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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 3.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Ralph Ellison's father hope that Ralph will grow up to be?
(a) College professor.
(b) Jazz musician.
(c) Police officer.
(d) Poet.

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

3. In the essay "Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke" what does Ellison say black face allows white America to do?
(a) Pour out its hatred and fear in a theatrical form.
(b) Laugh and forget about its troubles and woes.
(c) Avoid looking at the shallowness of white American culture.
(d) See the Negro story from a different perspective.

4. What is the relationship between Ellison and Stanley Hyman?
(a) Friends and intellectual sparing partners.
(b) Writers who abhor each other's work.
(c) Professors competing over the same university job.
(d) Cousins who grew up together in Oklahoma.

5. What folk tradition does Ellison believe the black face figure grows out of?
(a) America.
(b) Africa.
(c) West Indies.
(d) Europe.

Short Answer Questions

1. Falkner writes exclusively of the southern experience yet Ellison believes him to be addressing what?

2. According to Ellison what does the term "the grays" mean?

3. Why does Ellison's family live in a middle class white neighborhood in Oklahoma City?

4. Why does Oklahoma hold some freedom and equality for Negroes at the time Ellison lived there?

5. What is Ellison's original career direction?

(see the answer key)

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