50 Fun Facts About High School English

In the novel Frankenstein, which character carries the surname Frankenstein, a name popularly misapplied to another?

The creature's maker, Victor Frankenstein of Geneva, is the one the name belongs to; the creature has no name at all, and the mix-up was already being mocked in print in 1908.

What was the real name of Mark Twain, whose pen name is a riverboat leadsman's cry for two fathoms of water?

Samuel Clemens took the name from his years piloting Mississippi steamboats, where 'mark twain' meant the water was twelve feet deep and safe to pass.

How old is Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, whose age the Nurse counts to the day in her first scene?

Juliet is 13, two weeks short of her fourteenth birthday on Lammas Eve; Shakespeare cut the age from 16 in his source poem, and brides that young were about one in a thousand in his England.

In 'Wherefore art thou Romeo?', followed by 'deny thy father and refuse thy name', what does Juliet's 'wherefore' mean?

Why is the meaning: Juliet is lamenting that Romeo is a Montague, not asking where he is, which is how the line gets played for laughs in parodies.

In Poe's The Raven, which single word is the bird's reply to every question the grieving speaker asks?

Nevermore is the raven's 'only stock and store', yet the speaker keeps asking questions he knows it will answer the same way, a self-torture Poe built the poem around.

Which verb for wiping out a large part of something began as a Roman army punishment killing one man in ten?

Decimate comes from Latin decimatio, 'destruction of a tenth': a unit judged cowardly drew lots and every tenth man was clubbed to death by his own comrades, who were then put on barley rations.

What false name does Odysseus give the Cyclops Polyphemus, so that the blinded giant's calls for help go unanswered?

Nobody is the name, so when Polyphemus roars that Nobody is hurting him, the other Cyclopes assume a god is to blame and advise him to pray.

Walt Whitman's 'O Captain! My Captain!' mourns which leader, whom the 1865 poem never actually names?

Abraham Lincoln's assassination moved Whitman, who never met him, to write four elegies; this one was his most popular poem in his lifetime and, naming no one, has been reused for other dead leaders.

In The Old Man and the Sea, what fish, longer than his skiff, tows Santiago out to sea for two nights?

A marlin, harpooned on the third morning and lashed alongside, is then eaten by sharks on the way home, so Santiago lands only a skeleton from the catch of his life.

Which letter must Hester Prynne wear on her dress in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, her sentence for adultery?

A is the letter, and it outlives her: Hester's shared tombstone with Dimmesdale reads 'On a field, sable, the letter A, gules', heraldry for a red A on black.

In Animal Farm, which carthorse, sure that any problem can be solved by working harder, is sold to a knacker?

Boxer collapses from overwork and Napoleon sells him for whisky money, while the animals are told the knacker's van had been bought by an animal hospital and simply not repainted.

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, where does Winston Smith work, rewriting old newspaper reports to fit the Party line?

The Ministry of Truth, where Winston revises back issues of The Times, derives from the BBC's overseas service, which the real Ministry of Information controlled in wartime.

In The Catcher in the Rye, which word does the teenage hero pin on anyone fake, from his prep school to Hollywood?

Phony is the hero's verdict on everyone from his roommate to the film industry, which he calls the ultimate phoniness because it leaves no room for a writer's own imagination.

What does the number in the title Fahrenheit 451 refer to, according to Ray Bradbury's own title page?

The ignition point of paper is what the title page claims, 'the temperature at which book paper catches fire and burns', though scientists have since measured paper igniting across a range of temperatures.

In The Crucible, which farmer signs a confession, then rips it up rather than let it be made public?

John Proctor refuses to let his three sons be stigmatised by a public confession and is led off to hang, while Parris and Hale beg Elizabeth to talk him round and she refuses.

In Macbeth, who beheads the usurper despite the witches' promise that no man 'of woman born' can harm him?

Macduff slips through the witches' wording because he was delivered by Caesarean section, and he re-enters with Macbeth's severed head as Malcolm restores order.

In Julius Caesar, which conspirator stabs last and is hailed by Antony at the end as 'the noblest Roman of them all'?

Brutus, the only plotter Antony believes acted for Rome rather than envy, draws Caesar's 'Et tu, Brute?', a Latin line Shakespeare borrowed from earlier plays rather than inventing it.

