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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 is Paz's opinion about Western respect for life?

2. What role does the Mexican man play in society?

3. To follow Paz's previous argument, what is the result when one Mexican confides in another?

4. What happens when the Mexican dissimulates?

5. When Aztec victims were sacrificed, why did their deaths lack personal meaning?

Short Essay Questions

1. How is the modern murderer different from a murderer of the past? How has modernity contributed to that difference?

2. What happens during the fiesta? What is the emotional result?

3. What mutual problem do both the Mexican and the North American face? What is the solution to that problem?

4. What is the character of the Mexican's solitude? How does it differ from the solitude of the North American?

5. Why does the Mexican love Form? Other than in personal relationships, how does that idea express itself?

6. How do Mexicans view their bodies? How does their view contribute to their wish for privacy?

7. What is the Mexican's ideal of manliness? How does it affect his interactions with other people?

8. What is the greatest horror that a worker suffers? Do you think that is true?

9. What is Paz's understanding of woman? How does it fit the Mexican mindset?

10. What is the origin of the pachuco? How does that characterization prepare the reader for the rest of the book?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Find the deaths that are mentioned in the book. According to the Mexican criterion for a worthy death - the death suits the life - how many of those people died a worthy death? How many of them died a death that did not suit their lives?

Essay Topic 2

What is the Mexican view of privacy? Why does Paz defend it at such cost? What part does lying play in his defense? Is that accepted?

Essay Topic 3

In Paz's arguments, how important is the Mexican sense of place? What affects it? What is its most important aspect? Explain the sense of place in the greater context of the Mexican mindset that Paz presents throughout the book.

(see the answer keys)

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