A Page of Madness Trivia Quiz

Answer: The Yellow Wallpaper

Perhaps the best-known work of Victorian author Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper" took an approach to feminism that leaned into the Gothic horror sensibilities of the time, placing its protagonist into an isolated room of a new home and letting her suffer her alleged madness.

When the narrator hears a woman creeping behind the yellow wallpaper, she tears it free from the walls before declaring herself free (though quite the opposite is obvious). The work was the inspiration for a number of radio plays and literary works over the years-- Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber" extrapolated on similar themes (such as oppression and madness) through the lens of contemporary fairy tale retellings the better part of a century later.

Answer: The Shining

Stephen King's third novel (after "Carrie" and "'Salem's Lot"), "The Shining" is perhaps one of his best-known books. First published in 1977, it subsequently became the basis of the Stanley Kubrick horror film of the same name (starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall).

In the book, a writer moves his family into the haunted Overlook Hotel, high in the Colorado Rockies, to act as caretakers in the winter months. The cabin fever, as they find, coupled with personal and paranormal ghosts, only exacerbate their problems with madness.

Answer: A Beautiful Mind

Written by journalist Sylvia Nasar, "A Beautiful Mind" was quickly picked up by Universal and Dreamworks, becoming a Ron Howard-directed award-winning film that took Best Picture and Best Actor at the 2001 Oscars. An unauthorized biography, the book was based on the storied life of John Forbes Nash, Jr., the winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1994, who suffered from schizophrenia while also being one of the most brilliant mathematicians of his day. Nash would share the award that year with John Harsanyi and Reinhard Selten for their work in game theory with his name being used for his numerous significant theorems. Nash passed away in 2015, having died in a car crash at the age of 86.

Answer: The Tell-Tale Heart

A Gothic classic, Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" is best known for featuring a murder in which a man buries body parts beneath the floorboards of his home. Though it was clear that the murder would have been the perfect crime, the man's guilt, exacerbated by what he believed to be the sound of the corpse's beating heart, ultimately did him in.

The tale is one of Poe's countless that has been adapted for film, TV, and radio numerous times over.

Answer: Girl, Interrupted

More than thirty years after she was committed to an asylum for borderline personality disorder, Susanna Kaysen's memoir looked at the formative years of her life during a time when her mental state was under the microscope. What she recalled was nothing short of concerning; the book chronicled events in her late teenage years in which she had little semblance or recollection, but which could have been as a result of her troubled mind or potentially due to the treatment she received during her year-and-a-half-long stay in McLean Hospital.

The memoir became an award-winning film in 1999, winning Angelina Jolie an Oscar. Winona Ryder played Kaysen in the film.

Answer: American Psycho

Bret Easton Ellis' third novel, "American Psycho" became a bit of a cultural touchstone when it became a film nine years after its release, chronicling the life of Patrick Bateman, an investment banker in New York City living a life of calculated excess while embarking on a murder spree. Both the book and the film were known for being critical of a certain pre-9/11 archetype-- the Wall Street yuppie-- and the directions they took into depravity were enough to lead audiences to believe it was both transgressive horror and postmodern satire. With Bateman as the narrator, it's unsurprising to see that this one gets compared quite often to Chuck Palahniuk's "Fight Club".

Answer: Macbeth

First performed early in the 17th century, Shakespeare's "Macbeth" is perhaps one of his best-known tragedies. Following the last days of the King of Scotland, whose fateful demise would be foretold by a trio of witches, the acts of this play chronicle his and his lady's actions and their consequences. Of particular note, Lady Macbeth commences the play's fifth act unable to remove what she believes to be blood from her clean hands.

She subsequently commits suicide, driven to utter madness due to her and her husband's crimes.

Answer: Haunted

Though many of Palahniuk's earlier novels featured stories of psychologically damaged people and the absurd circumstances that brought them there, "Haunted" was the one that leaned the most into the horror genre, following a group of authors on a writer's retreat, locked away in an old theatre to write the best works of their careers.

While much of the book featured their short stories, the framing narrative tracked their activities in the house as they all became more and more depraved, seeking out the most shocking content while seeking infamy in the worst ways. "Haunted" famously contains the short story 'Guts', which has been said to be so shocking that, during readings of the tale, Palahniuk's audience members would faint.

Answer: High-Rise

An almost Freudian deconstruction of a high-rise residence can be found in "High-Rise", written by Ballard in the mid-1970s. Chronicling the degeneration of a luxury skyscraper, the novel unfolds as small problems escalate into an all-out warzone with the residents opting to stay inside and hole themselves up to commit dangerous and depraved acts.

The book was made into a movie in 2015 though it has been the basis of other films and TV shows in the past.

Answer: The Colour Out of Space

Though many of Lovecraft's works dealt with an ineffable type of madness brought on by otherworldly things, "The Colour Out of Space" was one of the author's few attempts to dissociate the idea of something human from something actually alien. What resulted was a meteorite that struck the town of Arkham, something of an unearthly, indistinguishable colour, which had the ability to destroy the crops, the livestock, and the people of the sleepy rural area.

The story was immensely influential, especially for authors like Stephen King, whose book "The Tommyknockers", was cited to be a version of the tale. Lovecraft's setting of Arkham also transcended the tale-- it may be recognizable from the Batman universe.