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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 7 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What technique does the first line of the poem, "You may write me down in history," introduce?
(a) Apostrophe.
(b) Allegory.
(c) Catalog.
(d) Verbal irony.

2. What body of water does the speaker claim to be in the eighth stanza?
(a) A river.
(b) A lake.
(c) An ocean.
(d) A stream.

3. What words create a refrain in the final two stanzas of the poem?
(a) "Still I rise."
(b) "Again I rise."
(c) "I rise and rise."
(d) "I rise."

4. What is the primary quality that the speaker's stanza eight description of a body of water is intended to convey?
(a) Endurance.
(b) Independence.
(c) Power.
(d) Persistence.

5. What technique is used in lines 7 and 8, "’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells/ Pumping in my living room"?
(a) Metaphor.
(b) Personification.
(c) Simile.
(d) Juxtaposition.

Short Answer Questions

1. Which two things does the final stanza use to represent the past and present?

2. What technique is used in line 29, "Out of the huts of history’s shame"?

3. What is the rhyme scheme of the first seven stanzas?

4. What kind of "certainty" does the speaker claim to have in line 10?

5. In the final quatrain, what does the speaker wonder about upsetting "you" with?

Short Essay Questions

1. In the final stanza, what metaphor does the speaker use, and what does it signify?

2. What do all of the questions the speaker asks have in common?

3. What specific historical phenomenon does the speaker talk about rising above in the final two stanzas, and what allusion does she use to introduce the topic?

4. Describe the pattern that stanzas 2, 4, 5, and 7 have in common.

5. Why is the poem titled "Still I Rise" and not just "I Rise"--what additional idea does the word "Still" convey?

6. What oppressive actions does the speaker suggest "you" might take, and how does she say she will respond?

7. Describe how the final two stanzas of the poem differ from the first seven stazas.

(see the answer keys)

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