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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 Lebyatkin ask Lisa in a letter?

2. Whom does Mrs. Lembke befriend?

3. What has Peter Verkhovensky been doing in the week since the confrontations at Mrs. Stavrogin's house?

4. How does Chapter 5 begin?

5. What do we find out about Dasha after the duel?

Short Essay Questions

1. What business does Peter conduct with Kirilov in the raining cold of the night?

2. How many people end up involved in the conversation between Mrs. Stavrogin and Shatov at the beginning of Chapter 3 in Part I?

3. What is Verkhovensky's status in Russian society?

4. How does Shatov respond to Lisa Tushin's proposal?

5. How does Peter feel about Shigalyov's plan?

6. What does Mrs. Stavrogin suggest as a result of her sense that she is getting older?

7. What has Shatov's state of mind been like since the confrontation, during which he struck Stavrogin?

8. What is Julia Lembke's relationship with the youth of her town?

9. Where was Shatov's wife, Mary, before she returned to him, and what condition is she in when she returns?

10. What does Peter tell us about Nicholas Stavrogin's relationship with Miss Lebyatkin?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What role does innocence play in The Possessed? Is it always sacrificed, as Mary Lebyatkin and Shatov are? Does it endure anywhere, in spite of Mary and Shatov's murders?

Essay Topic 2

Following the allegory of the swine from Luke, are the demons cast out of the society of the novel? Are they cast out of Russian society by Dostoevsky's novel?

Essay Topic 3

What is the role of the crowd in The Possessed? How do the gathered factory workers or the guests at the fête behave like one character with a unified will or behavior of their own? How does Dostoevsky describe the crowds? What power do they have? What weaknesses?

(see the answer keys)

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