View a FREE sample

This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Part 3, The Shadow and the Act, Section 4.

Multiple Choice Questions

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

2. What does Falkner understand about racial social code of the South?
(a) Destructive to both Negro and white parts of society.
(b) It will never change.
(c) Here today, gone tomorrow.
(d) It is fragile and illusionary.

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

4. What does Jones analyze "bop" as?
(a) Conscious gesture of separation.
(b) Misguided anger towards society.
(c) Attempt to circumvent critics.
(d) Cultivated blues disguised as popular culture.

5. How does Ellison describe the philosopher Kierkegaard in the "Stephen Crane.." essay?
(a) Pinnacle of the romantic poets of the 1950s.
(b) The keeper of Sophocles flame.
(c) Philosopher king who wrecked the castle.
(d) Household god for many contemporary novelists.

Short Answer Questions

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

2. What does Charlie Christian play when he was a young child?

3. Who is Henry Bowman Otto Davis?

4. Which American writers is the piece "Black Boys and Native Sons" about?

5. What is Ellison's original choice of career?

(see the answer key)

This section contains 335 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample