High School English Trivia
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50 free High School English trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
High-school English is the class where most of us met Macbeth, Gatsby and Atticus Finch, argued about what a poem 'really means', and were told, repeatedly, where a comma goes. It is also the knowledge that sticks: decades later people still remember the conch, the valley of ashes and the letter on Hester Prynne's chest, even after the essay rules have faded. These 50 questions spread across the syllabus rather than camping on one book: Shakespeare, Steinbeck, Orwell, Golding, Homer and Beowulf, Frost and Whitman, then the terms teachers test (devices, rhetoric, the shape of a sonnet), the grammar that trips everyone up, vocabulary with a story behind it, and the citation habits of a decent essay. Every answer comes with a one-line explanation that adds something the textbook left out. Play it to find out how much of tenth-grade English survived, hand it to a student as a revision round, or print it for a classroom quiz.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In the novel Frankenstein, which character carries the surname Frankenstein, a name popularly misapplied to another?
The creature's maker
The creature's maker, Victor Frankenstein, owns the name; his creation has none, and when a London play billed the part as a row of dashes, Mary Shelley called that way of naming it 'rather good'.
Q 02What was the real name of Mark Twain, whose pen name is a riverboat leadsman's cry for two fathoms of water?
Samuel Clemens
Samuel Clemens piloted Mississippi steamboats, where 'mark twain' meant twelve feet of safe water; he said he took the signature over from an old river captain who had signed river reports with it in New Orleans.
Q 03In Romeo and Juliet, which character boasts of knowing Juliet's age 'unto an hour'?
The Nurse
The Nurse, once Juliet's wet nurse, works out that she is 13, about two weeks short of fourteen; her father's reply to her suitor Paris is to wait two more summers.
Q 04Juliet's 'Wherefore art thou Romeo?' is often misread as asking where he is; what does 'wherefore' mean?
Why
Why is the meaning: Juliet is lamenting that Romeo is a Montague, so her next line begs him to 'deny thy father and refuse thy name'.
Q 05In Poe's The Raven, which single word is the bird's reply to every question the grieving speaker asks?
Nevermore
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.
Q 06Which verb for wiping out a large part of something began as a Roman army punishment killing one man in ten?
Decimate
Decimate comes from Latin decimatio, 'destruction of a tenth': as Polybius describes it, a cowardly unit drew lots, every tenth man was clubbed to death by his comrades, and the rest were put on barley rations.
Q 07What false name does Odysseus give the Cyclops Polyphemus, so that the blinded giant's calls for help go unanswered?
Nobody
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.
Q 08Whitman's 1865 elegy that opens 'O Captain! my Captain!' mourns which leader without ever naming him?
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln is the captain: his ship, the Union, has come safely through the Civil War, but he lies 'fallen cold and dead' on its deck while the crowds on shore cheer.
Q 09In The Old Man and the Sea, what fish, longer than his skiff, tows Santiago out to sea for two nights?
A marlin
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.
Q 10Which letter must Hester Prynne wear on her dress in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter?
A
A, for adultery, outlives her: the tombstone Hester shares with Dimmesdale reads 'On a field, sable, the letter A, gules', heraldry for a red A on black.
Q 11In Animal Farm, which carthorse, sure that any problem can be solved by working harder, is sold to a knacker?
Boxer
Boxer collapses from overwork and is driven off in a knacker's van, which the animals are told a vet had bought and not yet repainted; days later the pigs somehow have money for another case of whisky.
Q 12In Nineteen Eighty-Four, where does Winston Smith work, rewriting old newspaper reports to fit the Party line?
Ministry of Truth
The Ministry of Truth deals in lies, just as the novel's Ministry of Peace wages war and its Ministry of Love tortures; Winston's job there is to rewrite back issues of The Times.
Q 13In The Catcher in the Rye, which word does Holden Caulfield pin on almost everyone, from his prep school to Hollywood?
Phony
Q 21Whose 1845 Narrative tells how his Baltimore mistress taught him the alphabet until her husband forbade it?
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass took Hugh Auld's ban as proof that reading was the way out of slavery, so he traded bread to hungry white boys in the street for lessons and later ran a Sunday school teaching fellow slaves to read.
