View a FREE sample

This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What trait did American thinkers and writers see in evidence in America's industrial expansion?
(a) Greed.
(b) Creativity.
(c) World-weariness.
(d) Corruption.

2. How does industrialism devalue man, in Carlyle's opinion?
(a) It requires long hours in dark factories.
(b) It treats him as a commodity.
(c) It uses only one part of him.
(d) It discourages invention.

3. What percentage of Americans lived on farms (in the time of Marx's writing)?
(a) 60%.
(b) 25%.
(c) 10%.
(d) 40%.

4. What does fire symbolize in Hawthorne's The Unpardonable Sin?
(a) Chaotic forces of nature.
(b) The demonic element in factories.
(c) Intellect.
(d) Man's desire for progress.

5. What does the ocean symbolize in Melville's Moby Dick?
(a) Man's redemption.
(b) Nature's danger.
(c) Man's creativity.
(d) A provident god.

6. What 'sealed the fate' of American industrialism, according to Marx?
(a) The cotton gin.
(b) Standardized parts.
(c) Machine tools.
(d) The railroad.

7. What did Henry Adams envision as the consequence of technology?
(a) The unification of humans and nature.
(b) The unification of knowledge in one science.
(c) Disaffection, alienation, and disease.
(d) The human race committing suicide.

8. Which school of criticism does Marx belong to?
(a) Psychoanalytic criticism.
(b) New Criticism.
(c) Deconstruction.
(d) New Historicism.

9. What was unique about American manufacturing, in Coxe's view?
(a) Markets were waiting for American goods.
(b) It presented enormous economic opportunities.
(c) The environment would keep it healthy.
(d) The raw materials were limitless.

10. What does Marx say Thoreau wanted people to do in nature?
(a) Invent.
(b) Hide.
(c) Organize.
(d) Meditate.

11. What does Marx point out accompanied factories and progress in transportation?
(a) Decreased infant mortality rates.
(b) Worker abuses.
(c) Increased literacy.
(d) Longer lifespans.

12. How would you classify Marx's 'The Machine in the Garden'?
(a) Literary criticism.
(b) Cultural criticism.
(c) Scientific study.
(d) Psychological report.

13. When was man supposed to return to nature, in Thoreau's vision?
(a) For permanent residence.
(b) On weekends.
(c) He should keep nature alive in his cities.
(d) For temporary respites.

14. What conflict does Marx say was avoided as America expanded?
(a) Warfare between industrial and agrarian interests.
(b) Warfare between financiers and farmers.
(c) Class warfare.
(d) Warfare between North and South.

15. What power does Marx credit government with, in reversing the trend toward urbanization and industrialization?
(a) The ability to create lasting change.
(b) Powerlessness before the will of the people.
(c) Inability to manage complex problems.
(d) Hesitancy to impose lifestyle changes on the people.

Short Answer Questions

1. How did nature continue to redeem individuals in pastoral ideology?

2. How do modern authors, Marx included, tend to feel about preserving nature in an industrial world?

3. What would men of understanding provide in Emerson's vision?

4. How does Marx describe the pastoralism of the 19th century?

5. How does Marx say modern Americans see nature?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 508 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample