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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. Where was the woman from?

2. Why was Piri cut off from her family at the beginning of Chapter 3?

3. What does Farenc say about what Piri tells him?

4. Where were Piri and Iboya when they were nearly attacked?

5. What festivities did Babi prepare for, in spite of the fact that family wouldn't be able to gather?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why did Farenc agree to help Piri and her family?

2. Why did Babi distrust Farenc?

3. Discuss Farenc's return to Babi's farm.

4. Describe Piri's return to Beregszasz.

5. Describe Piri's relationship with Farenc.

6. What did Farenc say about Babi's desire to ship the children to America?

7. What bad news did Farenc deliver during one visit?

8. How did current events affect the Passover holiday?

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

10. Describe Piri and Iboya's encounter with the armed young men.

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

In Piri's account, what is the cause of the Holocaust that killed 11 million people? Was it simply Anti-Semitism, or does she attribute her family's experiences to other cultural phenomena? How important is it for her to find causes, anyway? If finding causes is not important to her, what is more important? Bearing witness? Testifying? Externalizing the experience?

Essay Topic 3

How does Siegal distinguish the memoir genre from the novel? How is 'Upon the Head of a Goat' literary in spite of itself? What novelistic features does 'Upon the Head of a Goat' have (allusions, foreshadowing, symbols, plotting) and how does Siegal make attempts to keep the writing real and urgent and true to life?

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This section contains 691 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample