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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. The narrator states in Chapter 2, “And this is the dwarfing, warping, distorting influence which operates upon each colored man in the United States. He is forced to take his outlook on all things, not from the viewpoint of a citizen, or a man, nor even a human being, but from the viewpoint of” what?
(a) “A coloured man.”
(b) “An animal.”
(c) “Society.”
(d) “A slave.”

2. What does the narrator describe under the shed in the backyard of his childhood home in Chapter 1?
(a) Wooden wash-tubs.
(b) Animal feed.
(c) Shovel and plow.
(d) Bicycles.

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?
(a) 1 year.
(b) 9 months.
(c) 3 weeks.
(d) 2 months.

4. What does the narrator say he has never been good at because his “ideas of interpretation were always too strongly individual”?
(a) Interpreting the Bible.
(b) Composing music.
(c) Running a business.
(d) An accompanist.

5. By what age could the narrator play by ear all of the hymns and songs his mother knew?
(a) 12.
(b) 15.
(c) 4.
(d) 7.

Short Answer Questions

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

2. The narrator’s mother supported herself and her son by what means, according to the narrator in Chapter 1?

3. Whose schoolwork did the narrator largely complete for him, as described in Chapter 2?

4. What term from the book refers to “the boys who pulled the long stems from the tobacco leaves”?

5. What is the Pullman car porter wearing when the narrator encounters him at a ball in Chapter 5?

Short Essay Questions

1. How are the author’s teenage years described? For whom did he work and where?

2. What elements does the novel share with the Realist Movement in literary style?

3. Who is the narrator’s guide when he first arrives in Atlanta in Chapter 4? What are the narrator’s impressions of the city?

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

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

6. Where did James Weldon Johnson attend university? How is this institution described?

7. When and where was the author of the book born and raised? How are his parents described?

8. How does dramatic irony relate to The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man?

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

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

(see the answer keys)

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