View a FREE sample

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

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. What type of jug does Ellison say Howe imagines Negro people to be in?
(a) Heavy jug that takes two men to lift it.
(b) Steel jug waiting for a black messiah to come and blow off the cork.
(c) Empty jug with no way out.
(d) Jug of beer in which they are drowning.

3. What work of literature seizes Ellison's young mind early on?
(a) The Waste Land.
(b) The American Constitution.
(c) The Bible.
(d) Black like me.

4. What are the three major section of the "Primer for White Folks?"
(a) Right, Wrong, Ambivilent.
(b) White, Negro, Mixed Race.
(c) Beginning, Middle, End.
(d) Heritage, Short Stories, Today and Tomorrow.

5. What is the Negro child taught to see the white man as?
(a) Something to be ignored.
(b) Wise and loyal.
(c) Omniscient, omnipotent and as relentless as a Mississippi flood.
(d) A being from another planet.

6. What does Ellison suggest as a subtitle for "Primer for White Folks?"
(a) Comprehensive Study of the Unruly Seas of Race.
(b) How-to book for Bigots and Innocents.
(c) Method for finding Peace and Harmony among the Races.
(d) Short Course on the American Negro for Those Who "Beat That Boy".

7. Why does Ellison choose to analyze Mark Twain?
(a) Twain was a humorist.
(b) Twain was a slave owner and trader.
(c) Twain offers a unique historical perspective.
(d) Twain was married to a Negro woman.

8. For Ellison who is the greatest artist the south has ever produced?
(a) Ralph Ellison.
(b) William Falkner.
(c) Mark Twain.
(d) Ernest Hemingway.

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

10. What does Crane die of and where?
(a) Murder, on board a ship crossing the Atlantic.
(b) In a fierce battle on the plains of Alsace.
(c) The black plague of 1834, in London, England.
(d) Tuberculosis, in the far Black Forest of Germany.

11. What does the phrase "beating that boy" mean?
(a) The actions of white policemen upon finding Negros in the wrong part of town.
(b) Polite conversation between white and Negro persons about the "Negro problem".
(c) A quick victory in chess.
(d) The insidious method of beating the life out of a Negro man by calling him "boy".

12. Ellison says Hemingway sought technical perfection rather than what?
(a) Lyrical qualities.
(b) Moral insight.
(c) Financial gain.
(d) Fame and notoriety.

13. How does Ellison describe Wright's autobiography "Black Boy?"
(a) An angry young man's immoderate tale of delusion.
(b) Another failed attempt to pierce the great wall between races.
(c) The Negro answer to "Huckleberry Finn."
(d) A non-white intellectual's statement of his relationship with Western culture.

14. How does Ellison start writing?
(a) His mother asks him to write the story of her life.
(b) Ellison is commissioned by the New York City Opera to write a libretto.
(c) Ellison fails to get into the jazz band he wants so he writes about it.
(d) Richard Wright asks him to review a novel for Wright's magazine.

15. How old is Crane when he wrote his masterpiece "The Red Badge of Courage?"
(a) 45.
(b) 16,
(c) 79.
(d) 21.

Short Answer Questions

1. According to Ellison what does the term "the grays" mean?

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

3. Who is Henry Bowman Otto Davis?

4. Why does Ellison reject the "hard-boiled" novel style of writing?

5. What is the "Hidden Name" referred to in the title of Ellison's speech?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 690 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample