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Name: _________________________ | Period: ___________________ |
This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.
Short Answer Questions
1. What is Mrs. Jackson cooking in "The Way It Is?"
2. Where does Charlie Christian come from?
3. What do all American Negros share?
4. What is Charlie Parker's nickname?
5. What two types of music is Ellison torn between as a child?
Short Essay Questions
1. What does Ellison say about a Negro President?
2. What does Ellison tell us about the matriarch, Mrs. Jackson, in "The Way It Is."
3. When asked when he began "Invisible Man" what does Ellison answer?
4. Who is Teddy Hill?
5. In the Paris Review (Spring 1955) Ellison was interviewed about his work as a writer. What does he say his first piece of professional writing was?
6. What are the two categories Jones places the blues in?
7. Why does Ellison disagree with Jones when he says "A slave cannot be a man"?
8. Who is LeRoi Jones?
9. Who does the song "They picked poor robin clean" remind Ellison of?
10. What experience in Ellison's childhood gives him patience with his upstairs singing neighbor?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
In "Living with Music" Ellison literally finds himself overwhelmed by the group of people who live around him. His struggle to find his own peace within a larger and very noisy society is a metaphor for the way he sees the individual constantly struggling against the group in life. How does he find peace? What method does he use to carve out his space and literally "be heard?"
Essay Topic 2
Who is Stephen Crane and why is Ellison so interested in him? What is it about Crane's style of writing that is important to Ellison's thinking about good writing? What does Crane do that makes him unique? Clearly Ellison holds Crane up as a great model for all novelists who follow. Is it Crane's technique, his ability to write in such specific ways, what impresses Ellison or is it Crane's willingness to look into the heart of the American culture and see what is there?
Essay Topic 3
"The World and the Jug" is an angry, often humorous response to the white, northern liberal writer Irving Howe's article about Richard Wright, James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison. What is Ellison's primary anger towards Howe based in? What pattern does he believe Howe has fallen into that is so similar to the discriminatory patterns against Negroes in America in general? What does Ellison argue that Howe is continuing when it comes to understanding the relationship between Negro and white culture?
This section contains 843 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) |
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