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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. What does Camus claim are the two essential pleasures of local youth?
(a) Going to the movies with shiny shoes.
(b) Having their shoes shined, then displaying these on the boulevard.
(c) Binge drinking and snappy dressing.
(d) Getting their shoes shined and attracting girls.

2. In which month has the writer returned to Algiers?
(a) August.
(b) November.
(c) February.
(d) December.

3. What is meant by 'quixotism'?
(a) Moving very quickly.
(b) Being generally unreliable and untrustworthy.
(c) Having the quality of the visionary or the romantic.
(d) The belief in the miracles of Don Quixote.

4. What would the writer choose never to do?
(a) Join a trade union.
(b) Betray a colleague.
(c) Act as a judge.
(d) Join the Resistance.

5. Of what does the color of the ruined city's columns remind the writer?
(a) Roses.
(b) Bread.
(c) Blood.
(d) Quartz.

Short Answer Questions

1. With God dead, what remains?

2. What must an artist serve simultaneously?

3. What is needed for a person to 'come alive again'?

4. Where can Moorish cafes be found?

5. In summer, what happens to Algiers?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Camus mean when he says that the 'tyrannies of today are improved'?

2. What problems does Camus see in modern philosophy?

3. Of what is Camus speaking when he criticizes 'idealism of the worst kind' (p.188 of the Penguin edition)?

4. In what way is Camus' comments about Algerian youth tempered by sadness?

5. What lies 'beyond the yellow walls of Oran'?

6. What has Camus to say about the shops in Oran?

7. What is the overall impression the reader has of Oran and its people?

8. In what respect did the Greek philosopher Heraclitus think of human society and the physical universe being similar?

9. What, according to Camus, is paradoxical about the crowded city of Oran, and crowded cities in general?

10. What 'two thirsts' has Camus been able to slake through his visit to Tipasa?

(see the answer keys)

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