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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 surprising development does the narrator experience when he attends a committee meeting?

2. Who does the narrator plan to use to destroy the Brotherhood

3. What does the narrator discover about Jack?

4. What does Dupre want to do prior to starting the fire?

5. Who had predicted the narrator's relationship with the white woman?

Short Essay Questions

1. Explain the initial results of the narrator's strategy of "yessing" them to death.

2. What puzzling irony does the narrator tell us about the human race?

3. The narrator says that he has learned that the lack of surprise is a warning. What does he mean?

4. What strikes the narrator as the profound truth about the riot?

5. How does the narrator really feel about the gift of the chain from Brother Tarp?

6. Why is the narrator's work on the "woman question" cut short?

7. Brother Jack refers to Clifton as Brutus? How does the metaphor fit the situation?

8. Why is the narrator's funeral oration more moving than if he had planned a speech based according to party guidelines?

9. What does Brother Jack really want the narrator to avoid doing?

10. Why is Ras' anger ironic?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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.

Essay Topic 2

Being invisible can be both an advantage and a disadvantage. By the end of the novel, how does the narrator intend to use his invisibility? Is the state of being invisible to the inner eye of other people something that can be changed? If so, how? If not, why not?

Essay Topic 3

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.

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