Ulysses quiz

Questions and answers

1. 1

   Question 1. Which literary genres best describe Ulysses?

   • Romantic Poetry, Pastoral Ode & Rhymed Couplets
   • Epic Poetry, Narrative Ballad & Rhymed Stanzas
   • Correct answer: Victorian Poetry, Dramatic Monologue & Blank Verse
   • Modernist Poetry, Free Verse & Interior Monologue
   • Renaissance Poetry, Sonnet Sequence & Heroic Couplets

   Correct. Tennyson is one of the leading Victorian poets. In a dramatic monologue one character, not the poet, does all the speaking, and here that character is Ulysses. The lines are blank verse: unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter, which sound close to natural speech.

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2. 2

   Question 2. Who is the speaker of Ulysses, and whom does he address by the end of the poem?

   • Correct answer: The aging king, home from Troy, who ends by speaking to his old mariners
   • The poet himself, who ends by speaking straight to his young readers
   • Telemachus, the king's son, who ends by speaking to the people of the isle
   • A sailor in the king's crew, who ends by speaking to the king at the port

   The speaker is Ulysses himself, the king who has come home from the Trojan War. He calls himself “an idle king” and remembers battle “Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.” Because a character, not the poet, does all the talking, the poem is a dramatic monologue. In the last section he turns to his sailors: “My mariners, / Souls that have toil'd and wrought, and thought with me.”

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3. 3

   Question 3. In the opening lines, why does Ulysses say it “little profits” him to stay at home as king?

   • His kingdom is at war, and he fears he is now too old to lead his army
   • Correct answer: He sits idle at a still hearth, ruling a people who do not even know him
   • His wife and son have plotted to take the throne while he was at sea
   • A famine has struck the island, and he can no longer feed his people

   Ulysses calls himself “an idle king, / By this still hearth, among these barren crags.” He spends his days handing out laws to people who “hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.” Every picture is of stillness, the thing he hates most. Nothing in the poem mentions a war, a plot or a famine at home; his problem is boredom, not danger.

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4. 4

   Question 4. In “I mete and dole / Unequal laws unto a savage race,” what does “mete and dole” mean?

   • To mourn over and grieve for in sorrow
   • To mark out the borders and limits of land
   • To hold back and keep away from others
   • Correct answer: To measure out and hand out in portions

   To mete is to measure out, and to dole is to hand out in small shares, the way food or money is doled out. Ulysses means that he spends his days dealing out laws to his people bit by bit. The phrase makes ruling sound like dull, petty work. (Dole once also meant grief, and a mete can be a boundary, but neither sense fits a king handing out laws.)

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5. 5

   Question 5. What does Ulysses mean when he says, “I am a part of all that I have met”?

   • He feels he belongs to no place and to no people at all
   • He regrets the many people he hurt on his long travels
   • Correct answer: Everything he has seen and done has shaped who he is
   • He wishes he could rule again the lands he once won

   Ulysses has just listed a lifetime of experience: cities, peoples, climates, governments, and battle at Troy. The line is usually read as a summing up: his travels made him who he is, and he has left his mark on the places and people he met. That is why a quiet life at home feels to him like losing himself.

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6. 6

   Question 6. Ulysses says “all experience is an arch wherethro' / Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades / For ever and for ever when I move.” What does this image suggest?

   • Correct answer: Each new experience shows him more unknown world, so his search can never end
   • Experience is a shelter that guards him from the dangers of the wider world
   • His memories are fading, and he can no longer recall where he has been
   • He has already seen every land, so there is nothing left to discover

   Experience is like an arch, or doorway, and through it Ulysses glimpses a world he has not yet traveled. Its edge, or margin, fades whenever he moves toward it, the way a horizon keeps moving away. So every experience opens up more to see and learn, and the goal can never be reached. The next lines show what he fears instead: “How dull it is to pause, to make an end, / To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!”

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7. 7

   Question 7. How does Ulysses describe his son Telemachus?

   • As reckless and restless, eager to sail off on adventures of his own
   • As a warrior who fought at his father's side on the plains of Troy
   • As weak and foolish, not fit to take the sceptre when his father goes
   • Correct answer: As patient and dutiful, suited to the slow work of ruling the island

   Ulysses calls Telemachus “Well-loved of me” and “Most blameless,” a ruler able “by slow prudence to make mild / A rugged people.” He is “centred in the sphere / Of common duties” and will honor the household gods. Then Ulysses closes the subject: “He works his work, I mine.” The son is made for patient ruling; the father is made for the sea. Some readers hear faint praise in these lines, but the words themselves are kind.

