The Arrival of the Bee Box Quizzes

The Arrival of the Bee Box Quiz

1 Who is the poem's speaker?
A bee who lives on a farm

Somebody who has just ordered a box full of bees

A writer comparing her words to swarming 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

Hard work and piety

Poverty and monasticism

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

A military parade

A dessert made of fruit

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

Fanny Burney

John Greenleaf Whittier

John Mandeville
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?
The speaker's home

A school

A field of flowers

An industrial honey farm
7 Which collection was this poem a part of?
Ariel

The Colossus

Double Exposure

The Bell Jar
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 only one line long

It is written in a different meter

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

ran away

turned into a tree

closed my eyes
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

intrigues

appalls

distracts
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?
5

9

7

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

Revolutionary America

The Old West

Victorian Britain
15 What is the meaning of the word "laburnum"?
A type of tree

A diploma

A kitchen counter

A New England company
16 What is the meaning of the word "din"?
Dinner

Noise

Hillside

Sunset
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 bees' power comes from their cleanliness and cooperativeness

The speaker struggles for power, but is no match for nature
18 What is the poem's meter?
Anapestic tetrameter

Iambic pentameter

It has no set meter

Dactylic pentameter
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?
self-effacing admiration

intimacy and love

maddening irritation

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

Tercets

Couplets

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

The queen bee represents the feminists of the twentieth century

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?
Hercules

Narcissus

Daphne

Persephone
24 What do the trees most closely symbolize?
Strength

The abundance of nature

Escape from conflict

The speaker's ambivalence
25 Which of the following is a metaphor?
"They can die, I can feed them nothing"

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

"There is only a little grid, no exit"

"In my moon suit and funeral veil"

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