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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. What distresses Ellison most about the essay "Black Boys and Native Sons?"
(a) Written only for a white audience.
(b) Assumes an absolute separation of the races.
(c) Uses the word "Boy" in its title.
(d) Criticizes his own writing.

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

3. Why do Crane and his wife move to England?
(a) It was more civilized.
(b) It was more exotic to Crane than New York.
(c) He was wanted for several crimes.
(d) To escape rumors that she was an ex-madam.

4. What does Ellison believe writing is?
(a) Channeling of higher beings.
(b) Mindless activity.
(c) A way to criticize others.
(d) Ethical instrument.

5. What specific folk art form does "Black Boy" reflect?
(a) African ethnic mask making.
(b) The blues.
(c) Modern dance.
(d) Folk sculpture.

Short Answer Questions

1. Who names Ellison?

2. How many children are in Stephen Crane's birth family?

3. What does Ellison say good fiction is made of?

4. What does Huckleberry Finn recognize about the Negro character, Jim?

5. Falkner writes exclusively of the southern experience yet Ellison believes him to be addressing what?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. What, for Ellison, is the great shaping event of twentieth-century fiction?

4. What were some of the catastrophic events which occurred in Wright's life?

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

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

7. Why does Ellison choose to write about Faulkner?

8. Ellison originally wanted to be a musician. What changed for him?

9. What does Ellison compare Wright's personal journey of blooming to?

10. Why does Ellison say that the least form of segregation is the word?

(see the answer keys)

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