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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. What is the name of the Jarvis farm?
(a) Sky Farm.
(b) High Place.
(c) Rainbow Valley.
(d) Cloud High.

2. What does James have a hard time looking at each day upon entering Arthur’s house?
(a) A cigar left half-smoked in an ashtray on Arthur’s desk.
(b) A portrait of Arthur hanging in the parlor.
(c) The bloodstain on the floor where Arthur died.
(d) An unfinished letter Arthur had started to his father.

3. Who effectively saves Kumalo from being sent away by the Bishop?
(a) His congregation.
(b) Arthur Jarvis’ son.
(c) James Jarvis.
(d) The tribal chief.

4. What inexplicable activity does the character who unexpectedly appears in Ndotsheni with the village chief and magistrate participate in?
(a) They mark the ground with sticks and flags.
(b) They dig up and remove buckets of dirt.
(c) They pull up crops.
(d) They cut down trees.

5. Which statement best describes Margaret Jarvis’ relationship with Arthur compared to James’?
(a) Margaret was more estranged from Arthur than James was.
(b) Margaret took James’ side against Arthur when necessary.
(c) Margaret understood Arthur better than James did.
(d) Margaret and James had the same exact relationship with Arthur.

Short Answer Questions

1. What natural phenomenon is afflicting Umzimkulu valley when Kumalo returns home?

2. Which of the following is NOT one of the ways the agricultural demonstrator intends to improve the farming in Ndotsheni?

3. What had James Jarvis hoped would be his son’s career?

4. Which adjectives does Mrs. Lithebe use to describe the people she thinks Gertrude should not spend time with?

5. What word for God does Kumalo use when praying?

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe the build-up, events, and results of the black mining strike.

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

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

4. What is the Judge’s ruling in the cases against Absalom and his two accomplices, Johannes and Matthew, and what are the Judge’s reasons for his verdicts?

5. What does Absalom give as his defense for owning a gun when the Judge asks him about it?

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

7. Describe Barbara Smith’s response to Kumalo’s question about her servant, and explain the significance of James’ translation of this answer to Kumalo.

8. What anxiety does Kumalo have over the death of Margaret Jarvis, and how does James Jarvis ease it?

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

10. 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?

(see the answer keys)

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