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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What are the narrator's feelings about guidebooks?
(a) They are destructive in their overanalysis.
(b) They are written by people who never travel.
(c) They are helpful for young travelers.
(d) Every location in them should be avoided.

2. Another one of the pilgrims featured within Flights considers what philosophical work to be more practical than the Bible?
(a) A work by Hobbes.
(b) A work by Nietzsche.
(c) A work by Descartes.
(d) A work by Cioran.

3. When the narrator attends the lecture about travel psychology, what does she conclude about its length?
(a) It was too long.
(b) It should never have started in the first place.
(c) It was precisely the right length.
(d) It was not long enough.

4. The narrator remarks that rarity is frequently rewarded with what?
(a) Integrity.
(b) Immortality.
(c) Constancy.
(d) Value.

5. The after-dinner entertainment causes what reaction in the narrator and her companion?
(a) They cry.
(b) They faint.
(c) They scream.
(d) They laugh.

Short Answer Questions

1. The owner of the donkeys sells tourists trips meant to mimic the journey of whom?

2. How many of the first vignettes focus on the narrator's motivations for writing?

3. The university attended by the narrator had previously served as an outpost for what group?

4. Once Kunicki's wife and child go missing, the locals keep repeating to Kunicki that the island is not what?

5. The narrator enjoys the idea of performing what activity as a moral obligation to one's people?

Short Essay Questions

1. What type of metaphor does Tokarczuk use to describe the river near her childhood home and why?

2. Discuss an instance of Tokarczuk employing satire in order to poke fun at a particular group.

3. Describe Blau's feelings about the discipline of medicine.

4. How does the unnamed narrator feel about islands and why?

5. How does the theme of isolation arise within the vignettes that focus on Eryk?

6. The narrator's use of the word pilgrim throughout the novel is an allusion to what great work of literature?

7. How is the theme of violence present within the story about the sultan?

8. What is ironic about Blau's "unproblematic" (133) romantic life prior to his marriage?

9. Provide basic information about the origins of travel psychology.

10. What discordant image is at the center of the vignette entitled "Cleopatras"?

(see the answer keys)

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