Pity Me Not (Sonnet 29) Quizzes

Pity Me Not (Sonnet 29) Quiz

By Eleanor Stern · Edited by James Cooper · Last reviewed March 15, 2022

1 Which device does Millay employ specifically in lines one, three, five, and thirteen?

Alliteration

Metonymy

Metaphor

Anaphora
2 What is the poem's meter?

Dactylic pentameter

Iambic hexameter

Iambic pentameter

Anapestic trimeter
3 Why can the speaker be considered an antagonist?

Because she is engaged in an internal conflict with herself

Because she has unintentionally caused her family to be inconvenienced

Because she is unconventional and judged by her peers

Because she has caused emotional pain to her lover
4 What is the poem's rhyme scheme?

ABBA ABBA CDC CDC

ABB CDD EFF GHH

ABAB CDCD EFEF GG

ABAB ACAC ABAB CC
5 Who is the poem addressed to?

The speaker's student

The speaker's pet

The speaker's sibling

The speaker's ex-lover
6 Where does the volta take place?

After line four

After line six

After line twelve

After line eight
7 What has happened to upset the speaker?

Her husband has had an affair

Her lover no longer loves her

Her lover is very sick

Her sister has fallen in love with her fiance
8 How does the poem's imagery shift in the work's second half?

Previously calm images are now portrayed as menacing

Images associated with femininity are replaced with images associated with masculinity

Images of nature give way to images of urban luxury

There are almost no concrete images in the poem's second half
9 Which is an example of irony in the poem?

The speaker's acknowledgment that male emotion is unpredictable, though she fights to control her own

The speaker's heartbreak over a man despite Millay's feminist politics

The poem's modernist form, which contrasts with traditional themes and ideas

The speaker's fixation on nature in spite of her urban setting
10 Which word is an instance of metonomy?

You

Heart

Desire

Moon
11 What is the meaning of the word "thicket"?

Stupid person

Thick bunch of trees or bushes

Country estate

Group of children
12 How does this poem fit into Millay's literary career?

It is a sonnet, a form Millay often explored

It is a persona poem, for which Millay is known

It deviates from the Modernist experimentation Millay usually engaged in

It discusses Millay's childhood in New England, like much of her later work
13 How do the poem's last two lines recontextualize the rest of the poem?

By making clear that the speaker does desire pity of a sort

By revealing the identity of the person to whom the work is addressed

By hinting that the speaker feels pity for her addressee

By showing that it is the speaker who has caused harm to others
14 Which important transition takes place during lines 7-8?

The shift to a nontraditional rhyme scheme

The revelation of the speaker's heartbreak

The switch from the speaker's words to dialogue

The transition to a new type of nature imagery
15 What is the meaning of the word "assails"?

Flirts

Interrogates

Attacks

Sails
16 How does the motif of nature function throughout the poem?

By making the speaker's New York life seem alien and sad

By depicting the impermanence of love

By showing how small the speaker's problems are

By portraying the pastoral romance the speaker longs for
17 What form does this poem take?

Spenserian Sonnet

Italian Sonnet

Petrarchan Sonnet

Shakespearian Sonnet
18 How does the poem evoke the themes of transience and impermanence?

Through images of cyclical natural events

Through images of death and decay

Through the slow breakdown of its own formal structure

Through time jumps between historical eras
19 Where in the poem is the theme of gender most explicitly addressed?

Line two

Line seven

Line nine

Line twelve
20 When was this poem published?

1918

1904

1912

1923
21 How does Millay most prominently explore the theme of rationality?

By portraying her speaker's attempt to rationalize emotions

By showing how nature's seemingly random events are actually rational

By evoking images of science and empiricism

By exploring how love and desire disrupt decision-making
22 What is the meaning of the word "gale"?

Blizzard

Strong wind

Makeshift home

Angry woman
23 What is the meaning of the word "wane"?

Shine

Undermine

Strengthen

Diminish
24 What can the night sky best be said to symbolize?

Freedom

Censorship

Mystery

Emotional emptiness
25 The line “And you no longer look with love on me" features alliteration through which sound?

L

M

N

A

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