Free American Literature MCQs with Answers

• A. A cotton ginning machine
• B. A hemp cleaning machine
• C. A hemp twines
• D. A bread slicing machine

Explanation: In Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, George Harris earns the proprietor’s respect by inventing a machine for cleaning hemp.

• A. Ten
• B. Thirteen
• C. Seventeen
• D. Fifteen

Explanation: Emmeline in Uncle Tom’s Cabin is described as approximately fifteen years old.

• A. Critic the way white people's society treats people of color wrong.
• B. Making peace
• C. Working together
• D. both B and C

Explanation: Apess uses the essay to condemn the unjust treatment of Native Americans by white society.

• A. Arrived on the Mayflower
• B. Mistook Bahama Islands for India
• C. Kept a journal of the First Voyage to America
• D. B and C

Explanation: Columbus reached the Bahamas during his first voyage and mistakenly believed he had reached islands near India.

• A. 1815-1820
• B. 1830-1840
• C. 1861-1865
• D. 1825-1833

Explanation: The American Civil War began in 1861 and ended in 1865, arising chiefly from the conflict over slavery and the powers of the federal…

• A. Mayflower compact
• B. Salem Witch Trails
• C. No involvement
• D. All the above

Explanation: Samuel Sewall was one of the judges involved in the Salem witch trials of 1692–1693, an early colonial crisis he later regretted.

• A. Created spiritual Diary
• B. Non-Separating puritan
• C. Separating puritan
• D. both A and C

Explanation: Bradford was a Separatist Puritan and recorded the religious and colonial experience of Plymouth in a diary-like historical narrative, Of…

• A. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• B. Thoruau
• C. Robert E. Spiller
• D. Gustave Falubert

Explanation: Robert E. Spiller wrote The Cycle of American Literature, a major survey of the development of American writing.

• A. dowry
• B. slavery
• C. corruption
• D. superstitions

Explanation: Stowe’s novel dramatizes the cruelty and injustice of slavery through the suffering of enslaved people, especially Uncle Tom.

• A. They are victimized by corrupt Indian Agents appointed by the government.
• B. They are not provided with adequate education.
• C. They are legally denied the right to engage in commerce.
• D. Native American women have been seduced and abandoned by white men.

Explanation: Apess attributes Native American misery to exploitation by government agents, inadequate education, and the abuse of Native women by white…

• A. Jean Toomer
• B. Richard Wright
• C. Ralph Ellison
• D. Stephen Crane

Explanation: Richard Wright wrote Native Son, published in 1940, which presents the racial oppression and alienation experienced by Bigger Thomas.

• A. Jason and Isolde
• B. General History of Virginia
• C. Declaration of Independence
• D. Journal of an Expedition

Explanation: John Smith recorded the early English settlement in A General History of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles.

• A. Postmodern; end slavery.
• B. Colonial; end patriotism for England.
• C. Modernism; end individualism.
• D. Romanticism; define themselves and their writing style as independent from England.

Explanation: The American Renaissance developed during the Romantic period, when writers such as Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman…

• A. First African American woman to speak to a mixed audience
• B. First African American to publish life writing Most popular native American writer
• C. Most popular slave narrative
• D. All the above

Explanation: Maria Stewart is remembered as the first American woman known to lecture publicly before a mixed audience, including men.

• A. African Americans
• B. White public of Plymouth
• C. White public of Massachusetts
• D. Native AmericansExplore Top Audiobooks

Explanation: John Saffin's pamphlet was part of the colonial Massachusetts debate over slavery and was directed chiefly at the white public there.

• A. Fredrick Douglass
• B. John Winthrop
• C. Benjamin Franklin
• D. William Apess

Explanation: This passage comes from John Winthrop’s 1630 sermon “A Model of Christian Charity,” delivered to the Puritan settlers travelling to…

• A. Pamphlets, poetry, novels, short stories
• B. Novels, poetry, dramas, histories
• C. Literary magazines, poetry, novels, short stories
• D. Narratives and poetryRead Classic Poetry

Explanation: Precolonial literature was mainly transmitted orally, so its principal forms were narratives, myths, legends, and poetry.

• A. Religious freedom
• B. Everyone has a role in society
• C. Only men should work
• D. Woman have no role in society

Explanation: Winthrop’s “city upon a hill” image presents the Puritan community as a public moral example whose success or failure would be watched by…

• A. The Earthmaker wanted the opportunity to creat a new race of people
• B. Mankind would suffer because of a lack of food if there were more people than resources to care for them
• C. Hare wished it to be so and that was how it was
• D. Grandmother wished it to be so and that was how it was

Explanation: In the creation myth, death or an end to life is necessary because unlimited population would exhaust the available food and resources.

• A. Anti-Slavery
• B. Father of american poetry
• C. Pro Slavery
• D. Father of American Liteature

Explanation: John Saffin defended slavery and argued against the antislavery position associated with Samuel Sewall.