View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is personified in "The Assassin"?

2. What does the building represent in "Riding the Elevator Into the Sky"?

3. Who visits the speaker in "Sweeney"?

4. Where does the speaker find the gods in the poem "Gods"?

5. What is represented as a pair of applauding hands in "Two Hands"?

Short Essay Questions

1. Other than showing Sexton's emotional and mental instability, how is The Death Notebooks different in the arc of her work? Give at least two examples.

2. How is The Book of Folly set up?

3. Why does Sexton end The Awful Rowing Toward God with the poem "The Rowing Endeth"?

4. What is the source material for "The Jesus Papers?" How does Sexton use this source material?

5. When was The Awful Rowing Toward God published, and how does that affect the poems in it?

6. Explain Sexton's retelling of the Biblical story of Jonah and the whale in "Making a Living".

7. What inspired The Awful Rowing Toward God?

8. What is the purpose of the poem "The Gold Key"?

9. Explain the premise of Transformations, and explain the title.

10. What is the focus of Sexton's version of "Cinderella"?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What role did family play in Anne Sexton's life and work?

Essay Topic 2

Compare and contrast Sexton's relationships with Sylvia Plath and John Holmes.

Essay Topic 3

Explain how Sexton uses source material, such as fairy tales and Biblical stories, in her poems. What does her treatment of these stories say about her?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 831 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample