48 questions. Try each one, then open the answer to check yourself and read the explanation.
Ibiwari Ikiriko, Oily Tears: The tone of the poet is
Answer: A (optimistic)
The poet promises 'I swear!' that the oily tears will one day be stopped, a hopeful, optimistic tone.
P.B. Shelley, Sonnet: The stanza above is an example of a
Answer: A (quatrain)
The extract is a four-line unit of verse, and a four-line stanza is a quatrain.
Frank Collymore, Hymn to the Sea: The address to the sea in the lines above is done by the use of
Answer: A (personification)
The sea is called 'Mother and destroyer' and said to give birth to life and dreams, so it is given human qualities: personification.
Isidore Okpewho, The Last Duty: The reaction in the passage above is that of
Answer: D (nausea)
The odour shocks him, he corks the bottle at once and spits on the floor: a feeling of sickness, or nausea.
Wole Soyinka, The Beautification of Area Boy: The literary devices in the dialogue above are
Answer: D (hyperbole and allusion)
Shaving 'an entire battalion between one coup and the next' is exaggeration (hyperbole), and the coups refer to Nigeria's military history (allusion).
John Updike, Wash: The images set in the lines above are of
Answer: C (discomfort and likely destruction)
A week of rain and a storm turning like a dog, with people as fleas complaining in its hair, suggest discomfort and the threat of being shaken off.
Ralph Ellison, Juneteenth: The force of the speech above is sustained on
Answer: C (repetition)
The word 'asleep' is repeated again and again to drive the point home, so the speech draws its force from repetition.
Charles Dickens, Hard Times: From the passage above, Thomas Gradgrind is
Answer: A (dogmatic)
He holds fixed principles ('two and two are four, and nothing over') and will not be persuaded otherwise, which is dogmatic.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The General in His Labyrinth: The master in the passage above is obviously in a state of
Answer: D (trance)
The General lies floating with open eyes, lost in an ecstasy as if no longer of this world: a trance, not drowning.
Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea: The character 'boy' is used alongside 'the old Man' in the novel to demonstrate
Answer: D (the failing productivity that accompanies old age)
Manolin, young and able, contrasts with Santiago, who has gone 84 days without a fish; the pairing shows how productivity declines with age.
The Old Man and the Sea epitomizes
Answer: B (the vain expectations of man)
Santiago's great catch, his hope of success, is eaten away to a skeleton, which sums up how man's high expectations often come to nothing.
Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea: The skeleton of the marlin implies the
Answer: B (futility of human struggle)
After all his effort Santiago brings home only bones, a picture of how human struggle can end in nothing.
Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea: Santiago loses his catch to the sharks because
Answer: A (the blood attracts them)
The wounded marlin, lashed to the boat, leaves a trail of blood in the water that draws shark after shark to it.
Camara Laye's The African Child: Laye's stay with Uncle Mamadou reveals a lot about
Answer: C (the strength of communal living in Africa)
In Conakry Laye lives with his uncle's family as if it were his own, showing how the extended family supports its members.
Camara Laye's The African Child: The setting of The African Child is a kingdom with
Answer: B (pre-Islamic and Islamic traditions)
Laye's family are Muslims, yet they also keep older animist beliefs such as the guardian snake and initiation rites, so both traditions live side by side.
Camara Laye's The African Child: Laye's first-person narrative technique
Answer: D (makes his story more believable)
Telling his own childhood as 'I' gives the reader an eyewitness account, which makes the story feel true and believable.
Buchi Emecheta's Second Class Citizen: Pa Noble became a living legend because
Answer: A (several conflicting stories were woven around him)
Pa Noble was a mysterious figure about whom people told many different, contradictory stories, which made him a legend.
Buchi Emecheta's Second Class Citizen: The marriage of Adah and Francis collapses because of
Answer: C (Adah's desire for personal fulfilment)
Adah wants to work, write and grow, but Francis wants a submissive wife and even burns her manuscript; her drive for fulfilment ends the marriage.
Buchi Emecheta's Second Class Citizen: The central theme in Second Class Citizen is that women should
Answer: D (free themselves from the negative forces of patriarchy)
Adah's story shows a woman breaking free from men's control in the family and society, i.e. from patriarchy.
Femi Osofisan's Morountodun: The character of Marshal in the play shows that
Answer: A (human beings are selfless)
Marshal gives himself completely to the peasants' cause, putting the struggle above his own safety, which shows selflessness.
Femi Osofisan's Morountodun: The war in the play symbolizes the struggle between the
Answer: B (bourgeoisie and the proletariat)
The farmers' revolt against the rich and the government stands for the class struggle of the poor (proletariat) against the wealthy (bourgeoisie).
Femi Osofisan's Morountodun: The diction of the play can be described as
Answer: A (political and rhetorical)
The play is about class struggle and uses speeches meant to persuade, so its language is political and rhetorical.
