|Name: _________________________||Period: ___________________|
This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.
Short Answer Questions
1. From what did Parker struggle to escape?
2. How does Ellison define the "understanding of art?"
3. What Hotel is Minton's part of?
4. What does Jones advise his audience to do?
5. In "The Art of Fiction: An Interview" what does Ellison say at the very beginning?
Short Essay Questions
1. What place does "Living with Music" describe?
2. What does Ellison say about a Negro President?
3. What does the "drunk of legend" who lives on the corner do?
4. What is the film "Intruder in the Dust" about?
5. What type of food is served at Minton's?
6. 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?
7. What experience in Ellison's childhood gives him patience with his upstairs singing neighbor?
8. How does the early film "Birth of the Nation" portray Negro persons?
9. Who is LeRoi Jones?
10. Who is Mahalia Jackson?
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
In "The Art of Fiction: An Interview" Ellison explores the relationship between art and protest. What does Ellison believe, for him, writing fiction is? Is social comment or protest part of his work at all? If so, how does he see his particular style of writing as contributing to positive social change?
Essay Topic 2
In the essay about Twentieth Century Fiction Ellison is sharply critical of Hemingway. What is it that Hemingway lacks which disappoints Ellison so much? Is his criticism solely of Hemingway or is Ellison critiquing a generation of writers? What changes in the twenty century after World War I? Why does the Negro character disappear? What is Ellison's final conclusion in reference to Hemingway and his technical brilliance?
Essay Topic 3
The final essay in the book was never published. It is a book review of the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal who was brought in by the Carnegie Foundation to study the "Negro problem." What is Ellison's primary reaction to the book? What is positive in Myrdal's assessment? What does Ellison object to? Why do you think the review was never published?
This section contains 802 words
(approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page)