In Beowulf, what is the name of King Hrothgar's great mead hall, the Danish seat of rule that Grendel raids by night?

Heorot means 'hart' or stag in Old English, and the poet boasts it was big enough for Hrothgar to present Beowulf with eight horses, each in gold-plated headgear.

In Jane Eyre, what does Mr Rochester keep hidden upstairs at Thornfield Hall, a secret exposed on his wedding day?

His first wife, Bertha Mason, is kept upstairs by the paid keeper Grace Poole, whose drinking occasionally lets her escape, which explains the strange laughter Jane hears.

In The Great Gatsby, what was Jay Gatsby's name at birth, before the boy from North Dakota reinvented himself?

James Gatz, 'Jimmy' to his family, became Jay Gatsby, a millionaire whose money turns out to come from bootlegging; he first met Daisy as a young officer at Camp Taylor in Louisville.

Whose 1845 Narrative tells how his Baltimore mistress taught him the alphabet until her husband forbade it?

Frederick Douglass took Hugh Auld's ban as proof that reading was the way out of slavery, finished teaching himself by playing games with white neighbourhood children, and later taught fellow slaves on the Freeland plantation to read.

In The Diary of a Young Girl, what name does Anne Frank give the imaginary friend she addresses her entries to?

Kitty was invented on 20 June 1942 as a surrogate friend, and the Anne Frank Foundation still fields theories that she was a real schoolmate, Kitty Egyedi, who herself believed the diary's Kitty was fictional.

Which Robert Frost poem began as a joke on his indecisive walking companion Edward Thomas?

The Road Not Taken was a private joke on Thomas, who dithered over which route to take on their English walks; Frost once warned an audience, 'it's a tricky poem — very tricky'.

In Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, what does Oedipus do to himself on learning he has killed his father and married his mother?

He gouges out his eyes with the long gold pins from Jocasta's dress after finding the queen dead; in Homer's older version Oedipus neither blinds himself nor is exiled.

In The Outsiders, which Robert Frost poem does Ponyboy recite to Johnny at a sunrise while the two hide out?

Nothing Gold Can Stay is recited by Ponyboy after he has cut and dyed his hair as a disguise and read Gone with the Wind aloud to Johnny in their hideout.

In A Streetcar Named Desire, who leaves with the doctor saying 'I have always depended on the kindness of strangers'?

Blanche DuBois breaks down when the matron grabs her, then goes willingly with the gentler doctor, while the poker game in the next room carries on uninterrupted.

In Of Mice and Men, what did Lennie do at his last job that sent him and George fleeing a lynch mob?

He grabbed a woman's skirt because he thought it was pretty, then held on tighter as she panicked, which he always does when stressed; the accusation of rape that followed is why George keeps him close.

In Lord of the Flies, what do Jack's hunters do to their faces as they take to ritual dances and pig hunts?

They paint them, becoming 'barbarians with painted faces', and Jack uses the boys' fear of an imaginary beast to tighten his hold on the tribe.

Which device, from a Greek compound meaning 'name-making', gives us words like 'buzz' that imitate the sounds they name?

Onomatopoeia varies by language: a frog says 'ribbit' in English but 'brekekekex koax koax' in Aristophanes' Greek, and a car horn goes 'tut-tut' in French.

Which figure of speech, from Greek words for 'beyond' and 'throw', is at work in 'this bag weighs a ton'?

Hyperbole, 'extravagant exaggeration employed for rhetorical effect', is even a legal category: US courts treat obvious rhetorical hyperbole as protected speech rather than defamation.

Which term covers a fire station burning down, an outcome the exact opposite of what was reasonably expected?

Situational irony has no ironist behind it — no one is being ironical, it is merely ironical that it happened — and in everyday usage the word irony is sometimes reserved for this kind alone.

Which Greek term did Aristotle's Poetics use for the relief tragedy brings its audience 'through pity and fear'?

Catharsis was a medical word for purging before Aristotle borrowed it, and he first applied it to the mind in the Politics, comparing the effect of music on listeners to a physical purge.

What did Wayne C. Booth call a storyteller whose account can't be trusted, in his 1961 The Rhetoric of Fiction?

