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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What story is Kurt describing when he calls it 'one of the most popular stories ever told?'
(a) Snow White.
(b) Moby Dick.
(c) Cinderella.
(d) Crime and Punishment.

2. Who tells Hamlet about the ghost of his father?
(a) Polonius.
(b) Rush Limbaugh.
(c) Perry Mason.
(d) Horatio.

3. Why did Kurt have to talk to a cop?
(a) His car was stolen.
(b) His pocket was picked.
(c) He lost his cantaloupe.
(d) He was mugged.

4. What does Freud call laughless jokes?
(a) Gallows humor.
(b) Maternal humor.
(c) Silent humor.
(d) Dead humor.

5. How many people were killed in the Dresden firebombing?
(a) 135,000.
(b) 13,500.
(c) 1,350,000.
(d) 1,350.

6. What was the only way Kurt could get into an adult conversation when he was young?
(a) By saying something really funny.
(b) By speaking loudly and quickly.
(c) By breaking something or doing something naughty.
(d) By constantly interrupting.

7. Where did Kurt go to high school?
(a) Wessex.
(b) Chicago.
(c) Indianapolis.
(d) Middleton.

8. Who said that 'religion is the opium of the people?'
(a) Karl Marx.
(b) Adolph Hitler.
(c) Mao Zedong.
(d) Joseph Stalin.

9. At what age did Kurt start smoking?
(a) Twelve.
(b) Ten.
(c) Twenty-one.
(d) Eighteen.

10. Who, according to Kurt, is not really a humorist?
(a) Bob McKenzie.
(b) Bob Hope.
(c) Bob Smith.
(d) Bob Newhart.

11. What did Kurt get a Master's degree in after the war?
(a) Chemistry.
(b) Anthropology.
(c) Psychology.
(d) Literature.

12. When did the first crack appear between English and German Americans?
(a) The Civil War.
(b) The First World War.
(c) When the Germans first arrived.
(d) World War II.

13. According to Kurt Vonnegut, who wrote the greatest American short story?
(a) William McKinley.
(b) Ambrose Bierce.
(c) Robert Enrico.
(d) Emily Dickenson.

14. When did Emma Lazarus write her famous sonnet about the 'poor,' 'wretched,' and 'homeless?'
(a) 1867.
(b) 1855.
(c) 1883.
(d) 1872.

15. In what year did Albert Camus win a Nobel Prize for literature?
(a) 1957.
(b) 1942.
(c) 1892.
(d) 1968.

Short Answer Questions

1. What did Kurt used to 'laugh his head off' at?

2. What does the man turn into at the end of Franz Kafka's story?

3. What would Kurt use occasionally in jokes?

4. Who was unsure about Jane Marie's decision to marry a German?

5. What did Freud not know?

(see the answer keys)

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