The Arrival of the Bee Box Quizzes

The Arrival of the Bee Box Quiz

1 Who is the poem's speaker?
A grieving husband participating in the custom of "telling the bees"

Somebody who has just ordered a box full of bees

A bee who lives on a farm

A writer comparing her words to swarming bees
2 Broadly speaking, what did bees symbolize in seventeenth-century Europe?
Poverty and monasticism

Creativity and individuality

Hard work and piety

Noisiness and immorality
3 What is the meaning of the word "colonnade"?
A colonial outpost

A row of columns

A military parade

A dessert made of fruit
4 Which writer did NOT use bees as a symbol or allegory?
John Greenleaf Whittier

Fanny Burney

John Mandeville

Mary Leapor
5 What are the bees probably NOT intended to symbolize in this poem?
Familial demands on women

Sexual aggression

Climate change

The speaker's thoughts
6 Where does the poem most likely take place?
A school

An industrial honey farm

A field of flowers

The speaker's home
7 Which collection was this poem a part of?
The Colossus

Double Exposure

The Bell Jar

Ariel
8 How does the work's final stanza most clearly differ from the others?
It is only one line long

It is written in a different meter

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 _______"
ran away

turned into a tree

closed my eyes

died
10 Which is an example of irony?
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

The amount of noise that the bees make
11 Fill in the blank: It is the noise that _____ me most of all,
appalls

distracts

ensnares

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

A chair

A tent

A baby
13 How many stanzas are in the poem?
9

3

5

7
14 The speaker compares the bees to a mob from where?
Revolutionary America

Ancient Rome

Victorian Britain

The Old West
15 What is the meaning of the word "laburnum"?
A New England company

A type of tree

A diploma

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

Noise

Hillside

Dinner
17 Which best describes the poem's portrayal of power?
The bees' power comes from their cleanliness and cooperativeness

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

The speaker loses her power when she buys the bees and gives up her job

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

It has no set meter

Iambic pentameter

Anapestic tetrameter
19 What best describes the poem's conflict?
The speaker's decision about whether to free the bees

The speaker's fight against the queen bee

The bee's decision about whether to sting the human

The beekeeper's conflict with the industrialist
20 What best describes the speaker's feelings about the bees?
intimacy and love

alternating fascination and fear

self-effacing admiration

maddening irritation
21 What type of stanzas appear in the poem?
The stanzas are unmatched

Couplets

Tercets

Sestets
22 How is the theme of femininity discussed in the poem?
The poem subtly equates the speaker's fear of the bees with women's fear of violence or subjugation

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

Persephone

Hercules

Daphne
24 What do the trees most closely symbolize?
Escape from conflict

The abundance of nature

The speaker's ambivalence

Strength
25 Which of the following is a metaphor?
"They can die, I can feed them nothing"

"There is only a little grid, no exit"

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

"In my moon suit and funeral veil"

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