The Arrival of the Bee Box Quizzes

The Arrival of the Bee Box Quiz

1 Who is the poem's speaker?
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"

A bee who lives on a farm
2 Broadly speaking, what did bees symbolize in seventeenth-century Europe?
Noisiness and immorality

Hard work and piety

Poverty and monasticism

Creativity and individuality
3 What is the meaning of the word "colonnade"?
A colonial outpost

A row of columns

A military parade

A dessert made of fruit
4 Which writer did NOT use bees as a symbol or allegory?
John Greenleaf Whittier

Mary Leapor

John Mandeville

Fanny Burney
5 What are the bees probably NOT intended to symbolize in this poem?
Familial demands on women

The speaker's thoughts

Climate change

Sexual aggression
6 Where does the poem most likely take place?
The speaker's home

An industrial honey farm

A school

A field of flowers
7 Which collection was this poem a part of?
The Colossus

Double Exposure

Ariel

The Bell Jar
8 How does the work's final stanza most clearly differ from the others?
It is written in a different meter

It is the only part that does not rhyme

It is only one line long

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 _______"
turned into a tree

ran away

died

closed my eyes
10 Which is an example of irony?
The speaker's feeling of temptation despite the danger of the bees

The speaker's comparison of herself to God

The amount of noise that the bees make

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,
distracts

intrigues

appalls

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

A baby

A tent

A chair
13 How many stanzas are in the poem?
9

7

5

3
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 kitchen counter

A type of tree

A New England company

A diploma
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 struggles to decide whether it is she or the bees who holds disproportionate 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
18 What is the poem's meter?
Dactylic pentameter

It has no set meter

Iambic pentameter

Anapestic tetrameter
19 What best describes the poem's conflict?
The beekeeper's conflict with the industrialist

The speaker's decision about whether to free the bees

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?
intimacy and love

maddening irritation

self-effacing admiration

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

The stanzas are unmatched

Sestets

Couplets
22 How is the theme of femininity discussed in the poem?
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

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

Daphne

Persephone

Narcissus
24 What do the trees most closely symbolize?
The abundance of nature

Strength

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"

"There is only a little grid, no exit"

"In my moon suit and funeral veil"

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