Ambiguity and Competing Interpretations

Question 1

In 'Something there is that doesn't love a wall' and 'Good fences make good neighbors,' what does the poem leave unsettled?

Accepted Answer

Whether the wall is worth the labor it demands

Answer

Whether the neighbors repair the wall each spring

Answer

Whether the speaker knows the neighbor's saying

Answer

Whether the stones fall from the wall over time

Question 2

Hamlet imagines death as sleep, then says, 'To sleep, perchance to dream; ay, there's the rub.' What remains unsettled?

Accepted Answer

Whether death promises rest or a terrifying unknown

Answer

Whether Hamlet knows that Claudius killed the old king

Answer

Whether Hamlet is speaking in public to the whole court

Answer

Whether Hamlet has already decided to spare Polonius

Question 3

Blake asks, 'Did he who made the Lamb make thee?' What does the question leave unresolved?

Accepted Answer

Whether one creator can account for both innocence and terror

Answer

Whether the tiger is literally inside a forest at night

Answer

Whether the speaker has seen a lamb before

Answer

Whether the poem answers with a named animal maker

Question 4

In 'My Last Duchess,' the duke says, 'I gave commands; / Then all smiles stopped together.' What is left ambiguous?

Accepted Answer

What exactly the commands did to silence the duchess

Answer

Whether the duke is showing someone a portrait

Answer

Whether the duchess had smiled at more than one person

Answer

Whether the duke values control over his household

Question 5

Keats's urn says, 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty.' What does the poem not finally settle?

Accepted Answer

Whether the maxim is wisdom, limitation, or the urn's own closed artifice

Answer

Whether the urn is addressed directly by the speaker

Answer

Whether the poem contrasts frozen art with human change

Answer

Whether the line links beauty and truth in a chiasmic phrase

Question 6

In 'The Sick Rose,' an 'invisible worm' with 'dark secret love' destroys the rose. What does the figure leave unsettled?

Accepted Answer

What human or natural force the worm allegorically names

Answer

Whether the rose is described as sick

Answer

Whether the worm is called invisible

Answer

Whether the poem uses the color crimson

Question 7

Dickinson writes, 'Because I could not stop for Death - / He kindly stopped for me.' What remains open in that personification?

Accepted Answer

Whether Death's courtesy comforts the speaker or masks coercion

Answer

Whether Death is grammatically personified

Answer

Whether the carriage also carries Immortality

Answer

Whether the speaker says she did not stop for Death

Question 8

Dickinson's speaker hears a 'Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz' before 'I could not see to see.' Which second reading do the lines sustain?

Accepted Answer

That the expected revelation narrows into bodily failure

Answer

That the speaker regains sight after the fly passes

Answer

That the fly clearly speaks as a divine messenger

Answer

That the room becomes bright enough to prove salvation

Question 9

Macbeth calls life 'a walking shadow' and 'a poor player.' Beside nihilism, what reading does the theatrical diction sustain?

Accepted Answer

That Macbeth stages despair as if still trapped in performance

Answer

That Macbeth calmly accepts a comic role

Answer

That Macbeth praises actors as morally superior to kings

Answer

That Macbeth has forgotten the news of Lady Macbeth's death

Question 10

'Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Which second reading arises after the shattered statue is seen in the desert?

Accepted Answer

The boast becomes an ironic command to despair at power's ruin

Answer

The king's works are shown surrounding the statue intact

Answer

The traveler confirms the ruler's empire still governs there

Answer

The inscription humbly apologizes for failed ambition

Question 11

In 'Dover Beach,' 'Ah, love, let us be true / To one another!' follows a world with 'neither joy, nor love, nor light.' What second reading fits?

Accepted Answer

Private fidelity may be refuge, not a cure for public disorder

Answer

The speaker proves the world has become joyful again

Answer

The beloved is blamed for causing the world's darkness

Answer

The poem says religious certainty has fully returned

Question 12

Blake ends, 'So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.' Beside childlike comfort, what reading do the lines sustain?

Accepted Answer

Bitter irony about a doctrine that excuses suffering

Answer

A literal guarantee that chimney sweeping is safe

Answer

A rejection of all religious language in the poem

Answer

A speaker who is old enough to own the soot-black coffins

Question 13

Wordsworth writes, 'She seemed a thing that could not feel / The touch of earthly years.' What second reading accompanies the calm tone?

Accepted Answer

The speaker's serenity may depend on denying mortality

Answer

The woman is presented as loudly protesting age

Answer

The speaker says she literally controls time

Answer

The poem identifies her as an immortal goddess

Question 14

A story closes with 'Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!' What does that ending settle?

Accepted Answer

Nothing about why Bartleby refused; it registers grief and bafflement

Answer

That Bartleby refused because he was secretly wealthy

Answer

That the narrator now fully understands Bartleby's motives

Answer

That Bartleby planned a successful protest movement

Question 15

At the end of 'The Yellow Wallpaper,' the narrator says, 'I've got out at last.' What remains unresolved?

