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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How did Coxe's vision for industrialism intersect with pastoralism?
(a) Coxe thought that America's environment would make the factory a pastoral place.
(b) Coxe thought that factories would blight the landscape.
(c) Coxe prophesied that extractive industries would ruin the landscape.
(d) Coxe predicted that industries would leave dead places in the environment when they collapsed.

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

3. Who does Marx offer as examples of 'complex pastoralism' in America literature?
(a) Fitzgerald and Faulkner.
(b) Eliot and Pound.
(c) Salinger and Bukowski.
(d) Dos Passos and Hurston.

4. What else does Marx say about people who live pastoral lives?
(a) They are poor.
(b) They are powerless.
(c) They are Indians and blacks.
(d) They are rich.

5. What was Daniel Webster's take on industrialism?
(a) He used it to his profit.
(b) He lamented the changing structure of society.
(c) He embraced the new power.
(d) He loathed the railroad.

6. What forces have led to the urbanization and industrialization Marx describes?
(a) Science and legal incentives.
(b) Wars and military campaigns.
(c) Literature and mythology.
(d) Markets and technology.

7. What does Marx say about man's hopes for nature?
(a) They are destructive.
(b) They are just a dream.
(c) They will create wars.
(d) They are realistic.

8. What 'sealed the fate' of American industrialism, according to Marx?
(a) The railroad.
(b) The cotton gin.
(c) Standardized parts.
(d) Machine tools.

9. 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.

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

11. How does Marx say modern Americans see nature?
(a) As expendable.
(b) As bountiful.
(c) As sublime.
(d) As divine.

12. What does our continued faith in the pastoral society preserve, in Marx's description?
(a) Faith in individual survival.
(b) Pessimism about industry.
(c) Pessimism about leaders.
(d) Faith in urban planning.

13. What did Emerson's philosophy ultimately propose?
(a) Rejection of industry.
(b) Urbanization of nature.
(c) Reconciliation of industry and nature.
(d) Domestication of nature.

14. What role has literature played in the formation of the culture Marx describes in 'The Machine in the Garden'?
(a) Literature reflected the changes after they had happened.
(b) Literature spurred the developments that shaped the landscape.
(c) Literature inspired the urge to abandon farms for cities.
(d) Literature guided people as they settled the land.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. What should man do in nature, in Thoreau's vision?

2. What modern problem does Marx take as emblematic of man's treatment of nature?

3. What is Ishmael's task, in Marx's description of Melville's vision in Moby Dick?

4. What is Marx's tone throughout 'The Machine in the Garden'?

5. When was man supposed to return to nature, in Thoreau's vision?

(see the answer keys)

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