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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. How did Delta return to his wife in Poland?
(a) With a girlfriend he'd brought from Brussels.
(b) Completely sober.
(c) With a girl he'd picked up at the Polish border.
(d) Without a single penny.

2. As the Polish fought the Germans for control of Warsaw near the end of the war, how did a few people manage to survive?
(a) Hiding with the underground resistance.
(b) Hiding in the surrounding forests.
(c) Turning themselves in as prisoners of war.
(d) Swimming across the river.

3. What view of Poland's past did Delta's poetry present?
(a) The past had the power to save her people from communism.
(b) The past provided an alternative to communism.
(c) The past held no hope of peace or rest.
(d) The past was close to dying out.

4. After coming to power, in 1945, the Party recognized that the best way to control a nation is through what force?
(a) Spies and informers.
(b) Parades and speeches.
(c) The written and spoken word.
(d) Brute force.

5. In communist thought, where is there no division?
(a) Between worker and peasant.
(b) Between man and woman.
(c) Between what man does and what he thinks.
(d) Between man and society.

Short Answer Questions

1. In Russia, what organization did Gamma and several of his friends create?

2. Delta would have fit well into what time period?

3. During Gamma's youth, Poland gradually separated along what lines?

4. As Beta relates, when Greek prisoners cannot march because they are too weak, how are they first punished?

5. Apart from his poetry, what was Delta's personality?

Short Essay Questions

1. Milosz opens Chapter VI with a description of Vilna as it existed during his childhood. Is this simply to introduce Gamma or is there another reason?

2. How did Beta's circumstances lead him to a poetry that constantly moved? Why was it restless?

3. In Chapter VIII, Milosz takes on the tone of a communist to describe the evils of the various classes. How is this more powerful than a mere description?

4. How could Delta, who was not racist, write such violently anti-Semitic material?

5. How was Delta able to play the game that the center demanded of him--and be better at it?

6. How were Beta and the people of his generation fallen into dark hopelessness?

7. Milosz writes that Delta could not (or would not) distinguish between truth and fable, even in his personal life. Is this the kind of mind the Party would have wanted?

8. Why is Gamma called "the slave of history"? Whose interests does he serve?

9. "Still, it was not easy to become a communist, for communism meant a complete revision of one's concepts of nationality " (pg. 147). How was this true?

10. Under communist rule, education is from a strictly materialistic view. Why is this necessary to maintain proper thought among the citizens?

(see the answer keys)

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