View a FREE sample

This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Section 1: "There Will Come Soft Rains".

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is the image of the west wall meant to allude to?
(a) An asteroid strike.
(b) The Biblical flood.
(c) A recent riot in Los Angeles.
(d) Similar silhouettes at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

2. What does Bradbury compare to Baal?
(a) The incinerator.
(b) The dog.
(c) The stove.
(d) The house.

3. What is the name of the family that owned the house?
(a) Fitzpatrick.
(b) Arthur.
(c) McClellan.
(d) Longfellow.

4. Which is the best descriptor of the mood of the scene in the study, where the poem is read and music plays as a cigar slowly burns down to ash?
(a) Haunting and ironic.
(b) Amusing and nostalgic.
(c) Tragic and melodramatic.
(d) Frantic and chaotic.

5. Which is the best summary of how the poem "There Will Come Soft Rains" compares to the short story of the same name?
(a) The poem focuses more on the role of technology in humankind's demise.
(b) The poem is more hopeful about humankind's future.
(c) The poem is a darker version of the same ideas contained in the short story.
(d) The poem focuses more on the survival of a world without humans.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Bradbury say is like "an altar with ten-thousand attendants"?

2. What effect is the constant repetition and rhyming of the voice-clock probably meant to have?

3. What is the likely purpose of inserting the house's "dialogue" ("Help, help! Fire! Run, run!") into the scene that describes the fire consuming the house?

4. What is unusual about the images of the African animals?

5. In the sentence "The morning house lay empty," there is an example of which technique?

(see the answer key)

This section contains 355 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample