The Arrival of the Bee Box Quizzes

The Arrival of the Bee Box Quiz

1 Who is the poem's speaker?
A writer comparing her words to swarming bees

A bee who lives on a farm

Somebody who has just ordered a box full of bees

A grieving husband participating in the custom of "telling the bees"
2 Broadly speaking, what did bees symbolize in seventeenth-century Europe?
Creativity and individuality

Noisiness and immorality

Poverty and monasticism

Hard work and piety
3 What is the meaning of the word "colonnade"?
A military parade

A colonial outpost

A row of columns

A dessert made of fruit
4 Which writer did NOT use bees as a symbol or allegory?
Mary Leapor

Fanny Burney

John Mandeville

John Greenleaf Whittier
5 What are the bees probably NOT intended to symbolize in this poem?
The speaker's thoughts

Familial demands on women

Climate change

Sexual aggression
6 Where does the poem most likely take place?
A school

The speaker's home

An industrial honey farm

A field of flowers
7 Which collection was this poem a part of?
Double Exposure

The Bell Jar

Ariel

The Colossus
8 How does the work's final stanza most clearly differ from the others?
It is the only part that does not rhyme

It is written in a different meter

It is only one line long

It is spoken by a different speaker
9 Fill in the blank: I wonder if they would forget me/If I just undid the locks and stood back and _______"
closed my eyes

turned into a tree

ran away

died
10 Which is an example of irony?
The amount of noise that the bees make

The speaker's comparison of herself to God

The speaker's feeling of temptation despite the danger of the bees

The speaker's ability to keep her bees alive or let them die
11 Fill in the blank: It is the noise that _____ me most of all,
distracts

ensnares

appalls

intrigues
12 What does the speaker NOT compare the box to?
A baby

A tent

A coffin

A chair
13 How many stanzas are in the poem?
3

9

5

7
14 The speaker compares the bees to a mob from where?
Victorian Britain

The Old West

Revolutionary America

Ancient Rome
15 What is the meaning of the word "laburnum"?
A type of tree

A diploma

A New England company

A kitchen counter
16 What is the meaning of the word "din"?
Sunset

Hillside

Noise

Dinner
17 Which best describes the poem's portrayal of power?
The speaker loses her power when she buys the bees and gives up her job

The speaker struggles for power, but is no match for nature

The bees' power comes from their cleanliness and cooperativeness

The speaker struggles to decide whether it is she or the bees who holds disproportionate power
18 What is the poem's meter?
Iambic pentameter

Dactylic pentameter

It has no set meter

Anapestic tetrameter
19 What best describes the poem's conflict?
The bee's decision about whether to sting the human

The beekeeper's conflict with the industrialist

The speaker's fight against the queen bee

The speaker's decision about whether to free the bees
20 What best describes the speaker's feelings about the bees?
self-effacing admiration

maddening irritation

intimacy and love

alternating fascination and fear
21 What type of stanzas appear in the poem?
Couplets

Sestets

The stanzas are unmatched

Tercets
22 How is the theme of femininity discussed in the poem?
The queen bee represents the feminists of the twentieth century

The speaker's desire to engage with insects hints at a need to escape human gender norms

The poem subtly equates the speaker's fear of the bees with women's fear of violence or subjugation

The bees' collaboration suggests that only collaboration between women will better their lot
23 Which mythological figure is alluded to in the poem?
Hercules

Daphne

Narcissus

Persephone
24 What do the trees most closely symbolize?
The abundance of nature

Escape from conflict

The speaker's ambivalence

Strength
25 Which of the following is a metaphor?
"There is only a little grid, no exit"

"Square as a chair and almost too heavy to lift"

"They can die, I can feed them nothing"

"In my moon suit and funeral veil"

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