The Dictators (Neruda Poem) Quizzes

The Dictators (Neruda Poem) Quiz

1 What does the word "surfeit" mean?
Complaint

Charter or agreement

Excess

Large dinner party
2 Which best characterizes this poem?
It makes heavy use of figurative language

It follows an elaborate, complex formal structure

It embraces moral ambiguity, leaving readers unsure who to root for

It focuses on the psyche of the speaker
3 Which best describes the poem's speaker?
A dictator

A journalist bearing witness to the dictator's cruelty

An unidentified, limited first-person speaker

An unidentified, omniscient third-person speaker
4 Where are the poem's first several lines set?
A military hospital

A schoolbuilding

A coffee shop

A sugarcane field
5 What is the poem's rhyme scheme?
AABAABABA

ABBACDDCABBACDDC

ABCBAADCD

It has no rhyme scheme
6 What is the dictator's palace compared to?
A diamond ring

A teapot

A dog's mouth

A watch face
7 Who is the translator of the version discussed in this guide?
Pablo Neruda

Ben Belitt

W.S. Merwin

Mark Eisner
8 Neruda compares the palace-dwellers to "wineglasses, _____, and piping."
Gemstones

Collars

Drumbeats

Chocolates
9 What is the poem's meter?
Iambic pentameter

Anapestic hexameter

It is free verse

Trochaic trimeter
10 What does the word "finical" mean?
Shiny

Erudite

Multifaceted

Picky
11 Which of the following does the poem sharply critique?
Adult cruelty to children

Religious extremism

Fascism and authoritarianism

Industrialization
12 How many lines are in this poem?
10

14

17

15
13 Which of the following phrases does NOT contain alliteration?
"the plant and its pollen"

"The snout filled with silence and slime"

"the blinded, big leaves"

"carrion, blood, and a nausea"
14 Which of the following are juxtaposed?
Laughter and death

The plant and the pollen

The dictator and his allies

The snout and the bones
15 What does the word "satrap" mean?
A type of trap used to catch mice and rats

A grand palace

An exclusive, government-sponsored club

A subordinate ruler or official
16 Which type of sensory imagery is prominent in the poem's opening lines?
Sound imagery

Tactile imagery

Smell imagery

Taste imagery
17 What does the plant most likely symbolize?
The power of the arts

The refuge of nature

God's abandonment

Life under dictatorship
18 Which is NOT one of the poem's themes?
Inequality

Gender

Evil and oppression

Death
19 Which of the following is an instance of hyperbole?
"Vendetta was born"

"A finical satrap conversed"

"Lament was perpetual"

"their festering surfeit of bones"
20 Which of the following serve as a synecdochic representation in the poem?
A glove

A mouth

A plant

A petal
21 What does the word "carrion" mean?
A battle cry

A brand of gun popular in fascist Spain

A type of bird of prey

Decaying dead bodies
22 Neruda uses a simile to compare which of the following to a flower petal?
The smell of corpses

A flag

A military medal

A gunshot wound
23 In which era is this poem most likely set?
The late eighteenth century

The 1970s

The mid-twentieth century

The early Medieval period
24 How does Neruda depict authoritarians?
As frivolous and willfully blind

As zealous and obsessive

As sadistic and monstrous

As vulnerable and frightened
25 What does the word "bludgeon" mean?
Broken-down vehicle

Blunt person

Toolbox

Physical blow

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