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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. How did Piri hear from her parents?

2. What grade did Piri start in 1941?

3. How does Piri say the school routine changed in 1941?

4. Who is Lajos?

5. Where did Father expect his battalion to go?

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe Piri's return to Beregszasz.

2. What was strange to Piri about Babi's distrust?

3. Describe Father's visit home.

4. What conflict does Piri witness?

5. Why did Piri's mother express concern over Rozsi?

6. How did Piri's mother react to this encounter with the group of boys?

7. What did Babi want Mother and Father to do with the children, and what was Mother's response?

8. Where does 'Upon the Head of a Goat' begin?

9. Describe Piri's family's friendship with Mrs. Gerber.

10. Describe the woman mother helped.

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Memoirs like Elie Wiesel's Night, or Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's 'Day in the Live of Ivan Denisovich' detail the goings on inside of concentration camps. This memoir stops at the moment when those stories would have begun. How does this ending point affect the shape of Siegal's narrative? Is there a tension between the memoir as a recollection of childhood, and a recollection of a horrific experience? How does Siegal both include and avoid the experience of the concentration camp itself?

Essay Topic 2

That are the most important, or prevalent symbols or metaphors in 'Upon the Head of a Goat'? The notion of the sacrificial animal is introduced at the beginning, but what other imagery or motifs does Siegal employ in 'Upon the Head of a Goat'? How does she add to the meaning of the book with symbolic associations?

Essay Topic 3

To what extent is this merely a story of Piri's self-discovery, in which she learned to pay attention to her own impressions and acquired a knowledge of adult facts like injustice and suffering and the relativity of human ideas? How much is Piri the subject of her own memoir? What other topics compete with herself?

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