The Arrival of the Bee Box Quizzes

The Arrival of the Bee Box Quiz

1 Who is the poem's speaker?

Somebody who has just ordered a box full of bees

A grieving husband participating in the custom of "telling the bees"

A writer comparing her words to swarming bees

A bee who lives on a farm
2 Broadly speaking, what did bees symbolize in seventeenth-century Europe?

Poverty and monasticism

Noisiness and immorality

Creativity and individuality

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

John Mandeville

John Greenleaf Whittier

Fanny Burney
5 What are the bees probably NOT intended to symbolize in this poem?

The speaker's thoughts

Sexual aggression

Climate change

Familial demands on women
6 Where does the poem most likely take place?

An industrial honey farm

The speaker's home

A school

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

Double Exposure

Ariel

The Colossus

The Bell Jar
8 How does the work's final stanza most clearly differ from the others?

It is written in a different meter

It is only one line long

It is the only part that does not rhyme

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 _______"

died

turned into a tree

closed my eyes

ran away
10 Which is an example of irony?

The speaker's comparison of herself to God

The speaker's ability to keep her bees alive or let them die

The amount of noise that the bees make

The speaker's feeling of temptation despite the danger of the bees
11 Fill in the blank: It is the noise that _____ me most of all,

ensnares

distracts

intrigues

appalls
12 What does the speaker NOT compare the box to?

A tent

A baby

A chair

A coffin
13 How many stanzas are in the poem?

9

7

5

3
14 The speaker compares the bees to a mob from where?

Victorian Britain

The Old West

Ancient Rome

Revolutionary America
15 What is the meaning of the word "laburnum"?

A type of tree

A New England company

A diploma

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

Hillside

Sunset

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 speaker struggles to decide whether it is she or the bees who holds disproportionate power

The bees' power comes from their cleanliness and cooperativeness
18 What is the poem's meter?

Dactylic pentameter

Anapestic tetrameter

It has no set meter

Iambic pentameter
19 What best describes the poem's conflict?

The speaker's fight against the queen bee

The speaker's decision about whether to free the bees

The beekeeper's conflict with the industrialist

The bee's decision about whether to sting the human
20 What best describes the speaker's feelings about the bees?

intimacy and love

maddening irritation

self-effacing admiration

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

Tercets

Sestets

The stanzas are unmatched

Couplets
22 How is the theme of femininity discussed in the poem?

The bees' collaboration suggests that only collaboration between women will better their lot

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
23 Which mythological figure is alluded to in the poem?

Narcissus

Hercules

Persephone

Daphne
24 What do the trees most closely symbolize?

The abundance of nature

The speaker's ambivalence

Escape from conflict

Strength
25 Which of the following is a metaphor?

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

"In my moon suit and funeral veil"

"They can die, I can feed them nothing"

"There is only a little grid, no exit"

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