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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. Before the murderer is caught, who is suspected of the crime of killing Arthur?
(a) Someone on the orders of Dubula and John Kumalo.
(b) A racist white who dislikes Arthur’s agitation for black rights.
(c) Someone who was once an employee of Arthur’s.
(d) Someone who committed the murder in a random act of gang violence.

2. What final feeling does the novel have about the future of Africa?
(a) It is pessimistic that the races will ever live in harmony.
(b) It indicates Africa will soon undergo violent revolution to achieve change.
(c) It is optimistic that racial equality will be achieved.
(d) It is anxious and uncertain about when racial equality will be achieved.

3. What is the verdict for Absalom’s two accomplices?
(a) The Judge finds one guilty of assault and sends him to twenty years in prison while allowing the other to go free.
(b) The Judge finds them guilty of house breaking and sentences them to ten years prison.
(c) The Judge makes them as culpable as Absalom in Arthur Jarvis’ murder and sentences them to death.
(d) The Judge finds insufficient evidence to convict either of them and lets them go free.

4. What had James Jarvis hoped would be his son’s career?
(a) He wanted Arthur to become an engineer.
(b) He wanted Arthur to become a prominent Judge.
(c) He wanted Arthur to study in England to become a doctor.
(d) He wanted Arthur to take over the family farm.

5. How does Kumalo’s wife react to the addition of Absalom’s wife and Gertrude’s child to the family?
(a) She worries ceaselessly about the increased financial burden they will engender.
(b) She curses Gertrude for shirking her only responsibility as a mother.
(c) She has a difficult time swallowing Absalom’s wife’s promiscuous and immoral past.
(d) She embraces them both as her own children.

Short Answer Questions

1. Where does Kumalo keep vigil during Absalom’s execution?

2. How did the three accomplices disguise themselves during the housebreak?

3. When does the Jarvis boy tell Kumalo he will be leaving for Johannesburg?

4. What was the name of the paper Arthur Jarvis was writing about justice for blacks?

5. What vocation does Gertrude think she would like to try?

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe how Napoleon Letsitsi comes to be in Ndotsheni.

2. Summarize the main events of the meeting between James Jarvis and Kumalo at the house of Jarvis’ kinswoman Barbara Smith.

3. Describe the final meeting between Stephen and John Kumalo.

4. Briefly summarize Arthur Jarvis’s argument about the responsibility of whites to blacks in the papers James Jarvis reads.

5. How does the focus of the novel shift at the beginning of Book Two? Who becomes a secondary protagonist and when does their story start?

6. Compare Arthur Jarvis’ son’s attitude toward Kumalo and by extension blacks, to the attitude of the generations above him.

7. Describe how Kumalo reacts when the Bishop tells him he wants to remove Kumalo from Ndotsheni.

8. What surprises James Jarvis most about people’s reaction to his son’s death?

9. Describe the reactions of Kumalo, Msimangu, James Jarvis, and the police to John Kumalo’s speech about black mining laborers need to demand more pay for their work.

10. Compare and contrast Absalom and his wife’s reactions to their wedding.

(see the answer keys)

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