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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What feeling characterized the beginning of Mark Twain's writing career?
(a) Nostalgia for the old days on the Mississippi.
(b) Optimism about industrial expansion into the midwest.
(c) Fear about the consequences of the railroad.
(d) Lamentation about the death of Indian cultures.

2. What was Daniel Webster's feeling about pastoralism?
(a) He set out national parks to preserve pastoral spaces.
(b) He thought it could co-exist with technology.
(c) He thought it would corrupt America's soul.
(d) He thought it would heal industrialism.

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

4. What is Ishmael's task, in Marx's description of Melville's vision in Moby Dick?
(a) To reconcile nature and society.
(b) To save the ship.
(c) To restrain Ahab.
(d) To kill the white whale.

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

6. What would manufacturing do for America, in Coxe's estimation?
(a) Ensure independence.
(b) Unify the electorate.
(c) Generate wealth.
(d) Drive western expansion.

7. What did Henry Adams envision as the consequence of technology?
(a) The unification of humans and nature.
(b) The unification of knowledge in one science.
(c) The human race committing suicide.
(d) Disaffection, alienation, and disease.

8. What did Coxe foresee for America?
(a) The value of industrialism.
(b) How industrialism would give America strength internationally.
(c) The danger of industrialism.
(d) The civic uses of industrialism.

9. What is the purpose of an epilogue?
(a) To repudiate parts of the book that look naïve or foolish.
(b) To describe the process of writing the book.
(c) To reflect on the content of the book.
(d) To repeat the main themes one more time.

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

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

12. Which industry has Marx talked most about, in 'The Machine in the Garden'?
(a) Medical devices.
(b) Transportation.
(c) Education.
(d) Pharmaceuticals.

13. What does Marx say about modern farming (in the time of his writing this book)?
(a) Modern farming has preserved nature while offering productive land.
(b) Modern farming has freed Americans from industry.
(c) Modern farming has become an industry.
(d) Modern farming has returned Americans to their agrarian roots.

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

15. What does Marx say Thoreau wanted people to do in nature?
(a) Organize.
(b) Hide.
(c) Invent.
(d) Meditate.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Marx characterize man's hopes for nature?

2. What does the ocean symbolize in Melville's Moby Dick?

3. What do complex pastoralists recognize, in Marx's account?

4. What criticism did Carlyle make of American industrialism?

5. What was unique about American manufacturing, in Coxe's view?

(see the answer keys)

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