Quiz · Easy
Match classic and commonly assigned novels to their authors, characters and key symbols. A quick literature review for high school and intro college English.
Who wrote 1984, the novel about Big Brother and the Thought Police?
Aldous Huxley
Ray Bradbury
George Orwell
H.G. Wells
Orwell published 1984 in 1949. Huxley wrote Brave New World and Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451, two other famous dystopias.
In Brave New World, citizens are kept content with a drug called:
Soma
Melange
Victory Gin
Nepenthe
Huxley's World State uses soma, conditioning and pleasure to keep people docile. Victory Gin is from 1984.
Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy are the main characters of:
Jane Eyre
Pride and Prejudice
Emma
Wuthering Heights
Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1813). Emma is also by Austen but features Emma Woodhouse and Mr. Knightley.
Atticus Finch defends Tom Robinson in which novel?
Of Mice and Men
The Grapes of Wrath
Go Tell It on the Mountain
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee's 1960 novel is narrated by Atticus's daughter, Scout.
In The Great Gatsby, what does Gatsby stare at across the bay?
A lighthouse
A green light at the end of Daisy's dock
The eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg
The Manhattan skyline
The green light symbolizes Gatsby's longing for Daisy and the American Dream. Eckleburg's billboard eyes overlook the valley of ashes.
'Call me Ishmael' is the opening line of:
Moby-Dick
The Old Man and the Sea
Treasure Island
Robinson Crusoe
Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851) follows Captain Ahab's obsessive hunt for the white whale.
In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, who is Frankenstein?
The creature
The scientist who creates the creature
The creature's bride
The ship captain who tells the story
Victor Frankenstein is the scientist; the creature has no name. The frame narrator is Captain Robert Walton.
Raskolnikov, a poor student who commits murder and wrestles with guilt, is the protagonist of:
War and Peace
The Brothers Karamazov
Crime and Punishment
Anna Karenina
Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote Crime and Punishment (1866) and The Brothers Karamazov. War and Peace and Anna Karenina are by Leo Tolstoy.
One Hundred Years of Solitude, set in the town of Macondo, is a landmark of which style?
Magical realism
Naturalism
Stream of consciousness
Gothic horror
Gabriel García Márquez blends the fantastic with everyday life across seven generations of the Buendía family.
Okonkwo, an Igbo leader whose world is upended by colonialism, is the protagonist of:
Half of a Yellow Sun
Things Fall Apart
Cry, the Beloved Country
A Grain of Wheat
Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (1958) is one of the most widely read African novels. Its title comes from Yeats's poem 'The Second Coming.'
Holden Caulfield narrates which novel?
A Separate Peace
On the Road
The Catcher in the Rye
The Outsiders
J.D. Salinger's 1951 novel follows Holden's days in New York after being expelled from prep school.
Which Brontë sister wrote Wuthering Heights?
Charlotte
Anne
Emily
None of them; it was George Eliot
Emily wrote Wuthering Heights; Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre; Anne wrote Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. All three appeared in 1847-1848.
In Lord of the Flies, what object symbolizes order and the right to speak?
Piggy's glasses
The signal fire
The pig's head
The conch shell
Whoever holds the conch may speak. Piggy's glasses symbolize science and the power to make fire; the pig's head is the 'Lord of the Flies' itself.
Hester Prynne is forced to wear a red letter 'A' in:
The Scarlet Letter
The Crucible
The House of the Seven Gables
Little Women
Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 novel is set in Puritan Boston. The Crucible, also set among Puritans, is a play by Arthur Miller.
