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?
Poverty and monasticism

Hard work and piety

Noisiness and immorality

Creativity and individuality
3 What is the meaning of the word "colonnade"?
A row of columns

A colonial outpost

A military parade

A dessert made of fruit
4 Which writer did NOT use bees as a symbol or allegory?
Mary Leapor

John Mandeville

John Greenleaf Whittier

Fanny Burney
5 What are the bees probably NOT intended to symbolize in this poem?
The speaker's thoughts

Climate change

Familial demands on women

Sexual aggression
6 Where does the poem most likely take place?
An industrial honey farm

A school

A field of flowers

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

The Colossus

Ariel

The Bell Jar
8 How does the work's final stanza most clearly differ from the others?
It is spoken by a different speaker

It is only one line long

It is the only part that does not rhyme

It is written in a different meter
9 Fill in the blank: I wonder if they would forget me/If I just undid the locks and stood back and _______"
closed my eyes

turned into a tree

died

ran away
10 Which is an example of irony?
The amount of noise that the bees make

The speaker's ability to keep her bees alive or let them die

The speaker's feeling of temptation despite the danger of the bees

The speaker's comparison of herself to God
11 Fill in the blank: It is the noise that _____ me most of all,
appalls

ensnares

distracts

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

A baby

A coffin

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

3

5

9
14 The speaker compares the bees to a mob from where?
The Old West

Revolutionary America

Ancient Rome

Victorian Britain
15 What is the meaning of the word "laburnum"?
A New England company

A kitchen counter

A type of tree

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

Sunset

Hillside

Dinner
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 for power, but is no match for nature

The bees' power comes from their cleanliness and cooperativeness

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

Dactylic pentameter

Anapestic tetrameter

It has no set meter
19 What best describes the poem's conflict?
The bee's decision about whether to sting the human

The beekeeper's conflict with the industrialist

The speaker's decision about whether to free the bees

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

self-effacing admiration

alternating fascination and fear

intimacy and love
21 What type of stanzas appear in the poem?
Tercets

Couplets

The stanzas are unmatched

Sestets
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 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

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?
Hercules

Persephone

Narcissus

Daphne
24 What do the trees most closely symbolize?
The speaker's ambivalence

The abundance of nature

Strength

Escape from conflict
25 Which of the following is a metaphor?
"There is only a little grid, no exit"

"They can die, I can feed them nothing"

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

"In my moon suit and funeral veil"

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