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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Why are the sailors being becalmed?
(a) As punishment for being superstitious.
(b) As punishment for entering the region of mist and snow.
(c) As punishment for killing the Albatross.
(d) As punishment for blaming the Mariner.

2. How many of the men does the Mariner stop?
(a) Three.
(b) One.
(c) Seven.
(d) Four.

3. Who is the original author of the poem's Epigraph?
(a) William Butler Yeats.
(b) Seamus Heaney.
(c) Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
(d) Thomas Burnet.

4. Who/what hides in the mist?
(a) The Mariner.
(b) The Mariner's nephew.
(c) The Spirit.
(d) The Sun.

5. What is the name of the learned Jew?
(a) Josephus.
(b) Tacitus.
(c) Michael Psellus.
(d) Marcus Aurelius.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Thomas Burnet say we must keep a sense of?

2. What kinds of worlds are implied in the Epigraph?

3. What initially changes the sailors' minds about the Albatross, to think negatively of it, after it dies?

4. How does the Albatross die?

5. What other Nature is studied in the poem?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why are the Sun and Storm-blast personified and how is their personification signified?

2. Why do you think there is such a strong emphasis placed on the Mariner's eye in Part I?

3. What does Thomas Burnet mean by saying "it is sometimes beneficial to contemplate, in thought, as in a picture, the image of a greater and better world"?

4. What is significant about the lengthy explanation of invisible Spirits towards the end of Part II?

5. Why is the human mind "always circled around a knowledge of these things" but never attains such knowledge?

6. What seems to be significant about the Guest's compulsion to listen to the Mariner's story?

7. Explain the metaphor used in Part IV, regarding the Moon and stars: "they enter unannounced, as lords that are certainly expected, and yet there is a silent joy at their arrival".

8. Why is it important that the notes make it clear that Life-in-Death wins the Mariner in her game of dice with Death?

9. For what reasons are there differences between the text of the poem and the text of the notes, such as Life-in-Death only being referenced as the "Spectre-Woman" in the notes?

10. The Mariner has a look of intense regret on his face towards the end of Part I. Why does the Mariner look so, and why is it important?

(see the answer keys)

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