Post by ernesto thaddeus m. solmerano on Mar 8, 2009 23:54:51 GMT -5
Lit 23: Anglo-American LiteratureThird Quiz
Prof. ETM Solmerano
Read each poem carefully and answer the accompanying questions. Eight O'Clock
By A. E. Housman
He stood, and heard the steeple
Sprinkle the quarters on the morning town.
One, two, three, four, to market-place and people
It tossed them down.
Strapped, noosed, nighing his hour,
He stood and counted them and cursed his luck;
And then the clock collected in the tower
Its strength, and struck.
1. This poem is about all of the following EXCEPT:
a. time
b. a hanging
c. mortality
d. injustice
e. fate
2. “He” in the poem is:
a. a symbol for Jesus
b. humanity in general
c. a convict
d. a traitor
e. a victim of religious persecution
3. He “cursed his luck” because he:
a. was guiltless
b. knew his fate was inescapable
c. believed no one cared
d. was offered no opportunity to confess
e. feared he was doomed to hell
4. The clock in the tower rang:
a. every three hours
b. every fifteen minutes
c. every hour
d. every half hour
e. only in the victim’s imagination
5. The words “sprinkle” and “tossed” suggest the:
a. inevitability of the passage of time
b. misty atmosphere of the morning
c. gentleness of time
d. inevitability of death
e. innocent destructiveness of time
6. The central figure speech of the poem is:
a. personification
b. metonymy
c. simile
d. hyperbole
e. irony
7. The variation of rhythm in the poem highlights the:
a. fluency of time
b. change of the seasons
c. tragedy of being human
d. blight of reality
e. urgency of the execution
8. The crime committed by the subject of the poem is:
A desertion
b. murder
c. treason
d. being born
e. apostasy
9. The effect of the last line in each stanza is to emphasize that:
a. time is powerful, destructive and quick
b. criminals cannot escape punishment
c. justice is triumphant
d. hope never dies
e. protest is pointless
10. In this poem the speaker is saying that:
a. there is no escape from the law
b. people are unconcerned about the welfare of their neighbors
c. nature is man’s chief enemy
d. man was born to struggle
e. death is the prelude to immortality
11. The town in the poem is:
a. in England
b. a metaphor for the church
c. a metaphor for the court of law
d. the world
e. heaven on judgment day
The Lifeguard
By James Dickey
In a stable of boats I lie still,
From all sleeping children hidden.
The leap of a fish from its shadow
Makes the whole lake instantly tremble.
With my foot on the water, I feel
The moon outside
Take on the utmost of its power.
I rise and go our through the boats.
I set my broad sole upon silver,
On the skin of the sky, on the moonlight,
Stepping outward from earth onto water
In quest of the miracle
This village of children believed
That I could perform as I dived
For one who had sunk from my sight.
I saw his cropped haircut go under.
I leapt, and my steep body flashed
Once, in the sun.
Dark drew all the light from my eyes.
Like a man who explores his death
By the pull of his slow-moving shoulders,
I hung head down in the cold,
Wide-eyed, contained, and alone
Among the weeds,
And my fingertips turned into stone
From clutching immovable blackness.
Time after time I leapt upward
Exploding in breath, and fell back
From the change in the children's faces
At my defeat.
Beneath them I swam to the boathouse
With only my life in my arms
To wait for the lake to shine back
At the risen moon with such power
That my steps on the light of the ripples
Might be sustained.
Beneath me is nothing but brightness
Like the ghost of a snowfield in summer.
As I move toward the center of the lake,
Which is also the center of the moon,
I am thinking of how I may be
The savior of one
Who has already died in my care.
The dark trees fade from around me.
The moon's dust hovers together.
I call softly out, and the child's
Voice answers through blinding water.
Patiently, slowly,
He rises, dilating to break
The surface of stone with his forehead.
He is one I do not remember
Having ever seen in his life.
The ground I stand on is trembling
Upon his smile.
I wash the black mud from my hands.
On a light given off by the grave
I kneel in the quick of the moon
At the heart of a distant forest
And hold in my arms a child
Of water, water, water.
12. The life guard in the poem yearns:
a. to forget his cowardice
b. to regain the love of the children
c. to relive the events of a happy day
d. to be able to sleep
e. to be a savior
13. The lifeguard dreams that:
a. he walks on the lake
b. the children revile him
c. he descends to hell
d. he saves a child
e. he holds a gravestone
14. When, in the lifeguard’s dream, the child rises from the water, the lifeguard:
a. smiles at his victory over death
b. recognizes the child and is elated
c. does not remember the child
d. falls to his knees in gratitude
e. eventually drowns with the child
15. The subject of this poem is the:
a. defeat of the lifeguard
b. desire of all men to be Christ
c. love of children
d. heroism of a lifeguard
e. cleansing property of water
16. In the poem there is a fusion between;
a. sea and sky
b. sun and moon
c. reality and dream
d. man and Christ
e. stone and grave
17. The sunlit world (stanza 3) symbolizes:
a. illusion
b. reality
c. death
d. hope
e. faith
18. Because he could not save the child, the lifeguard does all of the following EXCEPT:
a. hide from the children
b. think of suicide
c. dream of miracles
d. imagine himself kneeling at a grave
e. relive the experience of attempted rescue
19. All of the following images appear in the poem EXCEPT:
a. a moonlit lake
b. a lake stirred by leaping fish
c. a walk on water
d. a gravestone
e. a resuscitated child
20. The lifeguard compares diving into the depths of the lake to:
a. the agile movement of fish
b. experiencing resurrection
c. learning about death
d. challenging death
e. being baptized
Bonus QuestionsA. In his dream, the lake seemed to the lifeguard like a:
1. shimmering ocean
2. huge wheatfield
3. muddy expanse of death
4. glowing snowfield
5. patch of beauty in an ugly earth
B. In the poem water is a symbol of all of the following EXCEPT:
1. life
2. death
3. failure
4. oblivion
5. despair