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50 free Flannery O'Connor trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Flannery O'Connor called the South Christ-haunted and wrote it that way: a one-legged philosopher robbed by a Bible salesman, a grandmother who finds grace at gunpoint, a war veteran preaching the Church Without Christ from the hood of an Essex. She produced two novels and 31 stories from a Georgia farm full of peacocks while lupus took her at 39, and her Complete Stories later won the National Book Award. These 50 questions cover the life and the work. Easy ones ask about Southern Gothic, Savannah, lupus and the Misfit; the middle tier reaches Hazel Motes, Asa Hawks, Pitty Sing, Hulga, Tarwater, John Huston's film and the backward-walking chicken; the hard tier wants Modern Writing I, Teilhard de Chardin, the Tower restaurant, Betty Hester, Paul Engle, Memory Hill and the word Shiftlet teaches Lucynell. The 2023 biopic Wildcat and the 2024 unfinished novel get their turn too. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss. Play it solo or print it for a book club.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Flannery O'Connor's fiction is the best-known example of which literary style?
Southern Gothic
She said anything from the South gets called grotesque by Northern readers, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is called realistic.
Q 02In which Georgia city was Flannery O'Connor born in 1925?
Savannah
Her childhood home on Lafayette Square is now a museum.
Q 03How many novels did Flannery O'Connor publish in her lifetime?
Two
She wrote 31 short stories, which are the core of her reputation.
Q 04Which disease, inherited from her father, killed O'Connor at 39?
Lupus
She lived twelve years after diagnosis, seven more than doctors expected.
Q 05How many acres does O'Connor's Andalusia estate comprise?
544
Her mother inherited it jointly with her brother; it was a working dairy farm when they moved in.
Q 06O'Connor earned her MFA in 1947 from which famous writing program?
Iowa Writers' Workshop
She went there initially to study journalism and dropped the name Mary while enrolled.
Q 07Why did O'Connor drop her first name, Mary, at Iowa?
It sounded like an Irish washwoman
From then on she signed herself Flannery O'Connor.
Q 08In what year was O'Connor's first novel, Wise Blood, published?
1952
It was stitched together from stories first published in Mademoiselle, Sewanee Review and Partisan Review.
Q 09Who is the protagonist of Wise Blood?
Hazel Motes
A returning veteran, he founds the Church Without Christ and preaches from the hood of an Essex.
Q 10In Wise Blood, what does preacher Asa Hawks pretend to be?
Blind
He lost his nerve when he tried to blind himself with quicklime and became a con artist instead.
Q 11In Wise Blood, what is Enoch Emery's job?
Zookeeper
He believes his "wise blood" tells him what to do without any spiritual guidance.
Q 12What make of car does the preacher of Wise Blood use as his pulpit?
An Essex
The dilapidated vehicle serves as his mobile pulpit on street corners.
Q 13Who directed the 1979 film of Wise Blood?
John Huston
Brad Dourif played Hazel Motes; the film premiered at Cannes.
Q 14Who played the lead role in the 1979 film Wise Blood?
Q 21In "Good Country People", Hulga's artificial leg is stolen by a man selling what?
Bibles
Manley Pointer's case turns out to hold whiskey, condoms and obscene playing cards.
Q 22In "Good Country People", what was Hulga's name before she changed it?
Joy
She changed it to annoy her mother, Mrs Hopewell.
Q 23In "Good Country People", Hulga holds a doctorate in which subject?
Philosophy
A heart condition keeps her stuck at home with her mother.
Q 24In what year was O'Connor's second novel, The Violent Bear It Away, published?
Brad Dourif
Harry Dean Stanton played the fake-blind preacher Asa Hawks.
Q 15Which escaped convict confronts the family in "A Good Man Is Hard to Find"?
The Misfit
The grandmother recognises him after the family car flips into a ditch.
Q 16In "A Good Man Is Hard to Find", the family is driving from Georgia to which state?
Florida
The grandmother would rather visit relatives in east Tennessee.
Q 17What is the name of the cat the grandmother smuggles along in "A Good Man Is Hard to Find"?
Pitty Sing
The cat leaps onto Bailey and causes the crash.
Q 18Where does the family stop for barbecue in "A Good Man Is Hard to Find"?
The Tower
Proprietor Red Sammy Butts is billed as "the fat boy with the happy laugh".
Q 19The killer says the grandmother would have been a good woman if someone had done what?
Shot her every minute of her life
It is the story's most quoted line.
Q 20"A Good Man Is Hard to Find" first appeared in 1953 in which anthology?
Modern Writing I
Harcourt published her own collection under that title in 1955.
1960
Its hero is fourteen-year-old Francis Tarwater, raised to be a prophet.
Q 25In The Violent Bear It Away, what destiny has Francis Tarwater's great-uncle prepared him for?
Life as a prophet
Old Mason also charged him with baptising his cousin Bishop.
Q 26In The Violent Bear It Away, Rayber, the uncle Francis flees to, works as what?
A schoolteacher
The well-educated Rayber dismisses his own disabled son Bishop as "useless forever".
Q 27How many stories are in O'Connor's posthumous 1965 collection Everything That Rises Must Converge?
Nine
The title comes from the Jesuit thinker Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
Q 28The title Everything That Rises Must Converge derives from which thinker's work?
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
The collection gathers all three of her O. Henry Award-winning stories.
Q 29Which story in Everything That Rises Must Converge was the only completely new one?
Parker's Back
It was a last-minute addition written during her final illness.
Q 30O'Connor's story "Judgement Day" was a drastic rewrite of which earlier story?
The Geranium
The original appeared in her Iowa graduate thesis.