Potential Short Answer questions will be drawn from this list.
Quotes to Interpret:
For all short answer questions...enough CONCRETE details from the story MUST be given in support. Someone who has NEVER read the book should REALLY KNOW SPECIFICS ABOUT THE STORY in your explaination to get a better understanding of THIS PARTICULAR PIECE OF LITERATURE. Vague answers w/o textual evidence (only topic sentence type answers) will not be given credit. PROVE YOU READ THE BOOK. IF YOU DID NOT BE HONEST AND ANSWER A DIFFERENT QUESTION OR WRITE SORRY, I NEVER READ THE BOOK IN THE SPACE PROVIDED FOR THE ANSWER.
1. What does Primo Levi mean when he says “ We now invite the reader to contemplate the possible meaning in the Lager of the words ‘good’ and ‘evil’, ‘just’ and ‘unjust’(page 86 SIA).
2. What is Primo Levi saying about how his imprisonment has changed his life when he says: “This year has gone by so quickly…this time last year I was a free man: an outlaw but free…I had an enormous, deep-rooted, foolish faith in the benevolence of fate; to kill and die seemed extraneous literary things to me…Today the only thing left of the life of those days is what one needs to suffer the hunger and cold…I am not even alive enough to know how to kill myself” (pages 143-44 SIA).
3. Primo Levi explains in the following quote how one's humainty is taken from them in the lager. Use examples to fully explain his quote. “The Lager was a great machine to reduce us to beasts, we must not become beasts; that even in this place one can survive, and therefore one must want to survive, to tell the story, to bear witness; and that to survive we must force ourselves to save at least the skeleton, the scaffolding, the form of civilization ” (page 41 SIA).
4. What does Opdyke mean when she says: "Everyone in Poland in those days had a bitter story. Everyone." (IMH 101)
5. Moses Steiner said to Irena "You're only a young girl. What can you do?" (IMH 108). What does he mean by that statement? How does Irenka take to being given a label or a limitation?
6. Irenka says: "It must be said now that I am a slave. What else do you call someone put to work in an ammunition factory, kept under guard, and paid no wages". Explain how WWII changed Irenka's life. Who was she prior to the war? How was she a slave (to whom?) during the war? What was her life after the war? (IMH 84)
7. Irenka states: "Where could I live without fear?" She was fearful most of the six years she was involved in the war. Why? Did she cause the fear? Was the fear imposed upon her? Both? Explain.
8. "Memory is a curious instrument" (SIA page 132). How does Levi and Irena remember the events during WWII? Do they look back upon the events with anger? Are they sad? Are they merely stating facts? Use textual evidence to support.
Concepts:
1. What is a "Choiceless Choice" in the Lager?
2. What lessons did Levi learn from those he encountered the lager?
3. How did Irena's display her faith in the novel In My Hands?
4. Irena had crimes committed against her ad she committed crimes. Is she a victim? Is she a champion for those down and out? How would YOU identify her?
5. Book Buring - who, what, where, when, why
6. Propaganda - who was in charge? target audience? message?
7. The role of the: Survivor, Victim, Perpetrator, Rescuer, Bystander and Liberator
