Free CLEP Composition and Literature Exam Braindumps (page: 17)

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And now he died. Perhaps it was the smoked sausage he had eaten that morning – which may have been made out of some of the tubercular pork that was condemned as unfit for export. At any rate, an hour after eating it, the child had begun to cry with pain, and in another hour he was rolling about on the floor in convulsions. Little Kotrina, who was all alone with him, ran out screaming for help, and after a while a doctor came, but not until Kristoforas had howled his last howl. No one was really sorry about this except poor Elzbieta, who was inconsolable. Jurgis announced that so far as he was concerned the child would have to be buried by the city, since they had no money for a funeral; and at this the poor woman almost went out of her senses, wringing her hands and screaming with grief and despair. Her child to be buried in a pauper’s grave!

The passage above is most representative of what American literary movement?

  1. Modernism
  2. Muckraking
  3. Romanticism
  4. Puritanism
  5. Transcendentalism

Answer(s): B

Explanation:

Muckraking was an offshoot of the American Realist tradition in literature that focused on the plight of poor or disenfranchised Americans, particularly those living in the urban squalor.



And now he died. Perhaps it was the smoked sausage he had eaten that morning – which may have been made out of some of the tubercular pork that was condemned as unfit for export. At any rate, an hour after eating it, the child had begun to cry with pain, and in another hour he was rolling about on the floor in convulsions. Little Kotrina, who was all alone with him, ran out screaming for help, and after a while a doctor came, but not until Kristoforas had howled his last howl. No one was really sorry about this except poor Elzbieta, who was inconsolable. Jurgis announced that so far as he was concerned the child would have to be buried by the city, since they had no money for a funeral; and at this the poor woman almost went out of her senses, wringing her hands and screaming with grief and despair. Her child to be buried in a pauper’s grave!

The passage was written by

  1. Upton Sinclair
  2. John Steinbeck
  3. Sinclair Lewis
  4. Theodore Dreiser
  5. Robert Penn Warren

Answer(s): A

Explanation:

The passage is taken from Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle which portrays the poverty and difficult working conditions faced by workers in Chicago’s meat packing industry in the late 1800s.



“So far as Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, North and South, does not rightly value the privilege and duty of voting, belittles the emasculating effects of caste distinctions and opposes the higher training and ambition of our brighter minds ... we must unceasingly and firmly oppose [him].”

Who is the author of the above passage critiquing Booker T. Washington’s position on African- American rights?

  1. Malcolm X
  2. W. E. DuBois
  3. Ida B. Wells
  4. Benjamin W. Arnett
  5. Langston Hughes

Answer(s): B

Explanation:

W. E. B. DuBois was critical of Booker T. Washington for what he felt was his overly accommodating posture towards racism in America. DuBois felt that the only solution to what he termed “the Negro problem” was complete equality and derided Washington’s vision for black America as creating second-class citizens.



Why can’t Black Elk Speaks be viewed as an authoritative text of Sioux culture?

  1. Black Elk’s revelations were tainted by the errors of translators, transcribers, and the author.
  2. Black Elk was not a Sioux.
  3. The surviving text is incomplete and portions impossible to read.
  4. Black Elk’s own knowledge of Sioux culture was limited.
  5. Black Elk’s own views changed dramatically once he lived apart from his own culture and adapted to living in an urban setting.

Answer(s): A

Explanation:

Black Elk Speaks was written by John G. Neihardt, a man with literary rather than anthropological training. He relied on translators and transcripts to complete the story of Black Elk. This weakness introduced many inaccuracies and omissions.






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