"A Poison Tree"

 Which of the following best describes a major theme of the poem?

• Deceitful people are always punished by their own trickery.

• Envy and greed can permanently damage a relationship.

• Bottling up one's feelings leads to resentment and even violence.

• A healthy friendship is built on trust and communication.

How do the speaker's actions in the first stanza provoke action in the poem?

• The speaker expresses their anger to their friend but withholds this anger from their foe, creating some tension between the friend and the foe. 

• The speaker tricks the foe into trusting them by hiding their anger in the first stanza and offering the foe a poisoned apple later on in the poem

• The speaker does not express their anger to their foe, and because of this, their anger worsens until it eventually grows into a poisonous tree.

• The speaker acts differently towards their friend than their foe, which makes the foe jealous and pushes them to steal from the speaker.

What impact does the figurative language in lines 5-8 have on the poem's meaning?

• The speaker's wrath ripens like a piece of fruit that, like the foe, is outwardly beautiful but inwardly rotten.

• The speaker tends to their wrath like a plant, implying that the speaker actually does care for the foe because of all of the attention they pay to them.

• The speaker's wrath grows every time their foe smiles at or acts kindly towards the speaker, which suggests that nothing can overcome hatred.

• The speaker tends to their wrath like a plant that later produces a poisoned fruit, implying that anger can feel satisfying but is toxic to let grow. 

The speaker deals with their anger by…

• telling both their friend and their enemy that they are angry.

• telling their friend that they are angry, but not by telling their enemy.

• not telling either their friend or their enemy that they are angry.

• not telling their friend that they are angry, and by telling their enemy instead.

What happens to the speaker's anger towards their enemy, or foe?

• It decreases as time goes on.

• It dies from being watered too much.

• It worsens as the speaker becomes more afraid.

• It grows just like a plant does.

Which definition best fits the word bore as it is used in line 10?

1) v. to make someone feel weary and uninterested

2.) n. a tedious situation

3.) v. to produce something

4.) v. to hold up or support

• Definition 1

• Definition 2

• Definition 3

• Definition 4