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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. Why does Ellison's family live in a middle class white neighborhood in Oklahoma City?
(a) There is no Negro neighborhood in Oklahoma City.
(b) Ellison's family has always been well to do and had nice houses.
(c) Ellison's father made a great deal of money in the railroad business.
(d) His mother, a single parent, is a custodian in an apartment building there.

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) Find a subject worthy of his time and effort.
(c) Get someone to publish him because most of the publishers were white.
(d) Capture the Negro speech idiom and put it down on paper.

3. What does Ellison say good fiction is made of?
(a) Fun.
(b) Eternal truth.
(c) What is real.
(d) Tricks of the trade.

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

5. What book does Hemingway believe all modern American fiction sprang from?
(a) Moby Dick.
(b) The Red Badge of Courage.
(c) The Bible.
(d) Huckleberry Finn.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Mark Twain do with the character of Jim that breaks through the black face minstrel tradition?

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

3. What does Huckleberry Finn recognize about the Negro character, Jim?

4. What musician does Ellison see as the true "trickster" archetype?

5. Who is Henry Bowman Otto Davis?

(see the answer key)

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