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. Why does Ellison's family live in a middle class white neighborhood in Oklahoma City?
(a) Ellison's father made a great deal of money in the railroad business.
(b) There is no Negro neighborhood in Oklahoma City.
(c) Ellison's family has always been well to do and had nice houses.
(d) His mother, a single parent, is a custodian in an apartment building there.

2. That Ellison's first novel might win a prestigious award makes him think what?
(a) There is a crisis in the American novel.
(b) The committee has made a huge mistake.
(c) He is chosen only because he is Negro.
(d) He is a brilliant writer.

3. What type of literature does Ellison believe Wright's novel "Black Boy" is?
(a) Work of fiction.
(b) Autobiography.
(c) Weapon against prejudice and injustice.
(d) Sociological case history.

4. Who is Irving Howe?
(a) White liberal writer from New York City.
(b) Negro professor from Mississippi University.
(c) Pseudonym for Richard Wright.
(d) Hispanic Indian man who met Ellison in a bar.

5. As a child what do Ellison and his boyhood friends believe they are to do?
(a) They were doomed to hard manual labor and suffering.
(b) Negros had no chance of doing anything interesting in life.
(c) Negros could never equal the lives of white Americans.
(d) Be whoever they would and could be.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does the phrase "beating that boy" mean?

2. How does Ellison start writing?

3. Where does Ellison give the public address "Hidden Name and Complex Fate?"

4. Why does Ellison consider Stephen Crane a great artist?

5. Who is Ellison named after?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why was the young Ellison drawn to reading?

2. As a child Ellison imagined himself as a "Renaissance man." What does that mean?

3. What is Ellison's basic quarrel with Hyman?

4. What does Ellison critique about the authors included in the Primer?

5. Why does Ellison consider Stephen Crane to be such a great artist?

6. What is the common image of the Negro in contemporary literature according to Ellison?

7. What, for Ellison, is the great shaping event of twentieth-century fiction?

8. What were the two greatest influences upon Crane's life, in Ellison's estimation?

9. Why does Ellison say that the least form of segregation is the word?

10. What does the second half of the title "Hidden Names and Complex Fate" refer to?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,041 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample