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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Part 1, The Seer and the Seen, Section 5.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Violence is inflicted upon Wright by family, friends, and society as a whole. What is his response?
(a) Retreat.
(b) Passivity.
(c) Seclusion.
(d) Violence.

2. What musician does Ellison see as the true "trickster" archetype?
(a) Louis Armstrong.
(b) Jack Benny.
(c) Charlie Parker.
(d) Mahalia Jackson.

3. What does Ellison say the greatest difficulty for the Negro writer is?
(a) Get someone to publish him because most of the publishers were white.
(b) Reveal what he truly feels rather than serving up what Negroes are supposed to feel.
(c) Find a subject worthy of his time and effort.
(d) Capture the Negro speech idiom and put it down on paper.

4. Where and when is the essay "Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke" published?
(a) Life Magazine, Summer, 1958.
(b) Partisan Review, Spring 1958.
(c) New Yorker Magazine, Summer, 1959.
(d) Yale Literary Review, Winter, 1960.

5. What is the origin of the essay "Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke?"
(a) Treatise on the folk art of tying knots.
(b) Short story about lynching.
(c) Letter written by Ellison when he was living in Rome to an old friend.
(d) "Invisible Man."

Short Answer Questions

1. What are the three themes of "Shadow and Act" according to the Introduction?

2. What does the phrase "to finger its jagged grain and to transcend it" refer to?

3. Why do Crane and his wife move to England?

4. Where is the essay "Richard Wright's Blues" published and when?

5. Who is Henry Bowman Otto Davis?

(see the answer key)

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