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. The narrator describes which of the following as his thinking part (l. 34)?

2. In line 17, “hung with icicles of frost while hail flew in showers,” how many relatively stressed / emphasized syllables are present?

3. By which of the following were the narrator's "feet, bound by frost” (ll. 9-10)?

4. The narrator describes which of the following as happening when his feet were “bound by frost / in cold fetters” (ll. 9-11)?

5. Which of the following does the narrator remark happened when he "wretched with care, dwelt all winter” (ll. 14-17)?

Short Essay Questions

1. 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?

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

3. The poem opens with the narrator saying “I sing a true song of myself, / tell of my journeys” (ll. 1-2). What rhetorical appeal/s does the narrator make in doing so?

4. The narrator remarks that “he who has tasted life’s joy in towns, / suffered few sad journeys, scarcely believes, / proud and puffed up with wine, what I, weary, / have often had to endure in my suffering” (ll. 27-30). What tone is conveyed in the passage?

5. 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?

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. 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?

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

9. The narrator remarks that “he who has tasted life’s joy in towns, / suffered few sad journeys, scarcely believes, / proud and puffed up with wine, what I, weary, / have often had to endure in my suffering” (ll. 27-30). What rhetorical appeal/s does the narrator make in doing so?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The narrator notes having “dwelt all winter / on the ice-cold sea in the paths of exile” (ll. 14-15). How does the poem read if “paths of exile” is a literal statement meaning “paths taken by someone not allowed to return home?” How does it read if, instead, “paths of exile” is a kenning referring simply to “the sea”?

Essay Topic 2

Liuzza remarks that there is a shift in the poem so drastic that it has been taken in the past to indicate two narrators at work in the poem (19n5). While Liuzza adds that scholarship generally rejects the idea, there is still a pronounced shift in tone in the poem. Where is it, and what in the text places it at that point, rather than at another point?

Essay Topic 3

Consider ll. 80-90, “The days are lost” through “throughout middle-earth.” The passage speaks to a commonplace attitude, namely that things were better in earlier days. Given the historical and physical contexts of “The Seafarer,” why might such an attitude have been true for members of the poem’s presumed primary audience? What in the contexts would make it so, and how would they do so?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,149 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample