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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Section 1: "O Captain! My Captain!" lines 1-24.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Line 5, " But O heart! heart! heart!" is an example of which technique?
(a) Paradox.
(b) Aphorism.
(c) Apostrophe.
(d) Euphemism.

2. Where is the ship in the beginning of the poem?
(a) Just leaving the port.
(b) Docked in the port.
(c) On the open sea.
(d) Just coming into port.

3. The poem's title and first line contain an example of which technique?
(a) Apostrophe.
(b) Simile.
(c) Personification.
(d) Synechdoche.

4. Who is the author of "O Captain! my Captain!"?
(a) Ralph Waldo Emerson.
(b) William Cullen Bryant.
(c) Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
(d) Walt Whitman.

5. In the second quatrain of the second stanza, what becomes clear about the speaker's state of mind?
(a) He has not fully accepted the captain's death.
(b) He hopes to hide the captain's death from the crowd.
(c) He is actually asleep and only dreaming of the captain's death.
(d) He is afraid that he is in some way responsible for the captain's death.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does it mean that the people are "exulting"?

2. What does the phrase "swaying mass" refer to (line 12)?

3. What is the most accurate way to describe the poem's stanza form?

4. What is the rhyme pattern of the first four lines of each stanza?

5. Which term describes the poem's repeated use of the phrases "O Captain! My Captain!" (lines 1 and 9) and "fallen cold and dead" (lines 8, 16, and 24)?

(see the answer key)

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