Sample Questions: American Literature

The following American Literature sample questions aren't used in actual CLEP exams and aren’t presented here as they will be on the test. Use them to get a sense of question format and difficulty level.

Directions

Each of the questions or incomplete statements below is followed by five suggested answers or completions. Select the one that is best in each case.

Questions

1. The poems of this seventeenth-century Massachusetts wife and mother were initially published in England in the 1650s. 

   The writer described is
   
   A. Abigail Adams
   B. Sarah Kemble Knight
   C. Mary Rowlandson
   D. Anne Bradstreet
   E. Julia Ward Howe

    

   Lucy smiled, and Temple saw it was a smile of approbation. He sought and found a cottage suited to his taste; thither, attended by Love and Hymen, the happy trio retired; where, during many years of uninterrupted felicity, they cast not a wish beyond the little boundaries of their own tenement. Plenty, and her handmaid, Prudence, presided at their board, Hospitality stood at their gate, Peace smiled on each face, Content reigned in each heart, and Love and Health strewed roses on their pillows.

    

2. The form of the passage is that of
   
   A. an allegory
   B. a burlesque
   C. an epistle
   D. a fable
   E. a parody

    

   My mistress was, as I have said, a kind and tenderhearted woman; and in the simplicity of her soul she commenced, when I first went to live with her, to treat me as she supposed one human being ought to treat another. In entering upon the duties of a slaveholder, she did not seem to perceive that I sustained to her the relation of a mere chattel…Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me. When I went there, she was a pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman…Under [slaveholding’s] influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tigerlike fierceness.

    

3. Which of the following best describes the theme of this passage?

   A. Slaveholders were naturally cruel to
   enslaved people.
   B. Women could be just as cruel slaveholders
   as men.
   C. Slaveholders were not to be trusted, no matter
   how kind they might seem initially.
   D. Enslaved people sometimes felt sorry
   for slaveholders.
   E. Slaveholders were corrupted by the unchecked
   power of slaveholding.
    

4. The passage was taken from
   
   A. Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
   B. Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery
   C. W. E. B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk
   D. Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of
   Frederick Douglass, An American Slave
   E. Phillis Wheatley’s “On Being Brought from
   Africa to America”
    

5. Sarah Orne Jewett, Kate Chopin, and Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) are all sometimes referred to as

   A. romantics
   B. modernists
   C. regionalists
   D. transcendentalists
   E. naturalists

    

   Whenever Richard Cory went down town, We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole to crown. Clean favored, and imperially slim.

   And he was always quietly arrayed, And he was always human when he talked, But still he fluttered pulses when he said, ‘Good-morning,’ and he glittered when he walked.

   And he was rich—yes, richer than a king— And admirably schooled in every grace; In fine, we thought that he was everything To make us wish that we were in his place.

   So on we worked, and waited for the light; And went without the meat, and cursed the bread; And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, Went home and put a bullet through his head.

    

6. The speaker’s apparent response to the events described in the poem can best be characterized as one of

   A. concern
   B. bewilderment
   C. malice
   D. remorse
   E. anger
    

7. In which novel does the author suggest the vacancy of old orders of belief, ideals, or virtues by the image of sightless eyes looking down from a billboard?

   A. The Great Gatsby
   B. Light in August
   C. The Sun Also Rises
   D. To Kill a Mockingbird
   E. Native Son
    

8. Which of the following does NOT correctly match an author with a character he created?

   A. John Updike…Harry Angstrom
   B. Philip Roth…Alexander Portnoy
   C. Ralph Ellison…Bigger Thomas
   D. J. D. Salinger…Holden Caulfield
   E. Saul Bellow…Augie March
    

9. Toni Morrison examines the devastating effects of racism, abuse, and internalized self-hatred on an eleven year-old child named Pecola Breedlove in

   A. Tar-Baby
   B. Beloved
   C. The Color Purple
   D. The Woman Warrior
   E. The Bluest Eye

    

Answers

1) D   2) A   3) E   4) D   5) C   6) B   7) A   8) C   9) E