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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. Who is Sidi?

2. What does Lakunle say is true about women's intelligence?

3. When Lakunle talks about machines that will someday help women with their work, what is Sidi's reply?

4. What is Sidi carrying in the opening of the play?

5. What does Sidi say a man has to do in order to marry her?

Short Essay Questions

1. What happens with Lakunle when Baroka interrupts the dance?

2. What is the contradiction in Lakunle's view of women?

3. What does Lakunle think of Baroka?

4. How does Sidi feel about Lakunle's modern ideas?

5. What are the qualities that Lakunle thinks of as "civilized"?

6. When the play opens, what is the understanding between Sidi and Lakunle regarding marriage?

7. How did the "lost Traveller" come to be in the village?

8. Describe the setting in which the play opens.

9. What response does Baroka have to the magazine featuring pictures of the village?

10. What is the "dance of the lost Traveller," and who plays the Traveller?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Research the role of music and dance in Western theater. Then write a comparison and contrast essay in which you show how Soyinka's use of music and dance have both commonalities and differences with the tradition of music and dance in Western plays. Be sure to offer textual support for your ideas and cite your sources in MLA format.

Essay Topic 2

Wole Soyinka won the 1986 Nobel Prize in literature. Read the Swedish Academy's press release upon the occasion of Soyinka's receiving the award (available online) and read Soyinka's banquet speech given December 10, 1986 upon receiving the award (available online). Write an essay in which you consider what characteristics are considered to have made Soyinka an important writer and then compare how his speech and the play The Lion and the Jewel reflect these characteristics. Use textual support from all three sources in support of your claims, and be sure to cite your sources in MLA format.

Essay Topic 3

The village schoolmaster claims that he has "scientific" evidence that women are the intellectual inferiors of men. Faulty science has been used in this way to legitimize discrimination for centuries. Choose a kind of discrimination--that based on sex, gender, appearance, cultural background, religion, or any other kind--and write an essay about how pseudoscience has been used to support bigotry in this area. Credit all sources in MLA format.

(see the answer keys)

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