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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 best describes the personality of Werther's employer?
2. What does Werther often wish would happen to him, as related in numerous letters?
3. What does Werther wonder about happiness in the letter of November 30?
4. Whom does Werther blame for his sorrows in the letter of November 3?
5. What does Werther assert about the state of mind of the person he meets in the letter of November 30?
Short Essay Questions
1. How does Werther perceive Count C.?
2. Describe the Prince and why Werther is involved with him.
3. Summarize the ongoing story of the farmer-boy whom Werther had met earlier in the novel.
4. How do Werther's personality and his thoughts change upon returning to Wahlheim?
5. What correspondence does Werther receive from a government minister, as related in the letter of February 17, and how does Werther react to the correspondence?
6. What are Werther's general views on religion, as expressed in several letters?
7. Whom does Werther meet while walking in Weimar, and what is this young woman like?
8. What does Werther think of the aunt of the young woman he meets while walking in Weimar?
9. What reaction does Werther have to the news about the walnut trees in the courtyard of the vicarage?
10. What does Werther find out in the letter of December 1 about the man he met by the water, and how does he find this out?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
Examine Goethe's own biography and its influence on his composition of the novel and the formulation of characters and events. What events are similar between Goethe's experience and Werther's experience? What characters are similar? Which ones are notably different? Can you think of any particular expressions of sensibility, emotion, attraction, etc. that Goethe may have taken right out of his own life? What are the considerations a reader must have when reading a novel (ostensibly a work of fiction) that appears to be so closely related to its author's life? How closely can we truly tie the autobiography and novel genres without overstepping the bounds of either one?
Essay Topic 2
Compare and contrast the two lovelorn young men Werther meets: the farmer-boy who fell in love with his mistress and murdered his other servant, and the madman named Heinrich roaming around the water's edge looking for flowers. What has caused the situations the two men find themselves in? What are their reasons, excuses, interpretations and plans? How do their situations and Goethe's characterization of them relate to Werther--that is, in which ways are they notably similar and different? How does Werther interpret his encounters with the two men? Is there any form of irony present in their characterizations, their narratives, or their fates?
Essay Topic 3
Consider the little peasant family that Werther meets in Wahlheim and subsequently gets to know: the mother and her several children, including Hans. What is the little family's story? What attracts them to Werther? How does he interact with them? How is his relationship with them symbolic of a relationship between social classes at large? What might the symbolism be when their inheritance falls through, and when Hans dies? What is the effect of their tragedy on Werther? What about their fate of poverty is significant to the major themes of the novel?
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This section contains 1,218 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) |
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