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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Why does Ellison begin the speech by referring to Ernest Hemingway?

2. As a child what do Ellison and his boyhood friends believe they are to do?

3. In the essay "Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke" what does Ellison say black face allows white America to do?

4. Who is Richard Wright to Ellison?

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

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Ellison admire most about "The Primer for White Folks?"

2. How did a library for Negro persons emerge in Oklahoma City?

3. What is Ellison's basic quarrel with Hyman?

4. What is the common image of the Negro in contemporary literature according to Ellison?

5. What does the phrase "The World and the Jug" refers to?

6. How does Ellison leave the rather bitter dialogue with Howe?

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

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

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

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In "Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke" Ellison challenges Stanley Hyman's assertion the "smart man playing dumb" role is primarily Negro. What does Ellison propose is the true case? What examples does he use to argue that this "joke" is much broader than Negro culture? How does this understanding fit with the larger theme in Ellison's work of the relationship between Negro culture and American culture?

Essay Topic 2

The Lafargue Psychiatric Clinic is profiled with a sense of gratitude and anger. What is Ellison angry about and why? As much as he admires the clinic, why does he feel it should not be necessary? What is at the source of mental suffering for many persons in the Harlem community?

Essay Topic 3

"Richard Wright's Blues" explores the history of southern Negro culture. What was the atmosphere Wright grew up in? What would he have been afraid of? Where did the violence, especially the beating and punishment from Negro parents upon their children, come from? How did this environment affect the young Wright? If he had stayed in the south would he have bloomed into the writer and thinker that he did? What did Ellison think about the chances of that happening?

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