Figurative Language QUIZ

RL 1: 
Read the following poem by William Blake:
My Pretty Rose Tree
A flower was offered to me,
Such a flower as May never bore;
But I said, 'I've a pretty rose tree,'
And I passed the sweet flower o'er.
Then I went to my pretty rose tree,
To tend her by day and by night;
But my rose turned away with jealousy,
And her thorns were my only delight.
Why is the speaker's "only delight" the thorns of the rose tree?

• the speaker is not fond of flowers, which is why he passed over the flower offered him
• the speaker's girlfriend/wife is upset with him because of another woman is hitting on him
• the speaker is a bitter old man with nothing but memories of better days
• the speaker should have taken the rose offered

RL 2:
Read this haiku from Basho:
Sick on my journey,
only my dreams will wander
these desolate moors
This poem is about:

• traveling
• death
• birth
• being sick on vacation

RL 3:
Read the following excerpt from Fahrenheit 451.  This is a book written in the 1950s that takes place in our future.
The little mosquito-delicate dancing hum in the air, the electrical murmur of a hidden wasp snug in its special pink warm nest. The music was almost loud enough so he could follow the tune.
Without turning on the light he imagined how this room would look. His wife stretched on the bed, uncovered and cold, like a body displayed on the lid of the tomb, her eyes fixed in the ceiling by invisible threads of steel, immovable. And in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in, coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind. The room was indeed empty. Every night the waves came in and bore her off on their great tides of sound, floating her, wide-eyed, toward morning. There had been no night in the last two years that Mildred had not swum that sea, had not gladly gone down in it for the third time.
What is the purpose of the metaphor in this passage?

• to explain how Mildred drowned
• to show that Mildred cannot swim
• to explain how Mildred listens to music
• to show Mildred's unique fashion sense
  

RL 4: 
Read the following passage:
 It would be a never-ending if not hopeless task to try to assemble into anything less than several volumes all the misinformation regarding pregnancy.  But certainly some of the most common myths can be exploded.  Old wives' tales abound, of course: that eating ice cream will cause the baby to "catch cold"; that the baby may be "marked" if the mother is frightened; that getting the feet wet will flood the baby with "water"; that reaching for something on a top shelf will wrap the umbilical cord around the baby's neck, and so on and so on.  None of the above is true.  Nor is it so that broad-hipped women necessarily have easier births than the narrow-hipped -- it's internal, not external, measurements that count.  Nor will wearing high heel cause cross-eyed children, though some actually believe this.  
Based on the above passage, what is the author's tone toward those who believe the old wives' tales?

• incredulous
• he feels it is all good fun
• he feels it is harmful for the baby
• it is a part of the pregnancy culture and should be embraced, but not taken too seriously

RL 5: 
Read these opening paragraphs of The Scarlet Letter:
A throng of bearded men, in sad-coloured garments and grey steeple-crowned hats, inter-mixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.
The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognised it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison. In accordance with this rule it may safely be assumed that the forefathers of Boston had built the first prison-house somewhere in the Vicinity of Cornhill, almost as seasonably as they marked out the first burial-ground, on Isaac Johnson'out his grave, which subsequently became the nucleus of all the congregated sepulchres in the old churchyard of King's Chapel. Certain it is that, some fifteen or twenty years after the settlement of the town, the wooden jail was already marked with weather-stains and other indications of age, which gave a yet darker aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy front. The rust on the ponderous iron-work of its oaken door looked more antique than anything else in the New World. Like all that pertains to crime, it seemed never to have known a youthful era. Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, apple-pern, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilised society, a prison. But on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-hush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him.
What is the most likely reason that Nathanial Hawthorne opened his novel with a description of a door?

• to show off the fine workmanship and artistic nature of the Puritans
• to make a comparison that prisons are essentially the grave yards of society.
• because Hawthorne doesn't understand what it means to write a passage with an interesting theme
• to show how a place is not a utopia if it has to have a prison

RL 6:
"Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Coleridge is an excellent poem about some freaky things that happen to this guy while on a boat. 
Read the following excerpt:
“Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.”
What is the above an example of?

• hyperbole
• imagery
• situational irony
• unreliable narrator

L4a:
Read the following from J. R. R. Tolkien's work, The Fall of Arthur:
Greatest was Gawain,  
whose glory waxed
as times darkened,  
true and dauntless,
among knights peerless  
ever anew proven,
defence and fortress  
of a falling world
What word could replace "waxed" in the second line?

• faded
• increased
• faltered
• fearless

L5a:
Read these two quotes:
Wall Street has turned the economy into a giant asset-stripping scheme, one whose purpose is to suck the last bits of meat from the carcass of the middle class.  - Matt Taibi
Don't blame Wall Street, don't blame the big banks. If you don't have a job and you are not rich, blame yourself!  - Herman Cain
What literary term and purpose do the words, "Wall Street" serve in these quotes?

•  imagery - to give an image of the actual street and buildings in New York
• personification - makes it seem as if the actual streets and buildings are working there
• connotation - to represent the powerful and wealthy, no matter where they may live or work
• apostrophe - since the street cannot talk back.