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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Section 1: "Harlem Shadows," Lines 1-18.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. In the first image of the sex workers, what is being emphasized?
(a) The motion of their bodies.
(b) The burden of social expectations.
(c) Their determination.
(d) Their reaction to the cold.

2. What does the expression "feet of clay" in line 15 refer to?
(a) Stubbornness and selfishness.
(b) A delicate, easily-fractured nature.
(c) Cowardice and fear.
(d) A hidden character flaw.

3. Which line most clearly echoes the tension between "little girls" (line 5) and "prowling" (line 6)?
(a) Line 12, "Are trudging, thinly shod, from street to street."
(b) Line 7, "Through the long night until the silver break."
(c) Line 9, "Through the lone night until the last snow-flake."
(d) Line 11, "The dusky, half-clad girls of tired feet."

4. Which techniques are evident in line 4, "To bend and barter at desire's call"?
(a) Euphony and alliteration.
(b) Personification and asyndeton.
(c) Asyndeton and euphony.
(d) Alliteration and personification.

5. Which lines of each stanza are indented?
(a) The fifth and sixth.
(b) The first and sixth.
(c) The first and third.
(d) The second and fourth.

Short Answer Questions

1. What color does the speaker assign to the sex workers' feet?

2. Whose presence is implied in "To bend and barter at desire's call" (line 4)?

3. What ideas are associated with the snow in this poem?

4. Which two lines of each stanza create a kind of refrain in this poem?

5. In line 16, what word does the speaker use to describe the feet of his own race?

(see the answer key)

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