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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 4.

Multiple Choice Questions

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

2. Who is Stephen Crane?
(a) A 20th century novelist and author of "Here today, gone tomorrow."
(b) Ellison's first English professor who wrote "Black like me."
(c) A English gentleman who has fast holdings of land, slaves and wealth.
(d) A novelist born just after the Civil War.

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

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

5. Where does Ellison say civil wars are fought?
(a) "Between and betwixt fantasy and reality."
(b) "In no man's land which cannot be grasped."
(c) "Within the individual human heart."
(d) "On the field of family ties."

Short Answer Questions

1. Who is Stanley Hyman's favorite archetypal figure?

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

3. What is Ellison's original career direction?

4. What does Ralph Ellison's father hope that Ralph will grow up to be?

5. Where does Ellison grow up?

(see the answer key)

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