Goblin Market: A Tale of Two Sisters

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.