The Dictators (Neruda Poem) Quizzes

The Dictators (Neruda Poem) Quiz

1 What does the word "surfeit" mean?
Excess

Charter or agreement

Complaint

Large dinner party
2 Which best characterizes this poem?
It follows an elaborate, complex formal structure

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
3 Which best describes the poem's speaker?
A journalist bearing witness to the dictator's cruelty

A dictator

An unidentified, omniscient third-person speaker

An unidentified, limited first-person speaker
4 Where are the poem's first several lines set?
A coffee shop

A military hospital

A sugarcane field

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

It has no rhyme scheme

AABAABABA

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

A teapot

A dog's mouth

A watch face
7 Who is the translator of the version discussed in this guide?
Ben Belitt

Pablo Neruda

Mark Eisner

W.S. Merwin
8 Neruda compares the palace-dwellers to "wineglasses, _____, and piping."
Collars

Chocolates

Gemstones

Drumbeats
9 What is the poem's meter?
It is free verse

Trochaic trimeter

Iambic pentameter

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

Erudite

Multifaceted

Shiny
11 Which of the following does the poem sharply critique?
Adult cruelty to children

Fascism and authoritarianism

Industrialization

Religious extremism
12 How many lines are in this poem?
17

15

14

10
13 Which of the following phrases does NOT contain alliteration?
"the plant and its pollen"

"carrion, blood, and a nausea"

"the blinded, big leaves"

"The snout filled with silence and slime"
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 grand palace

An exclusive, government-sponsored club

A subordinate ruler or official

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

Sound imagery

Smell imagery

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

Life under dictatorship

The refuge of nature

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

Evil and oppression

Inequality

Gender
19 Which of the following is an instance of hyperbole?
"Vendetta was born"

"their festering surfeit of bones"

"A finical satrap conversed"

"Lament was perpetual"
20 Which of the following serve as a synecdochic representation in the poem?
A glove

A petal

A plant

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

A type of bird of prey

A battle cry

Decaying dead bodies
22 Neruda uses a simile to compare which of the following to a flower petal?
A flag

A gunshot wound

The smell of corpses

A military medal
23 In which era is this poem most likely set?
The mid-twentieth century

The late eighteenth century

The 1970s

The early Medieval period
24 How does Neruda depict authoritarians?
As sadistic and monstrous

As frivolous and willfully blind

As vulnerable and frightened

As zealous and obsessive
25 What does the word "bludgeon" mean?
Toolbox

Physical blow

Broken-down vehicle

Blunt person

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