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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 is in the bridal chamber when Ernie and Golda first enter in Ernie's dream?

2. What do Golda and Ernie decide there is no time left to do?

3. Golda, the red-haired girl Ernie rescues, tells him that the Nazis would not have taken her with them because ____________.

4. How does Benjamin view Jewish suffering?

5. What are Ernie's first words as he comes to life in the hospital?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does Madame Trochu, the farmer's wife, distrust Ernie?

2. Why does Ernie decide he does not want to join the movements that are fighting back against the Nazis?

3. Why does Benjamin Levy say that to be a Jew is impossible?

4. In Ernie's dream, what mistake does Judith make as she talks about the wedding?

5. What part does the music of the band play in the successful extermination of the Jews?

6. Where did the Nazis tell the Jews they were going in the boxcars?

7. What changes does Madame Trochu make when she understands that Ernie is a Jew?

8. Why does Mordecai say it would be useless to leave Germany?

9. What details alert Ernie to the fact that the passengers will never leave this place?

10. What does the author find "admirable" about German education during the years before the Final Solution of Jewish extermination?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

This author dedicates many pages of his story to dream sequences. For your essay, select one of the major dreams that Ernie has and interpret the dream, its relation to his waking life, and the author's possible purpose for including the dream in the story.

Essay Topic 2

Schwarz-Bart includes a number of characters who represent wide segments of society in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. In your essay, select two or three characters such as the nurse in the infirmary, the farmer's wife, the young Galician, or Herr Geek and explain what purpose they serve in presenting the reader with a panoramic viewpoint of the culture at that time.

Essay Topic 3

There are moments in this story when Ernie is happy. In your essay, identify and explain the moments that cause him to briefly experience happiness. Do they make his life better or worse? Why do you think so?

(see the answer keys)

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