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8. 8

   Question 8. Did it happen? Review these statements about the poem and mark each one.

   • Ulysses calls his wife by her name, Penelope, in the opening lines.

     Didn't happen

     The poem never names her. Ulysses calls himself “Match'd with an aged wife,” and she is not mentioned again. Penelope is her name in Homer's Odyssey, not in Tennyson's poem.

   • Ulysses names his son, Telemachus, and leaves him the sceptre and the isle.

     Happened

     “This is my son, mine own Telemachus, / To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle.” Telemachus is the only person besides Achilles whom the poem names.

   • Ulysses tells his mariners that they, like him, are old.

     Happened

     He says it plainly: “you and I are old.” He adds that “Old age hath yet his honour and his toil,” so age is no reason to stop.

   • Ulysses promises his mariners that the voyage will bring them safely home.

     Didn't happen

     He promises no such thing. He means to sail “until I die” and admits that “It may be that the gulfs will wash us down.” The voyage is a risk he chooses with open eyes.

   • Ulysses remembers fighting in the war at Troy.

     Happened

     He recalls how he “drunk delight of battle with my peers, / Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.” Later he imagines they may “see the great Achilles, whom we knew.”

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9. 9

   Question 9. “The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: / The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs.” What do these evening images suggest?

   • Ulysses fears the dark and would rather wait for the morning
   • Correct answer: The end of the day mirrors the late stage of Ulysses's life
   • A storm is coming, so the sailors must stay inside the port
   • The island is lighting fires to welcome the king's return

   The poem sets the departure at dusk. A day that “wanes,” or grows weaker, can be read as a picture of old age, and many readers take the evening scene as a quiet sign that Ulysses and his men are near the end of their lives. Yet in the next breath he says, “'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.” The dark falls, and he sets out anyway.

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10. 10

    Question 10. In “Tho' much is taken, much abides,” what does “abides” mean?

    • Correct answer: Remains and endures
    • Puts up with or tolerates
    • Obeys or follows a rule
    • Fades away or vanishes

    To abide here means to remain or endure. Age has taken much from Ulysses and his men, but much still remains: their will. The word has other senses (to put up with, as when someone cannot abide noise, or to abide by a rule), but only “remains” fits the contrast with “taken.”

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11. 11

    Question 11. What does the closing line, “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield,” say about Ulysses and his men?

    • They have found what they sought and are ready at last to rest
    • They will give up the sea and go home to their wives and sons
    • They will fight the gods to win control of the sea and stars
    • Correct answer: Though weakened by age, they will keep going and never give up

    The closing lines admit what age has done: “We are not now that strength which in old days / Moved earth and heaven.” Yet they are “strong in will.” The four verbs say what that will means: to struggle (strive), to search (seek), to discover (find), and never to give up (not to yield). That is why the line is so often used as a motto for perseverance.

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12. 12

    Question 12. Readers have long disagreed about Ulysses's choice to leave home. Which two readings does the poem support?

    • A comic tale of a foolish king, or a satire mocking Greek heroes
    • Correct answer: A heroic call to keep striving, or a proud man leaving his duties
    • A love poem to his wife, or a lament for sailors lost at sea
    • A prayer for a calm death, or a plea to return to war at Troy

    Many readers hear a stirring call never to give up, ending on “not to yield.” Others notice that Ulysses scorns his people as “a savage race,” mentions his wife only as “an aged wife,” and leaves the hard work of ruling to his son. Read that way, he is a proud man walking away from his duties. The poem gives evidence for both, which is why it is still debated.

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13. 13

    Question 13. Tennyson wrote Ulysses in 1833. What event in his own life is the poem closely linked to?

    • His appointment as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom
    • His first months as a student at Trinity College, Cambridge
    • Correct answer: The sudden death of his close friend Arthur Henry Hallam
    • His being made a baron, with the title of Lord Tennyson

    Arthur Henry Hallam, Tennyson's closest friend from Cambridge and the fiancé of his sister Emily, died suddenly in Vienna in September 1833, aged 22. Tennyson wrote Ulysses soon afterward. He later said the poem expressed his own feeling that he had to go forward and face life after Hallam's death, a remark his son recorded in his 1897 memoir. The other events came years before or long after 1833: Trinity College in 1827, the Laureateship in 1850 and the barony in 1884.

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