Femi Osofisan's Morountodun: The frequent intervention of the Director makes the stage experience of Morountodun very
Answer: C (informal)
The Director breaks into the action and talks to the audience, which removes the barrier of the stage and makes the performance informal.
William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night: The images in the quotation above express the speaker's
Answer: A (contempt and admiration)
Malvolio sneers at the young messenger as neither man nor boy, yet admits he is 'very well-favoured' and speaks sharply: contempt mixed with admiration.
William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night: In the lines above, the character is
Answer: C (lamenting over his unreciprocated love)
Feste sings this song for Orsino about a lover killed by a cruel maid, which matches Orsino's grief at Olivia's refusal of his love.
William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night: The traditional verse form of speech as dialogue in Twelfth Night is used to symbolize the
Answer: A (impressiveness of the character)
Noble characters such as Orsino, Olivia and Viola usually speak in verse, which marks their rank and dignity.
Twelfth Night is preoccupied with the juxtaposition of
Answer: B (appearance and reality)
Disguise and mistaken identity (Viola as Cesario, Malvolio fooled by a forged letter) set what things seem against what they really are.
In Niyi Osundare's 'They Too Are The Earth', musical effect is achieved by
Answer: A (repetition)
Osundare repeats words and lines, such as the title phrase, to give the poem its song-like rhythm.
In Keats 'Ode on a Grecian Urn', the recurrent use of the rhetorical question in the lines above suggests
Answer: A (admiration and amazement)
The speaker fires question after question about the scene on the urn because he is fascinated and amazed by it.
The rhyming pattern in the last stanza of Okigbo's 'Hurrah for Thunder' makes the stanza
Answer: C (a couplet)
The last stanza is two rhyming lines ('...hell' / '...bell'), which is a couplet.
The theme of Browning's 'My Last Duchess' is
Answer: D (the pride and arrogance of an aristocrat)
The Duke reveals his pride in his name and his arrogant wish to control his wife, which led to her death.
Tanure Ojaide's 'The Owl Wakes Us' portrays a society that is
Answer: A (unstable)
The poem shows a troubled society moving from one nightmare to another, with no settled peace: an unstable society.
In Mapanje's 'When This Carnival Finally Closes', the poet is describing the
Answer: D (role of sycophancy and bad leadership)
The 'carnival' is the dictator's reign of praise-singing; the poem attacks the flatterers and the bad ruler they serve.
From the tone of Wole Soyinka's 'Telephone Conversation', the two persons talking hold each other in
Answer: A (mutual suspicion)
The landlady is wary of a black tenant and the man is wary of her prejudice; each is suspicious of the other.
The major theme of Thomas Gray's 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' is that death renders life
Answer: C (meaningless for all)
'The paths of glory lead but to the grave': death ends rich and poor alike, so worldly achievement counts for nothing.
In Rubadiri's 'Stanley Meets Mutesa', the poet portrays the hardship experienced by the explorer's party through
Answer: C (olfactory and visual images)
The poem lets us see the weary, ragged carriers and smell the sweat and decay along the way, using sight and smell images.
Browning's 'My Last Duchess' apparently shows Duke's
Answer: A (hatred for common love)
The Duke resents that the Duchess gave her smiles and thanks to everyone alike; he hated her ordinary, undiscriminating love.
John Keats' 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' expresses the idea that
Answer: D (life is long, art is longer)
Keats shows the urn's figures lasting for ever while people grow old and die: art outlasts life.
In Oswald Mtshali's 'Nightfall in Soweto', night
Answer: D (aids man's enemy)
In the poem night is when thugs and police attack, so the darkness helps those who prey on the people.
In the lines above from Gray's 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard', the imagery is
Answer: A (of an approaching night in a rustic setting)
The evening bell, the cattle going home and the ploughman leaving the fields picture nightfall in the countryside.
The most important concepts in poetry are
Answer: C (rhythm and imagery)
Story, plot and character belong mainly to prose and drama; poetry depends above all on rhythm and imagery.
The literary device which anticipates that an event will take place is best described as
Answer: A (foreshadowing)
Foreshadowing gives hints of what will happen later in a story.
The flat character in a literary work
Answer: D (always embodies a quality)
A flat character is built around a single idea or quality and does not change.
The overwhelming pride that destroys the tragic hero is called
Answer: D (hubris)
Hubris is excessive pride that leads the tragic hero to his downfall.
A farce refers to a drama that has elements of the
Answer: C (comic)
A farce is a light comedy built on absurd situations and horseplay meant to make people laugh.
Catharsis is experienced
Answer: D (after watching a play)
Catharsis is the cleansing of pity and fear that the audience feels when a tragedy reaches its end.
An extended fictional narrative which is realistic is known as a
Answer: B (novel)
A novel is a long fictional prose story, usually realistic; a novella and a short story are shorter.
The technique in which both the stage and the auditorium are involved in a play production is called
Answer: C (audience participation)
When the audience in the auditorium is drawn into the action on stage, the technique is audience participation.