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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What analogy does Ellison use to describe Laly and Bliss's love?
(a) Like two dolphins.
(b) Like two lions.
(c) Like two snakes.
(d) Like two birds.

2. Who are Donelson and Karp?
(a) None of these answers is correct.
(b) Bliss's brothers.
(c) Bliss's uncles.
(d) Bliss's filmmaker partners.

3. What kinds of traditions does the Juneteenth holiday end up being connected to?
(a) Social.
(b) Religious.
(c) None of these answers is correct.
(d) Financial.

4. What is the age group of the people who arrive in Washington, D.C. when the novel opens?
(a) Young kids (there for a field trip).
(b) Elderly.
(c) Parents.
(d) Teenagers.

5. The religious revivals of this time period served as what kinds of events?
(a) None of these answers is correct.
(b) Spiritual and social.
(c) Social.
(d) Spiritual.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is Bliss wearing in his little coffin during the large Juneteenth revival?

2. What does Hickman say to Senator Sunraider's assassin?

3. Which character does Senator Sunraider ask for from the hospital?

4. Who is Senator Sunraider's assassin working with?

5. What rhyme does Bowlegs create to make fun of Bliss?

Short Essay Questions

1. How much of their losses are Laly and the townspeople able to recover once they discover that Bliss, Donelson, and Karp are frauds?

2. In the final chapter of the novel, how is it clear that the senator is in a hallucinatory state?

3. After he is shot, what does Senator Sunraider vaguely see by his bedside?

4. Why does Bliss get to cut open the watermelon he and Sister Georgia share?

5. Why is Sister Georgia hesitant to hug Bliss as a child?

6. Why does Sister Georgia think she is most qualified to take care of Bliss after the incident at the Juneteenth revival?

7. How does the senator remember his costume feeling as he lay in the coffin waiting for his cue?

8. Why is Bliss so obsessed about the image of the movie actress?

9. When remembering his trip with the crazed woman to the jailhouse, who does Reverend Hickman confess he should have been praying for instead?

10. Who does the young boy in the senator's final hallucination represent?

(see the answer keys)

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