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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Why is the narrator unable to see Mr. Bates?

2. Bledsoe tells the narrator that he should not worry about

3. What does the narrator want to do in Chapter 12?

4. What two groups of people must pay the price for being irresponsible?

5. What does Dr. Bledsoe call the narrator?

Short Essay Questions

1. Of what "irresponsibility" are sleepwalkers and dreamers accused?

2. What does Ellison mean when he says that for African Americans, all wars are "wars within wars."

3. Why does Mr. Norton give Jim Trueblood $100?

4. What mistake does the veteran doctor predict the narrator will make?

5. Why does the narrator say he is invisible?

6. How does the setting in chapter 5 provide additional foreshadowing?

7. Why is Harlem a particularly appropriate setting for the novel?

8. What does Dr. Bledsoe mean by "acting the nigger."

9. Why does the trip to the Trueblood house make the narrator feel uncomfortable?

10. Why do the grandfather's dying words make the narrator feel guilty about receiving praise?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In his last meeting with Hambro, the narrator is told that his own members--the blacks in Harlem--must be sacrificed for the good of the Brotherhood and that they will be making temporary alliances with other groups. Since the alliance with the blacks seems to have accomplished nothing for the blacks themselves, what was the purpose of the work in Harlem? Why did it fail? How did the alliance--if such it could be called--contribute to the riot?

Essay Topic 2

Someone has said that heresy is simply truth carried to an extreme. Explain, therefore, how either diversity or unity could be carried to an extreme, misused, and thus become heretical.

Essay Topic 3

Explain why the Brotherhood chooses the narrator. What factors have made him particularly vulnerable to their approach? How do his own intentions change as he begins working with them?

(see the answer keys)

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