Q 22In The Diary of a Young Girl, what name does Anne Frank give the imaginary friend she addresses her entries to?
Kitty
Kitty took her name from Kitty Francken, a cheerful character in a Dutch girls' series Anne was reading; Anne began by writing letters to the heroine's whole circle of friends, then kept only Kitty.
Q 23Which Robert Frost poem began as a joke on his indecisive walking companion Edward Thomas?
Phony is Holden's verdict on nearly everyone, even family: he says his older brother D.B., a writer he admires, has prostituted himself by going to Hollywood to write for the movies.
Q 14What does the number in the title Fahrenheit 451 refer to, according to Ray Bradbury's title page?
The ignition point of paper
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.
Q 15In The Crucible, which farmer signs a confession, then rips it up rather than let it be made public?
John Proctor
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.
Q 16In Macbeth, who beheads the usurper despite the witches' promise that no man 'of woman born' can harm him?
Macduff
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.
Q 17In Julius Caesar, which conspirator stabs last and is hailed by Antony at the end as 'the noblest Roman of them all'?
Brutus
Brutus is the one plotter Antony believes acted for Rome, not envy; Caesar's 'Et tu, Brute?' is stagecraft, since Suetonius says he died without a word or, by some reports, with a few words of Greek.
Q 18In Beowulf, what is the name of King Hrothgar's great mead hall, which Grendel raids by night?
Heorot
Heorot, Old English for 'stag', was Hrothgar's pride until Grendel, pained by the sound of its feasting, began killing the warriors who slept there; the hall stood empty at night for twelve years.
Q 19In Jane Eyre, what does Mr Rochester keep hidden upstairs at Thornfield Hall, a secret exposed on his wedding day?
His first wife
His first wife, Bertha Mason, is guarded upstairs by Grace Poole, whose gin now and then lets her slip out, once to set Rochester's bed alight and once to tear Jane's wedding veil.
Q 20In The Great Gatsby, what was Jay Gatsby's name at birth, before the boy from North Dakota reinvented himself?
James Gatz
James Gatz, still 'Jimmy' to his father, renamed himself at seventeen; Tom Buchanan later accuses him of building his fortune on grain alcohol sold over the counter in drugstores.
The Road Not Taken
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'.
Q 24In Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, what does Oedipus do to himself on learning he has killed his father and married his mother?
Gouges out his eyes
He gouges out his eyes with the pins from the dead Jocasta's dress; in Homer's older telling Oedipus stays king of Thebes and neither blinds himself nor goes into exile.
Q 25In The Outsiders, which Robert Frost poem does Ponyboy recite to Johnny at a sunrise while the two hide out?
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nothing Gold Can Stay returns at the end: the dying Johnny tells Ponyboy to 'stay gold', and a letter he left in their copy of Gone with the Wind says it again.
Q 26In A Streetcar Named Desire, who leaves with the doctor saying 'I have always depended on the kindness of strangers'?
Blanche DuBois
Blanche DuBois fights the matron who pins her arms, then goes quietly once the doctor takes off his hat and speaks to her politely, while the men in the next room go back to their poker game.
Q 27In Of Mice and Men, what did Lennie do in Weed that sent him and George fleeing a lynch mob?
Grabbed a woman's skirt
He grabbed a woman's skirt to feel the pretty fabric and in his panic would not let go; she cried rape, and the same frightened grip later kills Curley's wife.
Q 28In Lord of the Flies, what do Jack's hunters do to their faces as they take to ritual dances and pig hunts?
Paint them
They paint them: Jack first daubs his face as camouflage for hunting, then finds that the mask frees him from shame, and he dances and snarls behind it.
Q 29Which device, from a Greek compound meaning 'name-making', gives us words like 'buzz' that imitate the sounds they name?
Onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia still depends on the language you imitate in: the same rooster crows 'cock-a-doodle-doo' in English, 'cocorico' in French and 'kikeriki' in German.
Q 30Which figure of speech is at work in 'this bag weighs a ton'?
Hyperbole
Hyperbole, from the Greek for 'a throwing beyond', is even a legal category: US courts treat obvious rhetorical hyperbole as protected speech rather than defamation.