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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. What does the narrator lack in Chapter 12?

2. How does Mr. Norton explain the day's events?

3. When the narrator goes to see Mr. Emerson, who does he actually see?

4. What, ironically, makes the narrator's white bosses distrustful of him?

5. According to the vet, what does a white woman symbolize?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. What lie does Dr. Bledsoe expect the narrator to tell?

3. What does Mary Rambo want the narrator to do?

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

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

6. Describe Dr. Bledsoe.

7. Why does the drug store have the pork chop and grits special?

8. What is the objective of Rev. Barbee's sermon?

9. Why is important to know that the introduction was written 30 years after the novel itself?

10. Explain the irony of the sign "Keep American Pure with Liberty Paints."

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

On several different occasions, the narrator speaks directly to the reader, ending in his epilogue with "perhaps I speak for you...." Who do you think Ellison imagined as his most likely audience? If the various groups of people in the book could be allegorical representations of cultural groups--i.e. college administrators, blue collar employers, political party leaders, low income minority groups, etc.--what message would they perceive in the novel? Choose two or three different groups and tell how the story might speak to each of them.

Essay Topic 2

Discuss the women in the novel: Mary, Emma, Sybil, the nuns, and the white woman at the rally. What role do the women play in the narrator's development?

Essay Topic 3

Several times the narrator recalls his grandfather's dying words. Discuss the situations in which the narrator recalls his grandfather, showing how he reacts to those memories upon different occasions.

(see the answer keys)

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