Literary Famous Last Words Part I Quiz

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. "O happy dagger! This is thy sheath; there rust, and let me die!" So ends the life of one of fiction's most famous females, a character who stabs herself in a climactic scene. Earlier, her lover had drunk poison, mistakenly believing that this character was dead, but she had only drunk a potion that made her appear so. Who was this Shakespearean character?

Answer: Juliet

Juliet and her famous Romeo fall in love at first sight, but the prologue to Shakespeare's famous play tells the reader that both would ultimately die. The reason for their deaths is tragic fate: on the day that Romeo and Juliet were destined to marry, Romeo kills Juliet's cousin Tybalt in a duel, earning him banishment from the city of Verona by the local prince. Juliet's father, Lord Capulet, promises her hand in marriage to Paris, so Juliet uses a potion to feign death until Romeo comes to save her. Romeo doesn't know that Juliet was actually alive, and he swallows a poison to kill himself at her "tomb".

When she wakes up and sees her lover dead, Juliet says her famous last line and stabs at her heart.

2. Sometimes, famous last lines can be more famous than the work they come from. So it was that Giles Corey's last lines in "The Crucible" endure in popular culture. Being burdened by heavy stones, the old man gave his last speech: "More weight". What early event in American history was the backdrop for Arthur Miller's play in which this line appears?

Answer: Salem witch trials

Arthur Miller wrote "The Crucible" in the mid-1900s as a protest against the mob-style politics of the era. Driven by an anti-Communism fervor led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, American citizens deeply distrusted anything foreign and believed that Communism was infesting the government, despite very little evidence to prove it. "The Crucible" satires mob mentality from 300 years before that, when the town of Salem became overrun by fear of the devil when a group of girls fell sick after dancing (supposedly contacting spirits).

The sensible voices of Giles Corey and the play's protagonist John Proctor do little to convince the townsfolk that witchcraft is a myth, and indeed, the characters die at the end of the play after a practical joke by young girls turns deadly serious.

3. Whose last lines in a 19th century American novel were, "Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! THUS, I give up the spear!"

Answer: Ahab

Captain Ahab is the most famous character in Herman Melville's opus "Moby Dick". Ahab lost a leg to the titular white sperm whale, and he spends the rest of the novel trying to get revenge on Moby Dick, endangering the lives of his crewmates in the process. Moby Dick symbolizes a variety of concepts, but is generally used to refer to God, and Ahab's quest to capture the whale is symbolic of man's ill-fated quest for knowledge.

The story is told by Ishmael, an unimportant character on Ahab's ship "Pequod"; unfortunately for readers, Ishmael dedicates long portions of the book to information about whales, harpooning, and other nonrelevant topics, so the book is impressive in size.

4. Her last lines are "No! Oh, don't, don't go. It is the last time! Edgar will not hurt us. Heathcliff, I shall die! I shall die!" This character then dies in childbirth, producing a daughter that shared her name and leaving tremendous grief upon her childhood friend Heathcliff. He then wanders the moors to try to find her spirit. Who was this female character in "Wuthering Heights"?

Answer: Catherine Earnshaw

Of the other three options, only Nelly was a character in Emily Bronte's only novel, "Wuthering Heights", and it is from her perspective that we see the sad story of the love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff. Heathcliff had been adopted by Mr. Earnshaw as a companion for Catherine and her brother Hindley; unfortunately, Hindley strongly dislikes Heathcliff, a hatred that intensifies after Hindley is sent to college and Heathcliff remains with Mr. Earnshaw.

When Hindley inherits the family mansion at Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff and Catherine begin a strong relationship, which falls apart after Catherine falls for Edgar Linton, a rich boy from the neighboring estate at Thrushcross Grange.

Heathcliff flees Wuthering Heights and then returns several years later, richer and more mysterious than ever, but he witnesses Cathy's death in childbirth and eventually pleads for her spirit to remain on Earth after her death.

He eventually dies, wandering on the moors looking for Cathy.

5. Books sometimes hinge on a dramatic last line, and so it is with Charles Dickens' masterpiece "A Tale of Two Cities". The last line of the novel is spoken by a character about to go to the guillotine, having sacrificed his life to save his friend and look-a-like from death in the French Revolution. Who uttered the famous last line, "It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known"?

Answer: Sydney Carton

Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay look exactly alike, which caused no end of difficulties for the characters in "A Tale of Two Cities". Darnay was a relative of the cruel Marquis Evremonde, who was eventually killed during the prologue to the French Revolution.

As the revolution stirs in France, Darnay goes to France to rescue a friend, but he himself is captured by the rebels. Sydney Carton, a friend of Darnay's who had rescued him from a sticky legal situation in London earlier in the novel, switches places with Darnay and goes to his death in place of his friend.

