View a FREE sample

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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. The narrator describes sorrow as being which of the following (ll. 54-55)?
(a) Painful to the purse-string.
(b) Sour in the skull-hoard.
(c) Bitter in the breast-hoard.
(d) Stinky in the strong-parts.

2. What “hangs in the balance before its due time" (ll. 68-69)?
(a) One thing.
(b) One of five things.
(c) One of three things.
(d) One of two things.

3. The phrase "given up to the earth" (l. 93) is a euphemism for which of the following?
(a) Masonry.
(b) Farming.
(c) Death.
(d) Mining.

4. With what does the narrator's spirit move (l. 59)?
(a) The sun.
(b) The birds.
(c) The reindeer.
(d) The ocean.

5. In the phrase “summer’s guardian announces sorrow” (l. 54), which of the following is present?
(a) Cunning.
(b) Kenning.
(c) Künstlerroman.
(d) Curling.

Short Answer Questions

1. In l. 80, “delight among heaven’s host. The days are lost,” there is an example of which of the following?

2. What has the fallen noble host lost (l. 86)?

3. Line 83, “nor gold-gives as there once were,” offers an example of which of the following?

4. Which of the following does he have "who hastens to sea" (l. 47)?

5. Which of the following will "urge the eager-hearted / spirit to travel" (ll. 48-52)?

Short Essay Questions

1. Consider the narrator’s comments that “When life fails [a man], his fleshly cloak will neither / taste the sweet nor touch the sore, / nor move a hand nor think with his mind” (ll. 94-96). What is the “fleshly cloak,” and what wears it? How do you know?

2. Consider the narrator’s statement that “And so now my thought flies out from my breast, / my spirit moves with the sea-flood. / roams widely over the whale’s home, / to the corners of the earth, and comes back to me / greedy and hungry” (ll. 58-62). What tone is conveyed by the passage, and how is it conveyed?

3. Consider ll. 64-66, “because hotter to me / are the joys of the Lord than this dead life, / loaned, on land.” Given the physical and historical context of the poem, as well as its content, why might “the joys of the Lord” be described favorably as “hotter” by the narrator?

4. The narrator comments that “He has no thought of the harp or the taking of rings, / nor the pleasures of woman or joy in the world, / nor anything else but the tumbling waves— / he always has longing who hastens to sea” (ll. 44-47). What rhetorical appeal/s does the narrator make in the comment?

5. What is the strongest pattern of alliteration in line line 42, "that he never has sorrow over his seafaring," and why?

6. The narrator asserts that “And so no man on earth is so proud in spirit, / nor so gifted in grace or so keen in youth, / nor so bold in deeds, nor so beloved of his lord, / that he never has sorrow over his seafaring, / when he sees what the Lord might have in store for him” (ll. 39-43). What rhetorical appeal/s does the narrator make in the assertion?The narrator asserts that “And so no man on earth is so proud in spirit, / nor so gifted in grace or so keen in youth, / nor so bold in deeds, nor so beloved of his lord, / that he never has sorrow over his seafaring, / when he sees what the Lord might have in store for him” (ll. 39-43). What rhetorical appeal/s does the narrator make in the assertion?

7. Consider the narrator’s assertion that “Always, for everyone, one of three things / hangs in the balance before its due time: / illness or age or attack by the sword / wrests life away from one doomed to die” (ll. 68-71). What tone is conveyed by the passage, and how is it conveyed?

8. Consider ll. 58-102 as a unit. What is the overall tone of the passage, and how is it conveyed?

9. The narrator comments that “He has no thought of the harp or the taking of rings, / nor the pleasures of woman or joy in the world, / nor anything else but the tumbling waves— / he always has longing who hastens to sea” (ll. 44-47). What tone is conveyed in the comment, and how?

10. What tone is present in the following passage, and how is it conveyed? “The days are lost, / and all the pomp of this earthly kingdom; / there are now neither kings nor emperors / nor gold-givers as there once were, / when they did the greatest glorious deeds / and lived in most lordly fame” (ll. 80-85)?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,217 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample