The Dictators (Neruda Poem) Quizzes

The Dictators (Neruda Poem) Quiz

1 What does the word "surfeit" mean?
Charter or agreement

Large dinner party

Complaint

Excess
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?
An unidentified, omniscient third-person speaker

A journalist bearing witness to the dictator's cruelty

An unidentified, limited first-person speaker

A dictator
4 Where are the poem's first several lines set?
A coffee shop

A schoolbuilding

A military hospital

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

ABBACDDCABBACDDC

It has no rhyme scheme

ABCBAADCD
6 What is the dictator's palace compared to?
A diamond ring

A watch face

A teapot

A dog's mouth
7 Who is the translator of the version discussed in this guide?
Mark Eisner

W.S. Merwin

Ben Belitt

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

Drumbeats

Collars

Chocolates
9 What is the poem's meter?
Trochaic trimeter

It is free verse

Anapestic hexameter

Iambic pentameter
10 What does the word "finical" mean?
Multifaceted

Picky

Shiny

Erudite
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?
15

14

10

17
13 Which of the following phrases does NOT contain alliteration?
"the plant and its pollen"

"carrion, blood, and a nausea"

"The snout filled with silence and slime"

"the blinded, big leaves"
14 Which of the following are juxtaposed?
The snout and the bones

The plant and the pollen

Laughter and death

The dictator and his allies
15 What does the word "satrap" mean?
A grand palace

A subordinate ruler or official

An exclusive, government-sponsored club

A type of trap used to catch mice and rats
16 Which type of sensory imagery is prominent in the poem's opening lines?
Tactile imagery

Sound imagery

Taste imagery

Smell imagery
17 What does the plant most likely symbolize?
God's abandonment

The refuge of nature

Life under dictatorship

The power of the arts
18 Which is NOT one of the poem's themes?
Death

Gender

Evil and oppression

Inequality
19 Which of the following is an instance of hyperbole?
"A finical satrap conversed"

"Lament was perpetual"

"Vendetta was born"

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

A plant

A glove

A petal
21 What does the word "carrion" mean?
A brand of gun popular in fascist Spain

Decaying dead bodies

A battle cry

A type of bird of prey
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 mid-twentieth century

The early Medieval period

The 1970s

The late eighteenth century
24 How does Neruda depict authoritarians?
As zealous and obsessive

As sadistic and monstrous

As vulnerable and frightened

As frivolous and willfully blind
25 What does the word "bludgeon" mean?
Broken-down vehicle

Toolbox

Physical blow

Blunt person

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