Fiction: Stand-out Passages Trivia Quiz

Answer: The Great Gatsby

In Fitzgerald's much commented upon novel, what often becomes important are people's perceptions. This passage brings out the romantic flavor of Nick Carroway, a very important narrator of "The Great Gatsby."

Words like "gleaming white," and "frosted wedding cake of the ceiling" bring alive Nick's delight at being in this fashionable scene with its lovely women. Of course, later on, the reader recognizes that the whole world is 'false,' its people as well as its books literally with no pages in them, empty.

Answer: In Our Time

This passage specifically comes from Ernest Hemingway's "Big Two-Hearted River: Part I." Nick Adams' mind is flooded by images of war, death and devastation. Note the "burned landscape" called attention to a charred and destroyed physical world. As an alternative, he visits a river which to him could symbolize a cleansing, a purification of the rites of war. Of course, this is literary Modernism, and the river has two hearts, not one.

Therefore, this trip is not a simple cleansing experience for traumatized Nick.

He learns from it, however. in the act of fishing and reflecting. For Hemingway, it is often how people do things more than what they do that makes a difference.

Answer: The House of Mirth

Edith Wharton's "The House of Mirth" introduces a pattern--the male-hero who looks at the world from afar. In Lawrence Selden, the reader meets a person with his own very high standards--such as what he calls the "republic of the spirit." The passage above reveals Selden commenting upon various little imperfections of a woman whom he can never totally accept. Lily ultimately begins a slow, painful fall from security and, ultimately, she falls into death.

Answer: The Magic Mountain

Thomas Mann's 1924 "The Magic Mountain" is a famous novel of ideas. It takes place in a tuberculosis rest cure in the mountains where sick people could breathe pure air. The hero Hans Castorp is on a double journey--to become a complete person and also to get healthy.
"Death in Venice" is a 1912 novella by Mann which explores the writer, Gustav von Aschenbach, during his journey to Venice. In Venice, Aschenbach discovers death, (an epidemic of cholera) and love in the person of a nineteen year-old Polish boy, Tadzio.
"Obscure Destinies" is a 1932 collection of three experimental stories by Willa Cather. These stories bring out the perspectives of people often neglected in fiction: Anton Rosicky, Mrs. Harris and two friends, a cattleman and a banker, in the story by that name ("Two Friends").

Answer: Swann's Way

"Swann's Way" is the first volume of Marcel Proust's six volume novel, Remembrance of Things Past" or "In Search of Lost Time." The translation and publication of this novel reflect a change in the number of volumes and their names.

This famous passage in the first volume does two things: it introduces Swann in the crucial integrating phase of his life journey in which he includes both his childhood memory and his present. This passage also dramatizes memory, a kind of memory Proust respected which grows out of "duration," not clock time. This distinction reflects the importance of thinkers such as Henri Bergson who revolutionized notions of time.

Answer: The Odyssey of Homer

This is from the Owen Lattimore's ground-breaking 1963 translation of Homer's epic. It presents Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, upon the arrival of Odysseus after his long time away. The "Odyssey" has many so-called "recognition" scenes.

Answer: The Stranger

Albert Camus' 1942 novel, "The Stranger" is one of the most important existentialist novels in modern literature. Meursault, its hero, is sentenced to death, as much for his independence of normal social norms as for the accidental, meaningless murder he does commit. Meursault simply does not follow society's expectations concerning grieving, living, friendship. The final scene of the novel, below, presents Meursaut at his execution. Many people interpret his feelings as positive. Camus' writing explores the role of the absurd in life.

It is interesting to make note of two different translations of the same moment before his execution. The one below writes the "gentle indifference of the world(Matthew Ward 1988). A previous translation spoke of "the benign indifference of the universe." (Stuart Gilbert) There is a big difference between those two sentences. The original translation in 1946 was the second with the words "benign" and "universe."

"As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself - so like a brother, really - I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate."

Answer: The Sound and the Fury

This is from the Benjy section from William Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury."
Benjy is a thirty-three year old man who is a member of a highly dysfunctional Southern family. His sister Caddy has in the eyes of her brothers disgraced the honor of the family through her open sexuality.
To Benjy, however, much of the time "Caddy smelled like trees." The Benjy section is an eloquent exploration of pain and loss in a world without language.

Faulkner also wrote "As I Lay Dying" whose title reflects Addie, the mother of a family, dying with all her family around. After her death, the family undertook an epical, tragic-comic journey.

Gertrude Stein wrote "Three Women" and James Joyce's "The Dead" is a celebrated collection of integrated stories.

Answer: Catch 22

All the the books here have to do with war. "Catch 22" is a novel which presents the heartbreaking reality of the absurd as the following passage from the novel indicates:

"Catch-22 did not exist, he was positive of that, but it made no difference. What did matter was that everyone thought it existed, and that was much worse, for there was no object or text to ridicule or refute, to accuse, criticize, attack, amend, hate, revile, spit at, rip to shreds, trample upon or burn up."

Answer: Wuthering Heights

Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" is a brilliant presentation of class, story telling and the powers of romantic love. Catherine Earnshaw expresses both the strength of her love and also a dawning sense of selfhood, or its absence. This is a novel all about people seeing and knowing things they should not see.

Heathcliff, the epitome of the romantic hero but underclass, overhears Catherine telling the servant that she would be shamed to marry someone like him. Scenes of people watching each other through windows thread throughout this powerful nineteenth century novel.