Practice Test

Question 2 • English Language Arts 11

Which excerpt from Black Boy best reflects the way in which Wright’s knowledge of history and culture influence his views on his father?

Answer

When I awakened one morning my mother told me that we were going to see a judge who would make my father support me and my brother. An hour later all three of us were sitting in a huge crowded room.

For some reason the entire thing struck me as being useless; I felt that if my father were going to feed me, then he would have done so regardless of what a judge said to him. And I did not want my father to feed me.

My father and a strange woman were sitting before a bright fire that blazed in a grate. My mother and I were standing about six feet away, as though we were afraid to approach them any closer.

From far beyond the horizons that bound this bleak plantation there had come to me through my living the knowledge that my father was a black peasant who had gone to the city seeking life, but who had failed in the city; a black peasant whose life had been hopelessly snarled in the city.

Explanation

Choice D shows Wright interpreting his father through a wider understanding of Black life and history. He sees his father not simply as an individual who failed, but as a Black peasant who went to the city seeking opportunity and became caught in its hardships. The other excerpts describe events or Wright’s immediate feelings without connecting his father’s experience to that broader cultural context.

AI-written and checked against the verified answer.

More from this Course

Test

Practice Test

Practice Test