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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. In what year does the author say in the Foreword that she began the “story” that would eventually lead to The Bluest Eye?
(a) 1938.
(b) 1957.
(c) 1962.
(d) 1944.

2. In the third narrative of the Jane story in Part I, what has been taken away?
(a) Consonants.
(b) Punctuation.
(c) Vowels.
(d) Spacing.

3. The narrator in Part II describes the adults as treating illness in children with what?
(a) Empathy.
(b) Contempt.
(c) Sympathy.
(d) Mercy.

4. The narrator says in Part I, “What is clear now is that of all of that hope, fear, lust, love, and grief, nothing remains but Pecola and” what?
(a) “The infinite sky.”
(b) “The savage animals.”
(c) “The sands of time.”
(d) “The unyielding earth.”

5. What is Mr. Henry’s last name?
(a) Yacobowski.
(b) Washington.
(c) Whitcomb.
(d) Dunion.

6. With whom had Mr. Henry been living before taking a room from the MacTeer family?
(a) Miss Poland.
(b) Miss Delia Jones.
(c) Miss Marie.
(d) Miss Erkmeister.

7. Of what dancer does Claudia say in Part II “was my friend, my uncle, my daddy, and who ought to have been soft-shoeing it and chuckling with me”?
(a) Louis Armstrong.
(b) Bojangles.
(c) Fred Astaire.
(d) Chuck E. White.

8. In the story of Jane from Part I, Jane’s family lives in a house that is what colors?
(a) Green and white.
(b) Gold and blue.
(c) Green and gold.
(d) Blue and green.

9. The narrator in Part I says that for years she believed the reason the marigolds didn’t bloom was because she had done what?
(a) Planted them too deep.
(b) Planted them too shallow.
(c) Over-watered them.
(d) Under-watered them.

10. What does Toni Morrison refer to as the most “vulnerable member” of society in the novel’s Foreword?
(a) A female.
(b) The elderly.
(c) Children.
(d) A male.

11. How much milk does Mrs. MacTeer complain about having disappeared from her refrigerator overnight in Part II?
(a) 3 gallons.
(b) 1 quart.
(c) 2 quarts.
(d) 3 quarts.

12. What color is Jane’s dress in the story from Part I?
(a) Red.
(b) Orange.
(c) Brown.
(d) Green.

13. Who is the narrator of Part I?
(a) Poland.
(b) Frieda MacTeer.
(c) Claudia MacTeer.
(d) Pecola Breedlove.

14. The author states in the Foreword, “In trying to dramatize the devastation that even casual racial contempt can cause I chose a unique situation, not" what?
(a) “An imaginative one.”
(b) “A representative one.”
(c) “A realistic one.”
(d) “A classic one.”

15. The author describes "seeing oneself preserved in the amber of" what, in the novel's Foreword?
(a) “Disqualifying metaphors.”
(b) “Justice.”
(c) “Time.”
(d) “Collective memory.”

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Claudia recall doing with her baby dolls as a child in Part II?

2. What does Jane’s father do when Jane asks him to play in the story from Part I?

3. How old is the narrator’s sister in Part II?

4. Who is described as “still trotting up and down Sixteenth Street talking to herself” in Part II?

5. The author writes in the novel's Foreword that when she began writing The Bluest Eye, she was interested in the "far more tragic and disabling consequences of accepting rejection as" what?

(see the answer keys)

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