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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What did Paz find in the actions and faces of North Americans?
(a) A fear about the survival of their society.
(b) An unrealistic optimism about the future.
(c) A faith in man's intrinsic goodness and its effects on their culture.
(d) A faith in their society and confidence in its survival.

2. Paz discusses the result of persecution on the pachuco. What is that result?
(a) It makes him stronger.
(b) It makes him distrustful.
(c) It breaks his solitude.
(d) It strengthens his anger.

3. What type of book did Xavier Villaurrutia write?
(a) Religious exhortations about life.
(b) Death-related poetry.
(c) A scientific explanation of death.
(d) Life-related poetry.

4. What is Paz's opinion about the physical features distinguishing Mexicans from North Americans?
(a) People do not understand their significance.
(b) They are not as important as commonly believed.
(c) People are too distracted by them.
(d) They are more important than commonly believed.

5. What is the French sociologists' interpretation of the fiesta?
(a) The people's squandering of money appeases the gods.
(b) The people's misunderstanding of life increases their desire for death.
(c) The people's disregard for death increases their sense of life.
(d) The people's disregard for obligations enhances their sense of time.

Short Answer Questions

1. To follow Paz's previous argument, what is the result when one Mexican confides in another?

2. What mentality does Paz attribute to the Mexican?

3. How does the philosophy of progress treat death?

4. As the closure to Chapter Two, the reader sees what shadow spreading out over Mexico?

5. Why did the sense of Mexicanism "float" in the air of Los Angeles?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does North American culture view the pachuco? Does the pachuco accept or reject that culture's perception of him?

2. Who represents the conflict that Mexicans have not been able to solve? What effect does that conflict have on their culture?

3. What mutual problem do both the Mexican and the North American face? What is the solution to that problem?

4. What group of people did the author have in mind as he wrote the book? How and why did those people become important to him?

5. What is the character of the Mexican's solitude? How does it differ from the solitude of the North American?

6. What were Paz's impressions of the United States? How does that contrast with the literature being written? In your mind, what accounts for the discrepancy?

7. When does Paz say that a nation questions itself? Is it necessary?

8. Who is the Virgin of Guadalupe? How is she an important part of Mexican identity?

9. Why does the Mexican love Form? Other than in personal relationships, how does that idea express itself?

10. What is the greatest horror that a worker suffers? Do you think that is true?

(see the answer keys)

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