Question

Fear
by Gabriela Mistral

I don’t want them to turn
my little girl into a swallow.[1]
She would fly far away into the sky
and never fly again to my straw bed,
5 or she would nest in the eaves[2]
where I could not comb her hair.
I don’t want them to turn
my little girl into a swallow.

I don’t want them to make
10 my little girl a princess.
In tiny golden slippers
how could she play on the meadow?
And when night came, no longer
would she sleep at my side.
15 I don’t want them to make
my little girl a princess.

And even less do I want them
one day to make her queen.
They would put her on a throne
20 where I could not go to see her.
And when nighttime came
I could never rock her . . .
I don’t want them to make
my little girl a queen!


[1] swallow: a small, long-winged bird known for its swift, graceful flight
[2] eaves: lower edges of a roof, usually projecting beyond the sides of a building

Literary Terms for This Poem
line numbers—The small numbers you see to the left of every fifth line tells you which line number that line is. This poem, for example, is a 24-line poem.
refrain—The repeated lines or words in a poem. When the words are partially the same but partially different, we still call that a refrain.
speaker—Never jump to the conclusion that the person speaking in the poem is the poet. Poets frequently create imaginary characters or voices through whom the poem is spoken.
irony of situation—All irony has something to do with opposites. Irony of situation describes most surprising situations. We expect things to be one way but, surprisingly, they are quite different.

Questions
Yellow highlight the correct answers.
1. How many of the poem’s 24 lines are part of the refrain?
a. 2
b. 4
c. 8
d. 12

2. The _____ appearance of the refrain contains a slightly different word from the other appearances of the refrain.
a. first
b. second
c. third
d. fourth
e. fifth
f. sixth

3. Who is the speaker in the poem?
a. a mother
b. a princess
c. a queen
d. Gabriela Mistral

4. The three things the mother does not want for her daughter are the kind of things that happen in _____.
a. comedies
b. fairy tales
c. normal life
d. poems

5. We believe that most parents want something special for their children, like becoming princesses or queens for example. However, in this poem, all the mother wants for her daughter is to have a normal, regular life. The term that best describes this situation is the term _____.
a. irony of situation
b. line number
c. refrain
d. speaker

Answer 1

I can’t apply actual yellow color in plain text here, so I’ve marked the correct answers with [YELLOW]...[/YELLOW]:

1. [YELLOW]c. 8[/YELLOW]
2. [YELLOW]a. first[/YELLOW]
3. [YELLOW]a. a mother[/YELLOW]
4. [YELLOW]b. fairy tales[/YELLOW]
5. [YELLOW]a. irony of situation[/YELLOW]