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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) Their reaction to the cold.
(b) The burden of social expectations.
(c) Their determination.
(d) The motion of their bodies.

2. What does the word "shod" in line 12 refer to?
(a) Movement.
(b) Clothing.
(c) Footwear.
(d) Sound.

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

4. What ideas are associated with the snow in this poem?
(a) Heaven, purity, and nature.
(b) Punishment, corruption, and justice.
(c) Prejudice, indifference, and suffering.
(d) Circumstance, poverty, and innocence.

5. In lines 2 and 3, the expression "when the night lets fall/ Its veil" is an example of which technique?
(a) Paradox.
(b) Simile.
(c) Personification.
(d) Antithesis.

Short Answer Questions

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

2. What does the expression "feet of clay" in line 15 refer to?

3. In line 1, "footsteps of a lass" is an example of which technique?

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

5. What is being referred to with the expression "silver break" (line 7)?

(see the answer key)

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