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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 is Charlotte and Eduard's son to be named?

2. On which procession of people does the new house guest, who arrived during Ottilie's artistic activity, exercise his craft and calling?

3. Whose appearance do the painted decorations of the restored building seem to have?

4. What specific form of memorializing does Charlotte admit having an aversion to?

5. Whom does Ottilie summon for help as the tragedy unfolds?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the nature of the "pendulum experiment" that one of the foreign visitors proposes, why does he propose it, and what are its results?

2. What does Ottilie decide to embark upon as a career, and why?

3. Summarize the reason for the solicitor's visit to Charlotte, which is related at the beginning of Part II.

4. What amusement does the Count suggest should occupy Luciane's energies?

5. Where does Eduard go to meet Ottilie, and what are the circumstances of their meeting?

6. How does Ottilie respond to the tragedy involving herself and Otto?

7. What is the general substance of Ottilie's first journal entry, at the end of Part II, Chapter 2?

8. How do Eduard, Charlotte, and Ottilie act once they are all living in the same house together again?

9. Describe the circumstances of Ottilie's death.

10. Whom does Eduard meet when he walks through his own estate, and what is the significance of their meeting?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Choose three symbolic objects, characters, places, or events in the novel and discuss their significance to the plot, character development, thematic evolution, and the narrative as a whole. Some examples of symbolism include: Ottilie's miniature portrait of her father; the crystal goblet engraved with "EO;" the moss hut and pavilion; the various celebrations for characters' birthdays; Eduard's decision to rejoin the military; the events at Otto's baptism; Ottilie's Moroccan chest; the fireworks at the lake; the relationship between the Count and the Baroness; the contract; the restoration of the chapel; Otto's death; Charlotte's changes to the burial grounds in the churchyard; and so on. What do your selected symbols mean for the characters in the novel and do they differ from how you the reader interpret them in your analysis of the narrative as a whole?

Essay Topic 2

Examine the role of human beings in shaping the natural landscape. What do the four protagonists use the land for? How do they view their use of it, and the general purpose the landscape has? Describe their relationship to the land in terms of the utilitarian, the picturesque, the beautiful, and/or the sublime? What does nature seem to symbolize for each character, and what is the significance of this symbolism? How might a reader interpret the protagonists' use of and relation to the land as a statement by Goethe about human interactions with nature in his own time and place?

Essay Topic 3

Consider the form, style, and content of the novel as a whole. What is the style of narrative discourse in which Goethe generally writes? What type of narrator is Goethe's narrator, and how does he use this figure as a mediation between the story and the reader? What are the effects on the narrative when the narrator occasionally switches verb tense? How does the occasional interspersion of letters and journal entries affect the "flow" of the novel, the reader's perspective of the characters, and the plot itself? How does this story fit into the genre of the novel?

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