Goblin Market

1. B. The poem opens with a scene of the goblins tempting Laura and Lizzie with their fruits; while Lizzie warns Laura against them, Laura indulges temptation and begins to die after consuming the goblins’ enchanted food. Lizzie grapples with the consequences of her sister’s actions and must face temptation herself when she confronts the goblins to procure their fruit in hopes of saving Laura.

While a major point in the action is (A) Laura yearning for the fruit she cannot have, it instead incites the central conflict; similarly, while (D) Lizzie’s witness to Laura’s magic-induced decline is another major part of the poem, it is not the poem’s main conflict and instead develops the consequences of indulging temptation. While (C) the goblins may be read as an allegory for fear of foreigners, the poem’s main conflict does not explicitly focus on them spreading disease, but rather how their temptations affect two sisters.

2. A. The goblins show themselves to be sly and manipulative by the way they cajole and persuade the girls to buy their fruit. They are certainly not (B) timid and fearful, and nor are they (C) exuberant and generous, as they praise their own fruit for the purposes of tempting the girls into purchasing it. Describing the goblins as (D) self-assured and boastful is not the strongest choice either because their goal is not to boast about their fruit but to manipulate young women into tasting it.

3. C. In the poem, Laura succumbs to temptation and falls into an enchanted illness as a result. Lizzie faces the goblins at the poem’s climax and purchases their fruit for Laura’s sake but refuses to eat with the goblins; she endures their vicious attacks and resists drinking the fruit juices they try to force into her mouth. Because of Lizzie’s courage and resistance in the face of temptation, she returns to Laura and revives her with the fruit juices that remain on her face.

Laura does not face a true loss (A), but the consequences of indulging temptation; Lizzie does not reject her sister’s grief at her inability to taste the fruits again but instead worries about her sister’s magical illness. While Laura wants Lizzie to taste the goblins’ fruit as well (B), their arcs do not revolve around embracing and sharing the unknown, as the goblins’ fruit symbolizes not adventure and wonder, but ruin and sin. Finally, Lizzie does not appear resentful of Laura’s choices, and their arcs do not focus on repair and forgiveness (D).

4. D. One of the poem’s major themes is sisterhood and Female Community. The final lines of the poem emphasize this theme when Laura warns her children against the goblins and shares her own story, concluding by emphasizing the importance of her bond with her sister.

The opening lines of the poem in (A) set the scene and convey a distinct sense of the alluring tenor of the goblins’ cries, yet these lines do not exemplify the theme of temptation without further context. Laura’s realization that the goblins’ fruit is now lost to her after eating in (B) develops the theme of morality and the consequences of temptation yet does not encapsulate it as a whole. Lizzie’s musing on how their friend Jeanie met a gruesome fate after eating the fruits in (C) foreshadows Laura’s own decline but does not articulate one of the poem’s major themes.