View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What was Mencken's current opinion of the American South, as revealed in "The Calamity of Appomattox"?
(a) It was an economic powerhouse.
(b) It was a lightning-rod of controversy.
(c) It was a culturally inferior place.
(d) It was a culturally superior place.

2. What was Mencken's epitaph?
(a) Give your mother a kiss, for me.
(b) Remember what I said, not what I did.
(c) Wink your eye at some homely girl.
(d) This gravestone may alternately be used as a paperweight.

3. What is wrong, in Mencken's opinion, with most artists' depictions of death?
(a) They show death to be pathetic and ridiculous, which is false.
(b) They are obsessed with death in battle, when death usually happens in the bathtub.
(c) They never show women dying, only men.
(d) They show death to be dramatic and heroic, which is false.

4. What was Mencken's opinion of Gothic architecture?
(a) Valuable and useful.
(b) Completely out of style.
(c) Hideous.
(d) Joyless and dreary.

5. What did Mencken call for in "Mencken's Last Stand"?
(a) For president Harry S. Truman to resign.
(b) For the world to leave him alone.
(c) An end to segregation.
(d) A more intelligent approach to chiropractic.

Short Answer Questions

1. What was the subject of "A Good Man Gone Wrong"?

2. How was Mencken able to get a taxi driver to drive him to a speakeasy in Pennsylvania?

3. Which of the following describes an Anglo-Saxon soldier, according to Mencken?

4. Which of the following might Mencken say about Calvin Coolidge?

5. What was Calvin Coolidge's chief trait, according to Mencken?

Short Essay Questions

1. In "The Noble Experiment," what story did Mencken relate about acquiring alcohol at the Republican National Convention?

2. According to "The Author at Work," why do writers write?

3. What aspect of death interested Mencken the most?

4. Why did Mencken miss corporal punishment in schools in "Travail"?

5. How was FDR able to win the Democratic National Convention of 1932?

6. What was the nature of film actor Valentino's problem, as related in "Valentino"?

7. In "Exeunt Omnes," Mencken described his second book on death, which has collected sayings and thoughts on death. What did Mencken maintain was the main idea of the book?

8. What did Mencken conclude about his research into the court cases of Oliver Wendell Holmes?

9. Contemporaries wrote that Calvin Coolidge bore several similarities to Abraham Lincoln. Why did Mencken disagree with this claim?

10. For what reasons did Mencken admire Grover Cleveland?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,163 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample