Let Others Write Your Titles Trivia Quiz

Answer: Ode to a Nightingale

John Keats published "Ode to a Nightingale" in 1819. The speaker of the poem is burdened with the sorrow that comes as he thinks of the loss, pain, suffering, disease, old age, and death that we all must experience if we are to live. He even at one point explains that he has longed for death because of how it will put an end to his suffering. Through his imagination, however, he joins with the nightingale and lives for a moment in the bird's joyful eternal song.

While in this peaceful place, the speaker remarks, "[T]ender is the night, / And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, / Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays." There is no reason to believe that Keats is not the speaker himself. Keats lost his father to a horse accident and his mother and a brother to tuberculosis.

His family's state was caught up in legal proceedings so that he never benefitted from the financial security his inheritance would have provided, and his guardian removed him from school, where he was enjoying his pursuit of literature, to bind him in apprenticeship to a surgeon when Keats was not interested in medicine. Finally, Keats himself was diagnosed with tuberculosis and died in 1821 at the tender age of 25.

Answer: "Ecclesiastes" from the Old Testament

Ecclesiastes 1:3-5 occurs as an epigraph within the cover page of the novel, which reads thusly: "What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth forever.

The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose." (This quotation represents the wording of the King James Version of the Bible). Apparently, Hemingway, despite focusing on the "Lost Generation" meant the title to be one of hope.

The focus should be on the word "also", suggesting that while the sun sets, it also rises again. Hemingway believed that, while many of his generation had allowed their sufferings to contribute to their directionlessness, there was room for hope.

By the way, Hemingway also took a title from John Donne's "Meditation 17"--"For Whom the Bell Tolls".

Answer: Macbeth

In William Shakespeare's masterful tragedy, the title character Macbeth has just received the news of the death of his wife and queen. Weighed down by the despair, stress, and anxiety brought on by his corrupt and murderous life, he speaks these words: "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day / To the last syllable of recorded time, / And all our yesterdays have lighted fools / The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! / Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more: it is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing." The first part of Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury" interestingly is told by an "idiot," so to speak, as the narrator is a mentally challenged individual.

However, the case may be made that the other three narrators, despite possessing various degrees of increased intelligence, are no more understanding of life or reality. Life is not easily understood, and as Faulkner made very clear in his acceptance speech for his Nobel Prize for Literature, one must write from the heart, or one's tale is "signifying nothing."

Answer: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

Thomas Gray writes in his famous poem "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" of the obscurity of the poor who have died unknown to the rest of the world and who, had they been born in different circumstances, may have effected great changes in their societies and died with fame (or, perhaps in some cases, with infamy).

He at one point writes the following words: "Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, / Their sober wishes never learned to stray; / Along the cool sequestered vale of life / They kept the noiseless tenor of their way." "Far from the Madding Crowd" was Hardy's first novel to make use of Wessex, the setting for the remainder of his novels. Wessex is a name Hardy used to refer to a region of England that consisted of many of its southwest counties, such as Dorset, Devon, Somerset, and Hampshire. Hardy grew up in the area and relied on realistic landscape, towns, and ways of life for source material for his novels; however, he also tended to romanticize or idealize much of the countryside. Thus, he referred to his Wessex as "a merely realistic dream country".

Answer: To a Mouse

The complete title of the poem by Robert Burns is "To a Mouse: On Turning Her up in Her Nest with the Plough, November, 1785." The subtitle summarizes concisely the events of the poem. The farmer feels remorse for the suffering and frustration he has brought into the life of the mouse and feels guilty that "Man's dominion / Has broken Nature's social union". Nevertheless, from this event, the farmer gleans a sobering lesson about the condition of all of life's creatures: "The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men / Gang aft agley." Translated from the Scottish dialect Burns used for his poetry, these lines would read, "The most well-thought-out plans of both mice and men often go awry." However, the farmer/poet feels mankind's existence is more tragic than that of mice, or any other animals for that matter, for while mice, mentally speaking, live only in the present, mankind must dwell in the regrets of the past and in the worries and fears of the future. Man's lot in life is a depressing one, indeed, and thus the line is a most fitting one to serve as Steinbeck's title.

Answer: The Second Coming

William Butler Yeats, the great Irish poet, wrote "The Second Coming" shortly after the end of World War I, and near the beginning of the poem are found these words: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world".

The entire poem allows Yeats to express his belief that Western society had crumbled and that the return of tyrannical, corrupt, and evil governments were going to take advantage of this situation to rise to power, particularly when the good had become indifferent and apathetic.

He speaks of the Second Coming, not of Christ but of Anti-Christ, as is represented by the beast at the end of the poem, which "Slouches to Bethlehem to be born". Yeats believed that what people think of as Anti-Christ had already existed during the time of ancient Babylon through the time of the Roman Empire, which declined and opened the door for a more Christian rule throughout Europe. Now, however, godlessness had returned. "Things Fall Apart" seems a most appropriate title for Achebe's book not only because the main character's life, family, and society were crumbling but also because they were crumbling as a result of a new and foreign government's trespass and domination.

Answer: Walt Whitman

"I Sing the Body Electric" is among the poems published in Whitman's very first edition of "Leaves of Grass". This particular poem is concerned with the beauty of the human body and its function as a means that allows connection between people, whether that connection be an erotic one or a platonic one. To someone reading this poem in the context of other poems in the collection, it would become clear that Whitman is attempting to argue that the body is not an inferior entity compared to the soul; Whitman seems to believe that there exists an interconnectedness between the body and the soul.

Herein, most likely, is Bradbury's attraction to the title. On the surface, his short story seems completely unrelated to what Whitman is doing in his poem. Bradbury's story is about an attempt to replace a girl's lost mother with an electronic grandmother--a robot.

However, the girl eventually realizes that her grandmother is immortal. Thus, Bradbury seems to be suggesting that his title is more than a literal one about an electronic body; he too seems to cling to Whitman's belief that there is something within each body, no matter what it is made of, that transcends physical or material existence.

Answer: John Milton

John Milton, of "Paradise Lost" fame, wrote "Lycidas" in 1637 and dedicated it to Edward King, a college acquaintance who had drowned at sea when the ship on which he was a passenger sank. Milton's title seems to refer to the Lycidas that Herodotus wrote of, an Athenian leader who attempted to compromise with Xerxes I, the enemy of Athens, and was consequently stoned to death because he was suspected of being a traitor. Milton saw King's death as unjust or unfair and struggled to justify its occurrence as a moral one; obviously, he thought of Lycidas' death similarly.

The particular lines from which Wolfe drew his title are "Look homeward Angel now, and melt with ruth: / And, O ye Dolphins, waft the hapless youth". "Ruth" is an older term for "pity", "hapless" means "without luck or fortune", and dolphins had been used in Greek tales and myths as performers of sea rescues. Prior to settling on "Look Homeward Angel", Wolfe had used "The Building of a Wall" and "O Lost" for titles of his novel.

Answer: The Lady of Shalott

Alfred, Lord Tennyson published his famous poem "The Lady of Shalott" in 1833 and republished it slightly altered in 1842. The poem is referred to several times in Christie's novel, and the following lines, from which comes the title of her novel, are quoted often: "Out flew the web and floated wide; / The mirror crack'd from side to side; / 'The curse is come upon me,' cried / The Lady of Shalott." Miss Marple also quotes the last three lines of the poem at the end of the novel: "'She has a lovely face; / God in his mercy lend her grace, / The Lady of Shalott.'"

Answer: An Essay on Criticism

Alexander Pope wrote "An Essay on Criticism" in 1709. Remarkably, he was only twenty-one years old at the time, yet he composes this lengthy essay in heroic couplets to explain to many older and more experienced than he how they should approach the fine art of literary criticism.

The poem is filled with pithy couplets perfect for memorizing and quoting. For example, consider the following: "Words are like leaves; and where they most abound, / Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found" and "Good nature and good sense must ever join; / To err is human, to forgive divine".

The exact line from which E. M. Forster takes his title for his novel is "For fools rush in where angels fear to tread".