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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Why does Ellison's family live in a middle class white neighborhood in Oklahoma City?
(a) Ellison's family has always been well to do and had nice houses.
(b) Ellison's father made a great deal of money in the railroad business.
(c) There is no Negro neighborhood in Oklahoma City.
(d) His mother, a single parent, is a custodian in an apartment building there.

2. Why does Ellison consider Stephen Crane a great artist?
(a) He was the first great Negro author.
(b) He wrote so many books.
(c) He was talented in so many artistic fields.
(d) Under pressure and panic he stuck to his guns.

3. Which American writers is the piece "Black Boys and Native Sons" about?
(a) Joe Henry, Jules Verne and Thomas Edison.
(b) Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin.
(c) Irving Howe, Ralph Ellison and Joe Frasier.
(d) William Faulkner, Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway.

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

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

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Ellison say the "Negro problem" actually is?

2. How does Ellison describe the writer Malraux?

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

4. Where does Ellison grow up?

5. Where and when is "The World and The Jug" published?

Short Essay Questions

1. Where do Ellison and Hyman divide in their understanding of black face minstrel performance?

2. What is different about Oklahoma and the relationship of different races when compared to the South or even to Texas?

3. In "Richard Wright's blues" how does Ellison describe the blues?

4. What does the phrase "beating that boy" refer to?

5. What does the second half of the title "Hidden Names and Complex Fate" refer to?

6. As a child Ellison imagined himself as a "Renaissance man." What does that mean?

7. Though "Black Boy" presents a brutal and violent world, what else does it manage to convey about the young Wright?

8. Why was the young Ellison drawn to reading?

9. Who was it that suggested to Ellison that he review a book and write a short story?

10. When Ellison accepts the American National Book Award for "The Invisible Man" what does he say that the award is recognizing?

(see the answer keys)

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