6. "The white man whose power you know too well has ordered this meeting to stop." These are the last words of the character Okonkwo on one of the most famous African novels of all time, a protest against European colonization particularly of the author's home country, Nigeria. After his famous last words, Okonkwo leads a failed rebellion against the whites, and after he realizes that his plan is futile, he hangs himself. What is the name of the novel in which these events occur, written by Chinua Achebe?

Answer: Things Fall Apart

Things really do fall apart for Okonkwo during the book: he is highly respected by his clansmen as a successful wrestler, and his wives and children respect and fear his power. But during a celebration, Okonkwo's gun accidentally misfires, and he is forced to leave the village of Umofia for seven years' exile.

When he returns, whites have completely changed the dynamics of the village: introducing Christianity and breaking up old traditions. Okonkwo's fight to preserve his culture ultimately fails, and his death is of small note.

The last line of the novel says that the European man would add the story of Okonkwo into his new book, "The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger".

7. She is married to Alexsey Alexsandrovich, who refuses to grant her a divorce after she has an affair with the dashing military man Count Aleksey Vronsky. She starts growing paranoid after she is unable to talk to her legitimate son Seryozha, and ultimately comes to the insane conclusion that Vronsky is cheating on her. Leaving this world with the words, "Lord, forgive me everything", who was this Tolstoy heroine, who throws herself under a train at the end of her namesake novel?

Answer: Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina is one of the protagonists of the novel, in addition to Konstantin Levin, and the two characters couldn't be much different. Anna is a society woman whose dreams of a beautiful romantic life are stifled by her no-nonsense government husband. Levin is a farmer struggling to adapt to new agricultural techniques and is confronted by his own questionable faith in God. Anna elopes with Vronsky, is spurned by society for her behavior, and grows sick with life. Levin finds happiness with Kitty Scherbatskya, who had originally loved the count until he showed a preference for Anna. Tolstoy's novel has a clear theme: a life of sedentary agriculture and a firm faith in God is infinitely preferable to an exciting city life fraught with societal concerns and uncertain moral standards.

8. Marlowe says that his last words are "My god, my god, look not so fierce on me! Adders, and serpents, let me breathe awhile! Ugly hell gape not! Come not, Lucifer! I'll burn my books-ah, Mephastophilis!", but different authors have given him slightly different endings. Either way, the story's the same: this character sells his soul to the devil in exchange for learning his powerful dark arts. He has fun for a while, before the devil comes to exact his payment upon this scholar. Who was this man, whose story is recorded in the aforementioned plays?

Answer: Faust

Faust was a legendary scholar who did a very bad thing: selling one's soul to the devil is generally a pretty terrible idea after one's life is up. Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus" is one of the most well-known takes on the legend, as is Goethe's "Faust".

9. Getting stabbed in the back is generally a figurative expression, unless you are Josef K, a bank clerk living a fairly normal life. Yet Josef was arrested for a crime he didn't commit, didn't learn what the crime was, and was ultimately stabbed to death by fellow employees without a reason being given. In what novella does Josef K utter his famous last line "The dogs!" before being killed?

Answer: The Trial

Franz Kafka is famous for his bizarre plots and characters, which make up stories like "The Metamorphosis", "The Castle", and as noted above, "The Trial". Josef K desperately tries to learn for what he had been arrested, and what the consequences of it are, but he is unable to find an answer.

His lawyer gains little information about the progress of his trial, which never actually occurs in the book. Eventually, Josef is stabbed, ignorant of why he was under arrest or why he had been killed.

10. This character's last recorded words were to tell his chauffeur that his car shouldn't be taken out of the garage under any circumstances; that accomplished, he hurried off to his outdoor pool. It wasn't long before Wilson, seeking revenge upon this character for the death of his wife Myrtle, shot him in the pool. Who was this title character of 1925 novel?

Answer: Jay Gatsby

"The Great Gatsby" is F. Scott Fitzgerald's most famous work and the most influential novel to come out of the 1920s "Jazz Age" in America. One of Fitzgerald's points about the era is the insubstantiality of relationships: Gatsby loves Daisy Buchanan, and Daisy loves Gatsby, but she's married to Tom. Tom has an affair with Myrtle, who is sick of her married life. Nick Carraway, the first-person narrator who has very little to do with the story, traces Gatsby's attempts to buy Daisy's love, Tom's jealousy of Gatsby, and the ultimate climax of the story, when Daisy accidentally (or on purpose, the text is unclear) runs over Myrtle. Myrtle's husband thinks that Gatsby did it after Tom tells him a blatant lie, so he kills Gatsby in the pool surreptitiously.

Source: Author adams627

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor LadyCaitriona before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.

Many great works of literature involve the death of a major character, be it the protagonist or another. See if you can identify the deceased character by his or her last lines, plus a couple of other hints!

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