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 solitude assume a purifying, almost purgative, quality for the Mexican?

2. In the book's argument, what happens when a Mexican woman is passive?

3. When Paz first arrived in the United States, what surprised him most about the people?

4. In their relation to their world, to whom does Paz compare Mexicans?

5. Paz says that during critical moments in a nation's development, the people ask themselves a critical question. What is that question?

Short Essay Questions

1. 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?

2. What is the world of terrorism like? How is it different from the past world of conquest and war?

3. How do Mexicans view their bodies? How does their view contribute to their wish for privacy?

4. What happens during the fiesta? What is the emotional result?

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

6. What is the modern view of death? How is it dramatically different from the Aztec view?

7. What is dissimulation? How does it compare to lying? How does it affect the Mexican's idea of himself?

8. What is the origin of the pachuco? How does that characterization prepare the reader for the rest of the book?

9. How did the Aztecs view sin? How does that idea explain the Conquest? What enormous change did Catholicism introduce?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What are the gender roles explained throughout the book? Given the culture and the time, what are the gender expectations? Who acts against those expectations?

Essay Topic 2

In Paz's arguments, how important is the Mexican sense of place? What affects it? What is its most important aspect? Explain the sense of place in the greater context of the Mexican mindset that Paz presents throughout the book.

Essay Topic 3

What dualities did Sor Juana represent (philosophical, religious, gender-based)? What lasting influence did she have?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,742 words (approx. 6 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample