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 embraces moral ambiguity, leaving readers unsure who to root for

It focuses on the psyche of the speaker

It follows an elaborate, complex formal structure
3 Which best describes the poem's speaker?
An unidentified, limited first-person speaker

A journalist bearing witness to the dictator's cruelty

An unidentified, omniscient third-person speaker

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

A sugarcane field

A military hospital

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

It has no rhyme scheme

ABCBAADCD

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

A watch face

A dog's mouth

A teapot
7 Who is the translator of the version discussed in this guide?
W.S. Merwin

Ben Belitt

Mark Eisner

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

Chocolates

Collars

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

Iambic pentameter

It is free verse

Anapestic hexameter
10 What does the word "finical" mean?
Shiny

Erudite

Multifaceted

Picky
11 Which of the following does the poem sharply critique?
Fascism and authoritarianism

Industrialization

Religious extremism

Adult cruelty to children
12 How many lines are in this poem?
14

17

10

15
13 Which of the following phrases does NOT contain alliteration?
"The snout filled with silence and slime"

"carrion, blood, and a nausea"

"the blinded, big leaves"

"the plant and its pollen"
14 Which of the following are juxtaposed?
The snout and the bones

The plant and the pollen

The dictator and his allies

Laughter and death
15 What does the word "satrap" mean?
A subordinate ruler or official

An exclusive, government-sponsored club

A grand palace

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

Sound imagery

Tactile imagery

Taste imagery
17 What does the plant most likely symbolize?
Life under dictatorship

God's abandonment

The refuge of nature

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

Inequality

Death

Evil and oppression
19 Which of the following is an instance of hyperbole?
"Vendetta was born"

"Lament was perpetual"

"A finical satrap conversed"

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

A plant

A mouth

A glove
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?
A gunshot wound

The smell of corpses

A flag

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

The early Medieval period

The mid-twentieth century

The 1970s
24 How does Neruda depict authoritarians?
As vulnerable and frightened

As zealous and obsessive

As frivolous and willfully blind

As sadistic and monstrous
25 What does the word "bludgeon" mean?
Blunt person

Toolbox

Broken-down vehicle

Physical blow

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