Deck 21: The Age of the Masses and the Zenith of Modernism

Question 1

World War II began with Germany's invasion of which country?

A) Austria
B) Czechoslovakia
C) France
D) Poland

Answer 1

D

Question 2

Which of the following eventually became a totalitarian state after World War I?

A) Italy
B) Russia
C) Germany
D) All these answers are correct.

Answer 2

D

Question 3

The April 1917 event that helped determine the outcome of World War I was the

A) entry of the United States into the war on the side of the Allies.
B) Germans' initiation of unrestricted submarine warfare.
C) entry of Turkey into the war on the side of the Central Powers.
D) collapse of the currency in Italy.

Answer 3

A

Question 4

Who of the following was a pioneer of stream-of-consciousness writing?

A) Virginia Woolf
B) George Orwell
C) Ernest Hemingway
D) Langston Hughes

Question 5

The democratic political system in Germany between the Versailles Treaty and the rise of Hitler was known as the

A) Berlin Republic.
B) Bonn Republic.
C) Weimar Republic.
D) Potsdam Republic.

Question 6

Which novel was a satire on Stalinist Russia?

A) Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway
B) Orwell's Animal Farm
C) Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover
D) Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises

Question 7

The European country that suffered most from the Great Depression was

A) Germany.
B) France.
C) Italy.
D) Spain.

Question 8

Which novel reflected the author's debt to popular hardboiled detective fiction of the 1930s?

A) Joyce's Ulysses
B) Woolf's To the Lighthouse
C) Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises
D) Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury

Question 9

Fascism supported

A) the supremacy of individual expression.
B) the fusion of the people into one "spirit".
C) representative democracy.
D) free enterprise.

Question 10

Which of the following is true of Japan during the Great Depression?

A) It pursued imperialist goals in the Far East.
B) It sought economic and military aid from the United States.
C) It replaced its monarchy with a parliamentary democracy.
D) Its economy and government collapsed almost simultaneously.

Question 11

Which of the following was an ultimate result of the Treaty of Versailles?

A) strengthening the German economy
B) stripping Britain of control over Mosul and Basra
C) strengthening the Ottoman Empire
D) creation of the kingdom of Iraq

Question 12

Langston Hughes's poetry reflected

A) the values of the late Roman poets.
B) his anguish as a black man in a white world.
C) his hatred of totalitarian governments.
D) his black separatist politics.

Question 13

By 1914, nations in Europe had adopted or implemented all EXCEPT which of the following technological advancements that increased the destructiveness of war?

A) the 75 mm field cannon
B) machine guns
C) tank battalions
D) rail systems for moving troops and supplies

Question 14

Which author's philosophy helped to lay the groundwork for logical positivism?

A) Wittgenstein
B) Heidegger
C) Sartre
D) Heisenberg

Question 15

Which literary work is an example of "epic theater"?

A) Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway
B) Joyce's Ulysses
C) Brecht's Threepenny Opera
D) O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night

Question 16

About which of these ideas did Lenin and Marx NOT agree?

A) Economic conditions determine the course of history.
B) History leads inevitably to a communist society.
C) A dedicated communist elite is necessary to initiate revolutionary change.
D) The goal of history is a society run by and for the workers.

Question 17

Who of the following was a European fascist leader in the 1930s?

A) Mussolini in Italy
B) Blum in France
C) King Alfonso of Spain
D) Tito of Yugoslavia

Question 18

Existentialism is concerned primarily with

A) defining terms.
B) clarifying statements.
C) living an authentic life.
D) spiritual values.

Question 19

The leading symbol of America's dominant role in popular culture was

A) Igor Stravinsky.
B) Babe Ruth.
C) Walt Disney.
D) Louis Armstrong.

Question 20

What modernist symbol was intended to reflect the hollowness of contemporary life?

A) Yeats's Byzantium
B) Eliot's "waste land"
C) Hughes's river
D) Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County

Question 21

International-style architecture was characterized by

A) sleekness and lack of ornamentation.
B) the classical orders.
C) Gothic towers.
D) ornamented facades.

Question 22

Beckmann's The Departure has the structure of a

A) photograph.
B) mosaic.
C) triptych.
D) carpet.

Question 23

Mondrian's Composition with Blue and Yellow is

A) a photograph of dancers in Times Square.
B) an example of the de Stijl movement.
C) a neorealist representation of dancers in action.
D) a surrealist design charged with erotic elements.

Question 24

Dada artists were famous for their

A) outrageous acts.
B) spiritual values.
C) humanistic beliefs.
D) pure abstraction.

