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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. Who collected the Uncle Remus stories in the narrative?

2. How long do the narrator and the millionaire stay in Paris in Chapter 9?

3. Where is the “slender be-spectacled young man” from that the narrator encounters on the train in Chapter 10?

4. Who was the author of The Souls of Black Folk?

5. Where do the narrator and the millionaire walk and sit in chairs along the sidewalk in Chapter 9?

Short Essay Questions

1. How is the millionaire described by the narrator? What does he look like?

2. What are the narrator’s impressions of the African Americans he meets in the rural South in Chapter 10?

3. How does the narrator describe the rooming house and landlord where he first stays in New York in Chapter 6?

4. Whom does the narrator spot at the opera in Chapter 9? What is his reaction?

5. How does the narrator describe the draw of New York in Chapter 6? What imagery is used?

6. With whom does the narrator form a friendship on the ship to Boston in Chapter 10? What do they discuss?

7. How realistic are the hardships faced by African Americans as depicted in the narrative?

8. What have critics noted in regard to the relationship between the millionaire and the narrator in the novel?

9. How does the narrator respond to the events surrounding the widow in the end of Chapter 8?

10. How did the author incorporate slave narratives in his descriptions of the South in Chapter 10?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Define and identify foreshadowing in the narrative. How does the author effectively use foreshadowing in Chapter 4 to indicate that something may go wrong with the narrator’s money? What is foreshadowed regarding the narrator’s future and education in this chapter? How does the narrator respond to his situation at the end of Chapter 4?

Essay Topic 2

Discuss the author of the book and its genre. Why did James Weldon Johnson choose to use the term “autobiography” in the work’s title? Why was it initially published with an anonymous author? When was it republished with the author’s name? Why?

Essay Topic 3

Describe and discuss the cigar industry in the late 1800s, early 1900s in Florida and Cuba. What were relations like at this time between Cuba and the United States? How many of the narrator’s coworkers hail from Cuba? What influences do they have on him?

(see the answer keys)

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