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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Who is Henry Bowman Otto Davis?
(a) Author of "Radios and Communication, a guide."
(b) Father of Ellison's grade school nemesis, Horatio Davis.
(c) Little white boy known as Hoolie befriended by the young Ellison.
(d) Editor of the first magazine which published Ellison.

2. How does Ellison describe his relationship with Howe?
(a) Antagonistic cooperation.
(b) Alienation and scorn.
(c) Comrades in arms.
(d) Bitterly opposed enemies.

3. What assumption does Ellison start with when writing about Negro persons?
(a) Men with black skins are unquestionably human.
(b) They are his responsibility to explain.
(c) Only he, as a Negro writer, can find truth and beauty in their lives.
(d) His task as a writer is to save them from the white world.

4. Why does Oklahoma hold some freedom and equality for Negroes at the time Ellison lived there?
(a) It has no tradition of slavery.
(b) Oklahoma is founded on Mormon principles which forbade prejudice.
(c) There are almost no Negroes in Oklahoma.
(d) It is fully integrated and equality was legislated.

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

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

7. What is Ellison's original career direction?
(a) Play the trumpet.
(b) Tend gardens.
(c) Design buildings.
(d) Heal the sick.

8. What does Ellison praise about "Primer for White Folks?"
(a) Easy to read and young children will like it.
(b) Realistic and therefore does not contain much hope.
(c) Short and to the point.
(d) The search for images of black and white fraternity.

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

10. As a child what do Ellison and his boyhood friends believe they are to do?
(a) Negros had no chance of doing anything interesting in life.
(b) Be whoever they would and could be.
(c) They were doomed to hard manual labor and suffering.
(d) Negros could never equal the lives of white Americans.

11. Where and when is "The World and The Jug" published?
(a) New Leader, 1963 and 1964.
(b) New York Times, 1965.
(c) Paris Review, 1966.
(d) Mississippian, 1967 and 1968.

12. Why does Ellison begin the speech by referring to Ernest Hemingway?
(a) Hemingway once called Ellison by the wrong name, Emerson.
(b) Hemingway is often misspelled and therefore hidden.
(c) The name Hemingway is a pseudonym.
(d) Hemingway is a writer Ellison strongly identifies with.

13. How does Ellison describe the writer Malraux?
(a) French counterpart.
(b) Literary ancestor.
(c) Polar opposite.
(d) Greatest nemesis.

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

15. Why does Ellison reject the "hard-boiled" novel style of writing?
(a) Full of physical violence, social cynicism and understatement.
(b) Focused on detectives and criminals.
(c) Too boring for what he wants to say.
(d) Primarily a white form of writing.

Short Answer Questions

1. Why does Ellison consider Stephen Crane a great artist?

2. Who is Ellison named after?

3. How old is Stephen Crane when he dies?

4. What is minstrel show black face?

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

(see the answer keys)

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