Lesson 4.2.2.23

4.2.2.23 Ariel by Sylvia Plath Quiz: AQA English Literature A, Unit 2

20 questions

Written by Revision Ninja · Last reviewed 11 October 2026

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Lesson 4.2.2.23, Ariel by Sylvia Plath: 20 multiple choice questions for the AQA English Literature A (7712), Unit 2: Texts in shared contexts, written with Revision Ninja.

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The 20 questions

  1. In what year was Ariel first published as a collection?

    • 1956
    • 1972
    • 1983
    • 1965

  2. Who edited the first published version of Ariel?

    • Seamus Heaney
    • Ted Hughes
    • Robert Lowell
    • Richard Murphy

  3. Which poem in Ariel is named after a horse that Plath rode?

    • Tulips
    • Mirror
    • Daddy
    • Ariel

  4. Which poem in Ariel uses the image of a woman who rises from the ashes?

    • Morning Song
    • Lady Lazarus
    • Tulips
    • Mirror

  5. What is the father-daughter relationship that is central to the poem Daddy?

    • A happy reunion between a father and a daughter
    • A daughter's anger at her dead father, who is linked to Nazi and Holocaust imagery
    • A father's account of his daughter's wedding
    • A daughter's praise of her father's work as a teacher

  6. Which of Plath's parents was German-born?

    • Her father, Otto Plath
    • Her grandmother
    • Her mother, Aurelia Plath
    • Her husband, Ted Hughes

  7. What is the subject of the poem Morning Song?

    • The birth of a child and the speaker's sense of separation from the infant
    • The death of a father in a war
    • A dispute between two neighbours
    • A journey across the Atlantic

  8. Which phrase from the poem Ariel is quoted as a description of the speaker's state?

    • Silence of the grave
    • Dying in the sun
    • Wind over the moor
    • Stasis in darkness

  9. What is the central image of the poem Tulips?

    • Fields of wheat in an autumn harvest
    • A garden of roses in full bloom
    • Tulips that seem alive and disturbing in a sickroom
    • A market of tropical fruit

  10. What does the image of the mirror suggest in the poem Mirror?

    • The beauty of a summer landscape
    • The arrival of a new family member
    • The speaker's sense of self and the passing of time
    • The wealth of a rich household

  11. Which poem in Ariel deals with a woman's attempt to survive a suicide attempt?

    • Morning Song
    • Tulips
    • Lady Lazarus
    • Mirror

  12. What is the effect of Plath's use of imagery in Ariel?

    • It removes the emotional content from the poems
    • It makes the poems purely humorous
    • It intensifies emotion and creates a powerful sense of physical and psychological experience
    • It makes the poems simple descriptions of nature

  13. Which poetic technique does Plath use in many poems in Ariel to create a sense of urgency?

    • Short, sharp lines and dense, unexpected images
    • Narrative dialogue between two speakers
    • Long, regular Latin hexameters
    • Repeated refrains in every stanza

  14. How does Plath present the speaker's relationship to the body in the poems?

    • As a symbol of religious purity
    • As a site of uncomplicated pleasure
    • As a neutral object with no emotional meaning
    • As a site of pain, transformation and vulnerability

  15. What is the significance of the title Ariel?

    • It refers to a character in a Greek tragedy
    • It refers to a famous English naval battle
    • It refers to a horse that Plath rode, and to a spirit associated with air and freedom
    • It refers to a town in Massachusetts

  16. Which theme recurs across the poems in Ariel?

    • The joys of a settled family life
    • The peace of rural landscapes
    • The history of the Industrial Revolution
    • Death, rebirth and the struggle for identity

  17. What does the collection suggest about the poet's relationship to her own suffering?

    • She transforms suffering into poetry with fierce control and intensity
    • She is overwhelmed by it and produces no poetry
    • She rejects poetry as a means of expressing it
    • She ignores her suffering completely

  18. What is the significance of the posthumous publication of Ariel?

    • It was published only in a small limited edition
    • It made Plath's late work widely known and shaped her reputation
    • It had no impact on Plath's reputation
    • It was rejected by all critics at the time

  19. Which tone is characteristic of many poems in Ariel?

    • Intense, defiant and often darkly ironic
    • Soft, nostalgic and sentimental
    • Light, playful and comic
    • Calm, detached and indifferent

  20. Which best describes the way Plath uses personal experience in Ariel?

    • She writes only about public political events
    • She writes only about other people's lives
    • She avoids all personal details in favour of abstraction
    • She draws on intimate details but shapes them into universal images of pain and transformation

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