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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. By which of the following were the narrator's "feet, bound by frost” (ll. 9-10)?
(a) Coder flatterers.
(b) Cod fetters.
(c) Cold fetters.
(d) Cold feathers.

2. The narrator describes which of the following as happening when his feet were “bound by frost / in cold fetters” (ll. 9-11)?
(a) Casts called out to the crowd.
(b) Cars raced swiflty on the street.
(c) Carts heaped up with the harvest.
(d) Cares seethed hot around his heart.

3. The narrator remarks that “the wild swan’s song / sometimes served as my music, the gannet’s call / and the curlew’s cry for the laughter of men, / the seagull’s singing for mead-drink” (ll. 19-22). The passage offers an example of which of the following?
(a) Paradox.
(b) Parallelism.
(c) Passant.
(d) Pointillism.

4. The narrator remarks that “That man does not know, / he whose lot is fairest on land, / how I, wretched with care, dwelt all winter / on the ice-cold sea in the paths of exile, / deprived of dear kinsmen, / hung with icicles of frost while hail flew in showers” (ll. 12-17). In the sentence, “I” is in apposition to which of the following?
(a) Paths of exile.
(b) Whose lot is fairest on land.
(c) Hail flew in showers.
(d) Deprived of dear kinsmen.

5. The narrator describes the screaming eagle as which of the following (ll. 24-25)?
(a) Family-like.
(b) Sky-beautiful.
(c) Carrion-eating.
(d) Dewy-feathered.

Short Answer Questions

1. Which of the following does the narrator “come to know / on the keel of a ship” (ll. 5-6)?

2. The narrator remarks that “no sheltering family / could bring consolation to” which of the following (ll. 25-26)?

3. In line 30, “have often had to endure in my seafaring,” relative stress / emphasis falls on the first or only syllable of which of the following?

4. Per the Broadview editors (16-17), when is “The Seafarer” believed to have been written?

5. The narrator remarks that “the wild swan’s song / sometimes served as my music, the gannet’s call / and the curlew’s cry for the laughter of men, / the seagull’s singing for mead-drink” (ll. 19-22). The passage offers an example of which of the following?

Short Essay Questions

1. The narrator remarks that "That man does not know, / he whose lot is fairest on land, / how I, wretched with care, dwelt all winter / on the ice-cold sea in the paths of exile, / deprived of dear kinsmen, / hung with icicles of frost while hail flew in showers" (ll. 12-17). What rhetorical appeal/s does the narrator make in doing so?

2. Consider the symbolism of the swan-song the narrator mentions (ll. 19-20). What rhetorical appeal/s does the narrator make in evoking it?

3. The second sentence of the poem reads "Pinched with cold / were my feet, bound by frost / in cold fetters, while cares seethed / hot around my heart, hunger tore from within / my sea-weary mind" (ll. 8-12). Three things are put into juxtaposition. What are they, and what effect does the juxtaposition have?

4. The narrator remarks that “no sheltering family / could bring consolation to my desolate soul” (ll. 25-26). What rhetorical appeal/s does the narrator make in doing so?

5. The opening passages of the poem has the narrator state that “in days of toil / I’ve often suffered troubled times, / hard heartache” (ll. 2-4). What rhetorical appeal/s does the narrator make in doing so?

6. The narrator comments that “they compel me now, / my heart-thoughts, to try for myself / the high seas, the tossing salt streams; / my heart’s desire urges my spirit / time and again to travel, so that I might seek / far from here a foreign land” (ll. 33-38). What rhetorical appeal/s does the narrator make in the comment?

7. What tone is set by the first 26 lines of the poem? How do they do so?

8. Consider the symbolism of the seabirds the narrator catalogs (ll. 20-23). What rhetorical appeal/s does the narrator make in evoking it?

9. The narrator states that “The night-shadow darkened; snow came from the north, / frost bound the ground, hail fell on earth, / coldest of grains” (ll. 31-33). What rhetorical appeal/s does the narrator make in the statement?

10. Consider the kenning for hail, “coldest of grains” (l. 33). How does the kenning construct meaning?

(see the answer keys)

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