How does Luzhin feel about playing chess blind?

8. What does Luzhin resent while he is working on a puzzle?

9. How does Valentinov view Luzhin?

10. What happens when Luzhin is found hiding in his family's house at the end of Chapter 1?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Discuss marriage in the novel.

1) How does Luzhin's parent's marriage play out? What example of marriage does Luzhin have as a child?

2) Why does Luzhin marry? What does he expect from marriage? What does his wife expect from marriage? What do others expect from their marriage?

3) What other examples of marriage are there in the novel? What is Luzhin's wife's parents' marriage like? What does the novel say about marriage in general?

Essay Topic 2

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 3

Discuss obsession in the novel.

1) Why is Luzhin obsessed with chess? Is this unhealthy, as his psychiatrist suggests?

2) What are other characters' obsessions? Does Luzhin's father have an obsession? Does his wife have one? What about other characters?

3) Can Luzhin's obsession be broken? Should it be?

(see the answer keys)

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