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This Lord of the Flies trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and covers the whole novel: the plane crash and the conch, the election that makes Ralph chief, the signal fire and Piggy's glasses, the imagined beast and the dead parachutist, the feast, the killing on the beach, Castle Rock and the naval officer at the end. It also digs into the book's history: the many rejections before Faber & Faber said yes, the discarded title and the cut nuclear-war opening, its answer to R. M. Ballantyne's The Coral Island, and what the title really means. There are questions on William Golding himself, from D-Day to the Nobel Prize, on the 1963 and 1990 films, and on the book's afterlife in Stephen King, The Simpsons and Yellowjackets. Students revising the novel will find the plot questions useful; book-club veterans can chase the harder ones. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries before publishing.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who wrote Lord of the Flies?
William Golding
It was his debut novel, written while he was still a schoolteacher in Salisbury.
Q 02In which year was Lord of the Flies first published?
1954
Its first print run of 3,000 copies sold slowly; by 2015 it had sold more than ten million.
Q 03After many rejections, which publisher finally accepted the manuscript?
Faber & Faber
Editor Charles Monteith then cut the entire opening section describing an evacuation from nuclear war.
Q 04What was the working title of the manuscript before it became Lord of the Flies?
Strangers from Within
That draft explicitly placed the island near New Guinea and Borneo; the published book never names its location.
Q 05The novel's title is a literal translation of the name of which biblical demon?
Beelzebub
The name derives from a Philistine god worshipped at Ekron, mentioned in 2 Kings.
Q 06Golding took the idea for his plot from which Victorian children's adventure novel?
The Coral Island
Ballantyne's 1857 book also stars boys called Ralph and Jack; Golding inverted its faith in British boys' natural goodness.
Q 07What object does Ralph blow to summon the scattered survivors after the crash?
A conch shell
Holding it gives a boy the right to speak at meetings, and it is smashed in the same moment Piggy dies.
Q 08How do the boys light their first signal fire?
With Piggy's glasses
Jack's tribe later steals the glasses in the night, prompting the fatal confrontation at Castle Rock.
Q 09Which three goals does Ralph set for the boys?
Have fun, survive, keep a smoke signal
The signal fire later goes out while the hunters are chasing a pig, and a passing ship sails on.
Q 10Before the crash, Jack Merridew was the leader of what at his school?
The choir
He offers his credentials as head boy and a chorister who can sing C sharp, and still loses the election to Ralph.
Q 11What health condition, along with his weight and poor eyesight, makes Piggy a target of scorn?
Asthma
He has worn glasses since he was three, and he begs Ralph not to tell the others his nickname.
Q 12What do the boys mistake for the beast on the mountaintop?
A dead parachutist
The body drifts down after an air battle near the island; the twins spot it first.
Q 13Which pair of boys first mistakes the corpse for the beast?
Sam and Eric
The twins are among Ralph's last supporters, until Jack's tribe captures them and forces them to join.
Q 21Golding asked his wife whether he should write about boys on an island who behave how?
The way children really would
He thought The Coral Island was unrealistic and set out to correct it.
Q 22During World War II, Golding commanded a landing craft during which operation?
The Normandy landings
His destroyer had earlier been briefly involved in the pursuit of the Bismarck.
Q 23Where was Golding teaching when he began writing the novel in 1951?
Bishop Wordsworth's, Salisbury
Q 14What offering does Jack's tribe leave for the beast in the forest?
A pig's head on a stick
Swarming with flies, it is the 'Lord of the Flies' of the title.
Q 15Which Lord of the Flies boy talks to the pig's head and is then killed when mistaken for the beast?
Simon
He is rushing to tell them the beast is only a dead airman when the frenzied dance turns on him.
Q 16According to the pig's head, where is the beast really to be found?
Within the boys themselves
It also predicts that the others will turn on the boy it is speaking to, which they do that night.
Q 17Who kills Piggy by dropping a boulder from Castle Rock?
Roger
He starts out quiet and grows into the tribe's most eager torturer once Jack takes power.
Q 18Who finally rescues Ralph on the beach?
A British naval officer
He landed to investigate the smoke from the forest fire the hunters set to flush Ralph out, then turns to look at his cruiser offshore.
Q 19The rescuing officer compares the boys' misadventure to which book, echoing Golding's source?
The Coral Island
He calls it a 'jolly good show', apparently unaware of the irony as he stares at his own warship.
Q 20Which two stopovers Jack mentions suggest the island is in the Indian Ocean, not the Pacific?
Gibraltar and Addis Ababa
Critic John Sutherland reads 'Gib' and 'Addis' as clues to a flight bound for Western Australia.
He taught English, philosophy, Greek and drama there, and only resigned in 1961 once the book had made him famous.
Q 24In which year was Golding awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature?
1983
The citation praised novels that 'illuminate the human condition in the world of today'.
Q 25For which 1980 novel did Golding win the Booker Prize?
Rites of Passage
It opened his sea trilogy about a voyage to Australia, later collected as To the Ends of the Earth.
Q 26Golding's second novel, The Inheritors, is about the encounter between modern humans and whom?
Neanderthals
The gentle Neanderthals come off far better than the deceitful, violent newcomers.
Q 27In which English county was Golding born in 1911?
Cornwall
He was born at his grandmother's house in Newquay and died in Cornwall too, in 1993.
Q 28In which year was Golding knighted?
1988
He had been made a CBE in 1966.
Q 29Who directed the 1963 British film of Lord of the Flies?
Peter Brook
He was nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes; the boys' dialogue had to be re-dubbed more than a year after shooting.
Q 30Where was the 1963 film shot?
Puerto Rico
Locations included Aguadilla, El Yunque and the island of Vieques.