Question 25

Frida Kahlo expressed her creative talents best as

A) an artist of the neoclassical school.
B) a poet of the Harlem Renaissance.
C) a painter of many revealing self-portraits.
D) a playwright of existential dramas.

Question 26

Who of the following was a leading surrealist?

A) Beckmann
B) Matisse
C) Dal'
D) O'Keeffe

Question 27

Which of the following musicians created a ballet that draws on a Shaker folk tune?

A) William Grant Still
B) Leopold Stravinsky
C) Aaron Copland
D) George Antheil

Question 28

The most influential exponent of Dada was

A) Picasso.
B) Duchamps.
C) Malevich.
D) Mondrian.

Question 29

Surrealist art was inspired by the theories of

A) Marx.
B) Freud.
C) Einstein.
D) Heisenberg.

Question 30

According to your text, which of the following was the "greatest legacy of mass culture to the twentieth century"?

A) skyscrapers
B) stream-of-consciousness literature
C) film
D) Heisenberg's uncertainty principle

Question 31

Which composer's Mechanical Ballet was inspired by machine-oriented culture?

A) Igor Stravinsky
B) Charles Ives
C) Aaron Copland
D) George Antheil

Question 32

A key value in Sartre's existentialism is

A) the limits to human choice.
B) submission to forces beyond one's control.
C) faith in God.
D) personal responsibility.

Question 33

The scientist who headed the team that built the first atomic bomb was

A) Einstein.
B) Heisenberg.
C) Planck.
D) Oppenheimer.

Question 34

What was the first art style launched in 1917 by the young Soviet Union?

A) cubism
B) de Stijl
C) constructivism
D) logical positivism

Question 35

Who is famous primarily for photographs taken for the Farm Security Administration?

A) Margaret Bourke-White
B) Henry Luce
C)
D) Dorothea Lange
D) W. Griffith

Question 36

Which work by Orson Welles is often called America's best film?

A) Citizen Kane
B) The Birth of a Nation
C) Triumph of the Will
D) Intolerance

Question 37

Duke Ellington's suite Such Sweet Thunder was inspired by

A) Shakespeare.
B) African American spirituals.
C) World War II.
D) jazz.

Question 38

Which painter led the de Stijl movement?

A) Mondrian
B) Malevich
C) Picasso
D) O'Keeffe

Question 39

Which statement about Picasso's Guernica is NOT correct?

A) It is a protest against Franco's unbridled warfare.
B) It is executed in a modified cubist style.
C) Its vivid colors express the artist's rage.
D) It offers disturbing images in rectangular forms.

Question 40

Which of the following is a school of philosophy dedicated to defining terms and clarifying statements?

A) existentialism
B) constructivism
C) logical positivism
D) stream-of-consciousness

Question 41

Discuss World War I and its peace settlement. What impact did the war and its aftermath have on politics and culture?

Question 42

Discuss developments in film during the Age of the Masses.

Question 43

What was controversial about the films of Leni Riefenstahl?

A) rejection of standard story form
B) glorification of the Nazi Party
C) their procommunist message
D) criticism of the machine age

Question 44

Discuss World War II, its causes, major events, turning point, and peace settlement.

Question 45

How did historical events affect political and economic ideologies between 1914 and 1945?

Question 46

How did black American intellectuals, writers, and musicians redefine their place in American life during this period? Focus in particular on the Harlem Renaissance and the writers Hughes and Hurston.

Question 47

What two schools dominated philosophy during this era? What was the goal of each school, and who were its leaders? How did these developments in philosophy mirror events in the wider culture?

Question 48

Describe conditions in the Great Depression, focusing on the countries that suffered most and least. What impact did economic failure have on the era's politics?

Question 49

According to suprematism, what was supreme over every other element of life?

A) military power
B) ethnicity
C) feelings
D) material needs
Essay Questions

Question 50

Discuss the scientific advances made between 1914 and 1945. Show what relationship, if any, these advances had to the era's politics and culture.

Question 51

Define mass culture. What were its contributions between 1914 and 1945?

Question 52

What Newtonian concept did Einstein's theory overturn?

A) the relationship between energy and mass
B) the theory of relativity
C) the laws of inertia
D) fixed dimensions of time and space

Question 53

What is totalitarianism? Compare and contrast the two types of totalitarian governments that arose after 1917. What were the origins of these governments, their accomplishments, and their failures? What part, if any, did these totalitarian regimes have on the outbreak of World War II?