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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 did the speaker come home without in "Midnight Raffle"?

2. What "mellows to a golden note" in "Trumpet Player"?

3. What is Langston Hughes known for?

4. In "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," what does the speaker say his souls has done similar to a river?

5. What is all that a snail knows in "Snail"?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does the preacher in "Sunday Morning Prophecy" want congregants to give freely into the collection basket?

2. Why is the speaker so surprised by his girlfriend's snoring in "Morning After"?

3. What does the poem "Drum" portray Death's eventuality as?

4. Who is gathered up in the poem "Litany"?

5. In "Afro-American Fragment" (the poem), what does the author imply is being fragmented?

6. What theme unites the poems in "Distance Nowhere"?

7. What do many of the poems in the "Afro-American Fragment" section of "Selected Poems of Langston Hughes" have an undercurrent of?

8. What exactly is the "amen-corner" mentioned in the poem "Prayer-Meeting"?

9. What kind of tour does Hughes take the reader on in "Sea and Land"?

10. What are the Lincoln Prairies symbolic of in "One"?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Find three examples of personification in "Selected Poems of Langston Hughes" and discuss how and why Hughes uses each in the manner that he does.

Essay Topic 2

In "Widow Woman," Hughes writes from the perspective of a woman. Discuss at least 3 rhetorical devices he uses to come up with a voice that is his own and yet not his own in this particular poem.

Essay Topic 3

Discuss how the poem "Early Evening Quarrel" can be analyzed as a vignette that addresses the larger themes (particularly those of romance and the dynamics between men and women) present in "Selected Poems of Langston Hughes."

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