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

2. What does Huckleberry Finn recognize about the Negro character, Jim?
(a) Jim knows the landscape and can take Huck anywhere.
(b) Jim is very ill and near death.
(c) Jim can make him lots of money if Huck will return him to his owner.
(d) Jim is not only a slave, but a human being.

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

4. What does Mark Twain do with the character of Jim that breaks through the black face minstrel tradition?
(a) He's a complex, dignified and very human person.
(b) Jim performs black face without the paint.
(c) Jim's very serious and not at all fun.
(d) Jim is stereotypical and boring.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. As a child what do Ellison and his boyhood friends believe they are to do?

2. What is the origin of the essay "Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke?"

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

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

5. Who is Stanley Edgar Hyman?

(see the answer key)

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