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

Noisiness and immorality

Hard work and piety

Creativity and individuality
3 What is the meaning of the word "colonnade"?
A dessert made of fruit

A colonial outpost

A military parade

A row of columns
4 Which writer did NOT use bees as a symbol or allegory?
John Mandeville

John Greenleaf Whittier

Fanny Burney

Mary Leapor
5 What are the bees probably NOT intended to symbolize in this poem?
Climate change

The speaker's thoughts

Sexual aggression

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

A field of flowers

An industrial honey farm

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

Double Exposure

Ariel

The Colossus
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 spoken by a different speaker

It is the only part that does not rhyme
9 Fill in the blank: I wonder if they would forget me/If I just undid the locks and stood back and _______"
died

closed my eyes

turned into a tree

ran away
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,
intrigues

distracts

ensnares

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

A baby

A chair

A tent
13 How many stanzas are in the poem?
7

9

3

5
14 The speaker compares the bees to a mob from where?
Revolutionary America

Victorian Britain

Ancient Rome

The Old West
15 What is the meaning of the word "laburnum"?
A type of tree

A New England company

A kitchen counter

A diploma
16 What is the meaning of the word "din"?
Dinner

Hillside

Sunset

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

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

The bees' power comes from their cleanliness and cooperativeness
18 What is the poem's meter?
It has no set meter

Iambic pentameter

Dactylic pentameter

Anapestic tetrameter
19 What best describes the poem's conflict?
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

The speaker's fight against the queen bee
20 What best describes the speaker's feelings about the bees?
maddening irritation

intimacy and love

self-effacing admiration

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

The stanzas are unmatched

Tercets

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 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
23 Which mythological figure is alluded to in the poem?
Daphne

Hercules

Narcissus

Persephone
24 What do the trees most closely symbolize?
Strength

The abundance of nature

The speaker's ambivalence

Escape from conflict
25 Which of the following is a metaphor?
"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"

"There is only a little grid, no exit"

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