Unreliable narrator, in Booth's definition, is one whose values clash with the implied author's, and later critics have argued the label depends as much on the reader's norms as on the text.

Which device, repeating a phrase to open successive clauses, recurs eight times in King's 'I Have a Dream' speech?

Anaphora, besides hammering home an idea, adds rhythm and makes a passage easier to remember, and King reached for it to move an audience to act rather than merely agree.

Which word for a softened expression like 'passed away' comes from the Greek for 'words of good omen'?

Euphemism comes from euphemia, a compound of 'good' and 'speech', and the Greeks used the word itself euphemistically; the blunt opposite, a dysphemism, is deliberately harsh.

Which point of view, used throughout Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City, addresses the protagonist as 'you'?

Second person narration is rare enough to be a stunt: Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler and Andy Weir's short story The Egg are among the few other well-known examples.

Which figure of speech is Mercutio's dying 'Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man'?

A pun on 'grave' — solemn and a burial place — shows Shakespeare using wordplay for gravity rather than laughs, in a scene critics cite as 'seemingly inappropriate' for a joke.

Which figure of speech, Greek for 'simultaneous understanding', uses a part for the whole, as in 'wheels' for a car?

Synecdoche is technically a kind of metonymy, but 'the crown' for the monarch is not one, since a crown is not part of a monarch; 'suits' for businessmen and 'boots' for soldiers are.

What is the running of a sentence past a line break without punctuation called, from the French for 'to straddle'?

Enjambment makes the meaning 'step over' from one line to the next, so the syntax is incomplete at the line's end; lines that close on punctuation are end-stopped instead.

Which of Aristotle's three modes of persuasion is the appeal to the speaker's own credibility and character?

Ethos must be established from the start, Aristotle said, because an orator's purpose is to 'inspire trust in his audience'; pathos works the emotions and logos the reasoning.

What is the -ing form of a verb used as a noun, as in 'Playing on computers is fun', called?

A gerund takes its name from Late Latin gerundium, 'which is to be carried out', and in English it behaves as both verb and noun: an adverb can modify it and it can take a direct object.

In 'Alice Smith, my sister, arrived', what is the phrase 'my sister' called, from the Latin for 'near' and 'placement'?

An appositive comes in two kinds: set off by commas when it merely adds information, but written without commas when it is needed to say which Alice is meant.

What are words like 'their', 'there' and 'they're', pronounced alike but differing in spelling or meaning, called?

Homophones include 'rose' the flower and 'rose' the past tense, spelled the same, which makes them homographs and homonyms too; 'colonel' and 'kernel' sound alike because colonel's spelling kept an r that is no longer pronounced.

What part of speech are the seven words of the classroom acronym FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)?

Coordinating conjunctions join items of equal rank, such as two main clauses, and FANBOYS is only the common set: English has other coordinators the mnemonic leaves out.

Which pronoun, the objective form of 'who', correctly completes the formal 'To ___ did you speak?'

Whom is the inflected object form, as 'whose' is the possessive, but outside formal prose 'Who did you speak to?' is now the normal way to ask.

Which word for a trusted adviser is the name of the old friend Odysseus left in charge of his son Telemachus?

Mentor, son of Alcimus, was put in charge of Odysseus's palace as well as the boy when the king sailed for Troy, which is how his name became the common noun.

Which word did Thomas More coin for his 1516 book from the Greek for 'no place', after rejecting the Latin Nusquama?

Utopia is pronounced exactly like Eutopia, Greek for 'good place', a confusion that has stuck; More's traveller Raphael Hythloday has a name meaning 'expert of nonsense'.

Which citation style, widely adopted in classrooms for English papers, heads its list of sources 'Works Cited'?

MLA style comes from the Modern Language Association, is used across the humanities, especially English studies, and its 2016 edition switched from prescribing formats to a general system of documenting sources.

Which Latin word, placed in brackets after a quoted error, tells the reader the mistake was in the original?

Sic means 'thus' or 'so' in Latin, first appeared in English around 1856, and by 1889 had become a verb too: to 'sic' a quotation is to mark it with one.

What is the one- or two-sentence summary of an essay's core argument, usually placed near the beginning, called?

Thesis statement is the term; it is usually one or two sentences near the start of a paper and may be reiterated elsewhere, most often in the conclusion.