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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. In Chapter 8, how does the party treat whatever is not expressed?

2. In the people's democracies, according the Chapter 8, what does the most serious battle concern?

3. After being captured as a Polish soldier, what happened to Delta?

4. What did Gamma's second wife wear?

5. Rather than condemning the four men about whom he writes, how does Milosz open Chapter 8?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. Eventually Delta's poems became something of a dream, unreal. How was this inevitable?

3. Milosz states that the goals of the workers are far different from those of the state. How is this so?

4. Beta saw life only in terms of society rather than in terms of individual man. How was this his downfall?

5. How were Beta's stories a fitting insight into his nihilist worldview?

6. How was Delta's poetry some of the most insightful work being written at the time?

7. Delta, in wandering the roads in France, met people from many different nations. How did this universal migration prepare the way even more for communist rule?

8. Beta's anger toward mankind became directed toward a fear of self-deception. How did this happen?

9. How does the party's definition of a reactionary reduce him to a comic level?

10. Why does Milosz go to such pains to describe Gamma, when the other writers found in his book are given only a few sentences of description?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The book is fraught with nationalist tendencies, including the pride Milosz feels for his native city Vilna. What does this tell the reader about Milosz's idea of place? How does he act on (or, conversely, react to) these national tendencies? In the end, is he loyal to Poland?

Essay Topic 2

Milosz repeatedly returns to the idea that religion is dead. Is this true? If so, how is it replaced in modern society? Keep in mind his argument that man craves the mysterious, and so religion is necessarily replaced.

Essay Topic 3

What is the relationship between Western and Eastern communism? How do the citizens of each sphere think about and react to each other? Find specific examples of their current interactions, and project the outcome of these to the future. Will they always look at the world through such disparate viewpoints?

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