Accepted Answer

Whether the escape is liberation, psychic collapse, or both

Answer

Whether the wallpaper has been stripped away

Answer

Whether John faints after seeing her

Answer

Whether the narrator speaks in the first person

Question 16

In 'The Turn of the Screw,' Miles dies after the governess confronts what she sees. What does the ending refuse to resolve?

Accepted Answer

Whether the ghosts are real or the governess's interpretation destroys him

Answer

Whether Miles has been living at Bly

Answer

Whether the governess is the tale's central observer

Answer

Whether Quint has been named before the final scene

Question 17

The Awakening ends with Edna in the sea, hearing memories and 'the hum of bees.' What is left open?

Accepted Answer

Whether her final swim is defeat, release, refusal, or all three

Answer

Whether she has ever been to Grand Isle

Answer

Whether the sea has appeared earlier in the novel

Answer

Whether Edna is still at a dinner party when the novel closes

Question 18

Frankenstein's creature is 'borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance.' What does the ending leave open?

Accepted Answer

Whether his promised self-destruction actually occurs

Answer

Whether Victor Frankenstein has already died

Answer

Whether the creature speaks to Walton

Answer

Whether the scene occurs in an Arctic setting

Question 19

Joyce's 'Araby' ends with eyes that 'burned with anguish and anger.' What does the ending refuse to decide?

Accepted Answer

Whether the boy's recognition will mature him or only wound him

Answer

Whether the bazaar has already closed many stalls

Answer

Whether the narrator desired a gift for Mangan's sister

Answer

Whether the boy feels anguish at the end

Question 20

Frost says, 'I shall be telling this with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages hence.' Which reading do the words rule out?

Accepted Answer

That the speaker is reporting the choice only as it happens

Answer

That the speaker imagines a future retelling

Answer

That the emotional value of the sigh is unstable

Answer

That memory may reshape the choice into a story

Question 21

'We wear the mask that grins and lies.' Which interpretation does Dunbar's line rule out?

Accepted Answer

That the mask is transparent honesty

Answer

That the mask conceals pain from observers

Answer

That the plural speaker describes a shared performance

Answer

That the grin may mislead those who see it

Question 22

Prufrock says, 'No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be.' Which reading is ruled out?

Accepted Answer

That he confidently casts himself as the tragic protagonist

Answer

That he measures himself against literary roles

Answer

That he diminishes himself through comparison

Answer

That the allusion helps define his self-consciousness

Question 23

Donne writes, 'Our two souls therefore, which are one... endure not yet / A breach, but an expansion.' Which reading is ruled out?

Accepted Answer

That separation is figured as an absolute break

Answer

That the lovers' bond is imagined as spiritual unity

Answer

That distance can enlarge rather than destroy the bond

Answer

That the poem argues against ordinary mourning

Question 24

Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 begins, 'My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun.' Which reading do the words rule out?

Accepted Answer

That the poem opens by idealizing her through conventional praise

Answer

That the speaker rejects exaggerated comparisons

Answer

That the poem answers the blazon tradition

Answer

That the speaker can love without false comparison

Question 25

In 'Ode to a Nightingale,' 'Was it a vision, or a waking dream? / Fled is that music: Do I wake or sleep?' What is ruled out?

Accepted Answer

That the speaker is certain of his state at the close

Answer

That the bird's song has vanished from the moment

Answer

That the speaker questions the boundary between dream and waking

Answer

That the ending leaves perception unstable

BLASTROOM

BLASTROOM

BLASTROOM

Ambiguity and Competing Interpretations

Ways to Play

Device Games: Students play on their phones

Blast Go

Zombie Escape

Avalanche

Maze Blast

Cave Climb

Blast Out

Mystery Auction

Tour Guide

Food Truck Rush

Tug of War

Alien Blast

Glacier Rush

Board Games: Teacher-led, projected to the class

Like what you see?

Bug Blast

BlastRace

BlastQuiz

BlastBoard

Seek & Destroy

Mystery Blast

Checkers

Texas Hold 'Em

Da Bomb

Castle Siege

Hot Potato

Market Mayhem

King of the Hill

Bank Heist

Top Corner

Ambiguity and Competing Interpretations

Ways to Play

Device Games: Students play on their phones

Blast Go

Zombie Escape

Avalanche

Maze Blast

Cave Climb

Blast Out

Mystery Auction

Tour Guide

Food Truck Rush

Tug of War

Alien Blast

Glacier Rush

Board Games: Teacher-led, projected to the class

Like what you see?

More like this

Bug Blast

BlastRace

BlastQuiz

BlastBoard

Seek & Destroy

Mystery Blast

Checkers

Texas Hold 'Em

Da Bomb

Castle Siege

Hot Potato

Market Mayhem

King of the Hill

Bank Heist

Top Corner