All Free English Literature MCQs with Answers

• A. Weasel.
• B. Bear.
• C. The farmer.
• D. The young boy.

Explanation: Weasel relies on cunning, deception, and manipulation rather than physical strength, which are the defining traits of a trickster figure.

• A. The poem is the first-known writing of an African American.
• B. The poem is better than the poems of the more famous Phillis Wheatley.
• C. The poem is the first of many poems by Terry.
• D. The poetry focuses on slave life in the 18th century.Read Classic Poetry

Explanation: “Bars Fight,” composed in 1746, is regarded as the earliest known poem by an African American.

• A. Her relationship with a patron.
• B. Her mother.
• C. Her best friend.
• D. Her job as a waitress.

Explanation: Delia’s characterization was influenced by Hurston’s relationship with a patron, reflecting the unequal and pressuring relationships that…

• A. She is one-quarter Black.
• B. She is one-eighth Black.
• C. She is White.
• D. She cannot be a slave.

Explanation: Quadroon was a historical racial term for a person with one Black grandparent, meaning one-quarter Black ancestry.

• A. That female slaves were escaping more frequently than men.
• B. How slavery was worse for men.
• C. How females were affected by slavery.
• D. That female slaves were more valuable than male slaves.

Explanation: Jacobs presents slavery through the particular experiences of enslaved women, including sexual exploitation, threatened motherhood, and…

• A. The mistress of the house was afraid her husband would be attracted to Clotel.
• B. To keep the lice away.
• C. So that the other slaves would get along with her.
• D. So she could sell it.Books & Literature

Explanation: Clotel’s long hair attracted unwanted attention from the mistress’s husband, so the jealous mistress ordered it cut.

• A. Women's rights.
• B. Negro rights.
• C. The right to keep one's children.
• D. A and B.
• E. The rights of farm hands.

Explanation: The speech joins the causes of women's rights and Black rights, showing that Black women suffer both racial and gender oppression.

• A. W.E.B. DuBois
• B. Amiri Baraka
• C. Booker T. Washington
• D. Frederick Douglass

Explanation: Giovanni presents Frederick Douglass as the necessary companion to Lincoln because Douglass represents Black leadership and the continuing…

• A. So the author could get paid.
• B. In order for people to believe the events in the narratives.
• C. So that slave owners could refute the events in the narratives.
• D. So that the author could be assured he wouldn't be recaptured.

Explanation: Because many readers doubted the testimony of enslaved people, an authenticated title page helped establish that the narrative was genuine…

• A. William Wells Brown
• B. Richard Wright
• C. Charles Chesnutt
• D. Booker T. Washington

Explanation: Charles Chesnutt used psychologically developed characters and realistic African American dialect to challenge the stereotyped figures…

• A. Stowe's novel is sentimental.
• B. Stowe describes the treatment of slaves.
• C. Stowe describes the escape of slaves.
• D. Uncle Tom's Cabin was used by abolitionists.Writers Resources

Explanation: Jacobs presents a former enslaved woman's autobiographical testimony, whereas Stowe's novel relies heavily on sentimental conventions to…

• A. Narration of a deserved punishment.
• B. Depictions of a beautiful rural environment.
• C. Descriptions of the kinds of food and clothing slaves were given.
• D. The author's father is often a white man.

Explanation: Douglass follows a familiar slave-narrative convention by discussing the possibility that the enslaved person's father was white, often…

• A. To impress the horrors of slavery on listeners
• B. To ease their pain
• C. To pray for deliverance
• D. To show that they were content in their workLiterary Classics

Explanation: Douglass explains that enslaved people's songs expressed suffering and longing for deliverance, rather than proving that they were happy…

• A. Jean Toomer.
• B. Richard Wright.
• C. Ralph Ellison.
• D. James Baldwin.

Explanation: Richard Wright wrote Native Son, whose protagonist Bigger Thomas becomes a central figure in twentieth-century African American fiction.

• A. To go to a party.
• B. To go pay old man Stevenson.
• C. To end their lives.
• D. To go to church.

Explanation: In “A Summer Tragedy,” the elderly couple dresses carefully because they intend to preserve their dignity before committing suicide…

• A. Lucy Terry
• B. William Wells Brown
• C. Harriet Wilson
• D. Harriet Jacobs

Explanation: Harriet Jacobs wrote Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl under the pseudonym Linda Brent.

• A. Harriet Jacob's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
• B. Harriet Wilson's Our Nig.
• C. William Wells Brown's Clotel.
• D. Toni Morrison's Beloved.

Explanation: Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig exposes racism in the supposedly free North, showing that emancipation did not guarantee humane treatment or…

• A. William Wells Brown
• B. Lydia Maria Child
• C. Harriet Jacobs
• D. Harriet Beecher Stowe

Explanation: Lydia Maria Child helped establish the tragic-mulatto figure in The Quadroons, whose mixed-race heroine suffers because neither white nor…

• A. Based on a New England captivity narrative.
• B. An anonymous narrative.
• C. Fiction written by Lydia Maria Child.
• D. Written by Jacob's son.

Explanation: Because Jacobs published under a pseudonym and Child edited the manuscript and wrote its preface, scholars once attributed the work to…

• A. The "Talented Tenth."
• B. All African Americans.
• C. African American women.
• D. Only White Americans.

Explanation: Du Bois proposed higher education for the “Talented Tenth,” an educated leadership group he believed could advance African American…