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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 does the narrator describe surrounding the flowers in the front yard of his childhood home in Chapter 1?
(a) Cherry trees.
(b) Large rocks.
(c) A white picket fence.
(d) Glass bottles.

2. The narrator’s mother supported herself and her son by what means, according to the narrator in Chapter 1?
(a) Tutoring students.
(b) Growing vegetables.
(c) Giving violin lessons.
(d) Sewing.

3. The narrator states in Chapter 2, “In the life of every one there is a limited number of unhappy experiences which are not written upon the memory, but stamped there with” what?
(a) “Extreme pressure.”
(b) “Vivid detail.”
(c) “Bad memories.”
(d) “A die.”

4. To whom does the narrator say he became inseparable in school in Chapter 2?
(a) The Girl.
(b) Joel Chandler Harris.
(c) Shiny.
(d) Red Head.

5. What habit does the narrator say he picked up on very young that “makes the piano a sympathetic, singing instrument” in Chapter 2?
(a) Playing with his eyes closed.
(b) Playing the wrong notes.
(c) Playing the black keys.
(d) Using the pedals.

Short Answer Questions

1. In Chapter 5, the narrator compares the black man and his fight to what bearing the “fury of the storm”?

2. The narrator of the novel was born a few years after the close of what war?

3. The landlady and her husband at the boarding house tell the narrator that the big winter hotels would not open within how much time in the beginning of Chapter 5?

4. What is stolen along with the narrator’s money from his trunk in Chapter 4?

5. How much money per week is the room that the narrator rents at the boarding house in the beginning of Chapter 5?

Short Essay Questions

1. What event takes place informing the narrator of his ethnic heritage in his early years? How does he react to the information?

2. How does the theme of identity apply to the novel? How does it apply to the narrator?

3. What is early education like for the narrator? When does he enter public school and how is this setting described?

4. To whom were African American narratives during the Reconstruction Era generally addressed? Why?

5. How is segregation addressed when the narrator eats his first meal in Atlanta in Chapter 4?

6. How is the period in which the book is set described by the author? What was life like for African Americans?

7. Who is the narrator of The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man? What secret does he discuss in Chapter 1?

8. What does the narrator discover when he encounters the porter at a dance in Chapter 5?

9. Into what classes does the narrator categorize African Americans in Chapter 5?

10. How does the motif of music apply in the novel? What is the narrator’s relationship to music?

(see the answer keys)

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