American Literature / Unit 19 AML 1822 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Drill 8: The Author–Character Mismatch
The idea
The board asks which pairing does NOT correctly match an author with a character he created, offering Updike and Harry Angstrom, Roth and Alexander Portnoy, Ellison and Bigger Thomas, Salinger and Holden Caulfield, and Bellow and Augie March. The answer is Ellison and Bigger Thomas. Bigger Thomas belongs to Richard Wright and Native Son, published in nineteen forty. Ralph Ellison's protagonist has no name at all, which is the whole point of Invisible Man. The other four pairs are correct as printed. Note what the question is doing. It puts the period's two most famous Black novelists beside each other, ten years apart, and asks whether you know which wrote which.
In practice
Bigger Thomas is Richard Wright's.
Where people slip
Read the question's NOT. Four of the five pairs here are right, and the work is to find the single wrong one rather than to confirm a right one.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Something wrong in this lesson? Flag it