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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 does an old man in the woods offer Claude and Christine?

2. Who is the journalist who drops in while Pierre and Claude are visiting Mahoudeau and Chaîne?

3. Who now has a mansion near Claude's and Christine's cottage?

4. What do Claude's friends in Paris think is the ideal life for an artist?

5. What is Pierre Sandoz doing for Claude?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does Christine turn to Sandoz to help pull Claude out of one of his depressions?

2. How has Fagerolles become swallowed up by the commercial world of art?

3. How does the behavior of Dubuche foreshadow the deterioration of the Open Air group of young Bohemian artists?

4. What is another evidence of how the Open air group is drifting apart?

5. Discuss the Salon des Refusés.

6. Explain how Claude turns on Christine as the reason his grand painting is not coming together for him.

7. Aside from the poverty of Claude's studio, how does the reader come to understand how poor Claude actually is?

8. Describe the friendship between Claude, Sandoz, and Dubuche.

9. How does the reader understand that Claude earns a subsistence?

10. How does the atmosphere of the country begin to change for Claude and Christine?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Write an essay of at least two typed, double-spaced pages on the topic of Zola's Use of Simile in THE MASTERPIECE. Going through the novel, pick out three similes that particularly impress you and build your essay around those. (For example, Zola refers to life in the "secluded little mansion in Passy...as smooth and regular as the gentle ticking of its antiquated clocks.") Points of the essay should include (1) why you chose the similes, (2) how they made a passage clearer, and (3) how easy they are to understand.

Essay Topic 2

Write an essay of at least two typed, double-spaced pages on the topic of Getting to the Top. Using Bongrand as an authority, the essay should center on his statement that the "greatest satisfaction was not being at the top, but in getting there." The essay may also include more modern examples of more modern celebrities who rose to the top of their fields only to end up in obscurity.

Essay Topic 3

Write an essay of at least two typed, double-spaced pages on the topic of The Development of the Rift Between Claude and Christine. Using this line from the end of Chapter 8--"Never again would they be all-in-all to each other; the rift between them could never be healed. The wife had despoiled the mistress, and marriage seems to have done away with love." Explain in the essay what Zola means by those statements.

(see the answer keys)

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