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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. Hemingway carries on Twain's technical discoveries in writing but loses what?
(a) Twain's political and social construct.
(b) Twain's understanding that technique is to be used in the service of truth.
(c) Twain's focus on American subjects.
(d) Twain's humor and light approach to storytelling.

2. Who is Stanley Edgar Hyman?
(a) Ellison's uncle who has a good sense of humor.
(b) A lyricist and comedian in the 1930's.
(c) A scholar who wrote on the relationship between Negro literature and folklore.
(d) The prominent Negro intellectual who wrote "Santa Claus is Black."

3. What is dangerous and different about Wright's attitude?
(a) Refused to participate in school.
(b) Sought individual freedom in a "pre-individual" Negro culture.
(c) Ran for public office and refused to accept defeat.
(d) Was loud and demanding of others.

4. Falkner writes exclusively of the southern experience yet Ellison believes him to be addressing what?
(a) Northern Negro experience.
(b) Nature of man.
(c) Inevitable rise and fall of every civilization.
(d) Effect of war upon culture.

5. How does Ellison describe Wright's autobiography "Black Boy?"
(a) The Negro answer to "Huckleberry Finn."
(b) A non-white intellectual's statement of his relationship with Western culture.
(c) Another failed attempt to pierce the great wall between races.
(d) An angry young man's immoderate tale of delusion.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Ellison describe his boyhood experience in Oklahoma?

2. In the essay "Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke" what does Ellison say black face allows white America to do?

3. Where and when is the essay "Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke" published?

4. What does Ellison say good fiction is made of?

5. What is Ellison's original career direction?

(see the answer key)

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