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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 kind of underwear had the narrator not worn in years? ("The Train.")

2. What month was it in "The Lawyers' Plot"?

3. What did the orderly tell the narrator to bring back from Romanov's home? ("The Lawyers' Plot.")

4. What was raked into Shemolyov's work gang? ("The Lawyers' Plot.")

5. Why did Golubev's boss like him? ("Magic.")

Short Essay Questions

1. What "magical powers" did Stukov have? ("Magic")

2. How did the narrator come to remember the story "Esperanto"?

3. Why was Stukov contemptuous and delighted by the shifty-eyed man's admittance about his being an informant? ("Magic")

4. What did Shestakov offer the narrator as nourishment to aid in an upcoming escape attempt? ("Condensed Milk.")

5. What happened to the Spam that was sent to the camps from America? ("Land-Lease.")

6. What did the bulldozer, in "Land-Lease," come to be used for?

7. What bliss did the narrator find while in Irkutsk? ("The Train.")

8. What game did the lieutenant and the narrator play during "The Train"?

9. Where did the narrator hide his money during his train ride? ("The Train.")

10. Why did Gusev break the window in the basement of the former monastery? ("My First Tooth.")

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

As detailed by the text, men were moved constantly and consistently in and out of different work houses. This change set up for many of the men to find themselves separated from human companionship. In what ways did the text show the breakdown of relationships based upon the experiences in Kolyma?

Essay Topic 2

Many time throughout the collection of stories, Shalamov detailed the loss of human emotions. What human emotions were laborers in Kolyma able to keep? What human emotions did the men tend to lose forever? Why was this as it was?

Essay Topic 3

Many of the guards in the stories are described by their attitudes towards the camp convicts. Describe the different ways that guards were described, how these descriptions mandated how convicts felt about the guards, and how the convicts acted around different guards based upon their dispositions.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 791 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample