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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Ishmael symbolize, in Marx's interpretation of Moby Dick?
(a) The victim of the whale's aggression.
(b) The prophet to warn people against destroying nature.
(c) The representative of nature.
(d) The middleman between nature and society.

2. Whom does Marx credit with predicting all the evils of industrialism?
(a) John Orvis.
(b) Ralph Waldo Emerson.
(c) Daniel Webster.
(d) Thomas Jefferson.

3. How does Marx describe the pastoralism of the 19th century?
(a) Romantic.
(b) Industrial.
(c) Sentimental.
(d) Modern.

4. What trait did American thinkers and writers see in evidence in America's industrial expansion?
(a) Creativity.
(b) Greed.
(c) World-weariness.
(d) Corruption.

5. What criticism did Carlyle make of American industrialism?
(a) He lamented the death of wildlife.
(b) He protested the destruction of indigenous societies.
(c) He decried the disruption of nature.
(d) He complained about the decline of marriage in cities.

6. What is Huck Finn lamenting at the beginning of Huckleberry Finn?
(a) Jim's incarceration.
(b) Tom Sawyer's punishment.
(c) His current civilized state.
(d) His loss of his father.

7. How did Melville describe whaling?
(a) As a symbol of society.
(b) As a spiritual calling.
(c) As an industrial enterprise.
(d) As an art.

8. How did Americans see westward expansion, in Marx's account?
(a) As a form of progress.
(b) As a form of corruption.
(c) As a crime against Indians.
(d) As a destruction of the landscape.

9. What did Emerson originally propose in his philosophy?
(a) Immersion in literature.
(b) Immersion in nature.
(c) Immersion in society.
(d) Immersion in science.

10. How did Thoreau describe modern man?
(a) Free in the wilderness.
(b) Poised at the boundary between nature and industry.
(c) Torn apart by his desires.
(d) Unhappy in factories.

11. What did Coxe contrast manufacturing with?
(a) The trades.
(b) Cottage industry.
(c) Importation.
(d) Self-reliance.

12. What was the American response to steam power in Britain?
(a) That it would corrupt the youth with dreams of travel.
(b) That it would never come to America.
(c) That it would become their great strength.
(d) That it would provide them cheap power.

13. How does Marx say most American writers described industrial expansion?
(a) As a crime.
(b) As a torment.
(c) As a form of art.
(d) As a force of nature.

14. What do complex pastoralists recognize, in Marx's account?
(a) The need to return to nature at any cost.
(b) The need to reconcile pastoralism and industrialism.
(c) The need to abolish machinery.
(d) The need to integrate industrial machinery with natural processes.

15. What dangers were writers warning about as America urbanized?
(a) Loss of nature.
(b) Creation of a permanently poor underclass.
(c) Declining value of money.
(d) Decline of morals.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does modern man hope for, in spite of industrialism?

2. How does industrialism devalue man, in Carlyle's opinion?

3. What would men of understanding provide in Emerson's vision?

4. What did Emerson say that science and technology could serve?

5. What structures does Marx use as examples of how modern man mistreats nature?

(see the answer keys)

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