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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. How were Gamma's interactions with people characterized?

2. In communist thought, where is there no division?

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

4. As Beta scornfully realized, how could someone have power in Poland?

5. Catholic Communists gradually lose everything except what aspect?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

4. Milosz calls Beta's reaction to the concentration camp life sadistic. How is this true?

5. 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?

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

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

8. Gamma did not even try to save his family when they were deported to Siberia. How is this a vivid example of the communist attitude toward individual lives?

9. 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?

10. How are the peasants, in several ways, the most helpless class of people?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The West, in not taking advantage of every artist, wastes a huge amount of talent. Is the East's method better or worse? Is there an ideal system in which exceptional artists are appreciated without conforming to a particular method?

Essay Topic 2

Throughout the book, the converts to communism decry the evils of capitalism, even going so far as to say capitalism led directly to Hitlerism (pg. 128, Beta's assertion). Is this necessarily true? If communism leads, as history has proven, to a dictatorship, then where does capitalism lead?

Essay Topic 3

Through Party propaganda and education, communism suppresses man's ability to think for himself. How do the people presented in The Captive Mind either fight or accept this suppression? Consider only the main subjects of the book, including their writing for the underground or for the party.

(see the answer keys)

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