The Quest for the Holy Mail Trivia Quiz

Answer: Hawthorne - "The Scarlet Letter"

Yes, this is Nathaniel (Nate, to his pals) Hawthorne's letter to end his writer's block for "The Scarlet Letter", which tells the story of Hester Prynne's ostracization by the townspeople in her Puritan village for the affair she had and the pregnancy that ensued.

This amazing work is very well written, so please don't judge it based on the terrible movie adaptation starring Demi Moore. The Hollywood-ized story even changed the ending so that it wouldn't be so depressing! Believe me, the real thing is much better than the watered-down version.

Answer: False

The book described here is actually "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", a young white southerner who befriended Jim, an escaped black slave. Huck helps Jim escape and the two muse on life as they float down the Mississippi. Twain used unconventional spelling and grammar to mimic the way that Huck and Jim would talk to each other, and many schools have removed the book from their reading lists because of this.

Answer: Shakespeare - "Macbeth"

The lines that our Will (aka William) Shakespeare is writing about are:

"Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble."

Which are chanted in unison by the witches at the beginning of "Macbeth."

The other veiled reference to Shakespeare's work is from "Romeo and Juliet":

"Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow."

Answer: WALDEN POND

Henry David Thoreau wrote "Walden Pond" in 1854, a time in his life when he was questioning everything that society held dear.

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion."

Answer: Poe - "The Telltale Heart"

In Edgar Allen Poe's short story, "The Telltale Heart", the first-person narrator tries to justify and explain his murder of an old man, all the while arguing that he is completely sane. The narrator undermines his own purpose, however, when his imaginings of the dead man's heart still beating loudly from under the floorboards where he is buried cause the narrator-murderer to confess the crime to the unsuspecting police.

Answer: Bronte - "Jane Eyre"

Charlotte Bronte was one of the three Bronte sisters who influenced English writing in the mid-1800s. Charlotte wrote "Jane Eyre," about a young orphaned girl who was forced to work as a governess to make her way in the world in 1847. The book has been made into a movie a couple of times, and the adaptations have not been bad, but it's always best to read the book first!

Answer: IN COLD BLOOD

Truman Capote is said to be the first to have written a true-crime novel when he penned "In Cold Blood" about the killing of the Clutter family in their beds in 1959 by drifters Richard Hickock and Perry Smith. Harper Lee, Capote's childhood friend and the author of "To Kill a Mockingbird" helped him gather the information needed to write the novel.

It was published in 1965 and then filmed in 1967. The movie starred Robert Blake, who would later in life be put on trial for the murder of his girlfriend and the mother of his daughter.

Answer: Eliot - "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

Many know the beginning of T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot's forlorn ode:

"LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question....
Oh, do not ask, 'What is it?'
Let us go and make our visit."

The line in question mentioned in the letter is:

"In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo."

The other reference in the hypothetical epistle is to another of Eliot's famous works, "The Wasteland."

Answer: True

"Heart of Darkness" is said to be the inspiration for Coppola's "Apocalypse Now." It explores the nature of a commander deep in the jungle, who some see as a god and others as a madman.

"Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I can't say. I think the knowledge came to him at last--only at the very last. But the wilderness found him out early, and had taken vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude--and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core."

Answer: Mitchell - "Gone with the Wind"

Margaret Mitchell's only published novel was "Gone with the Wind". She wrote many drafts of the epic tale of Scarlett O'Hara and the old South, and she almost gave up a few times because the task was so daunting. Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937 for the novel, and it was made into a groundbreaking film in 1939 starring Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Olivia De Havilland, Leslie Howard and Hattie McDaniel. Mitchell was killed in 1949 in a traffic accident in the city of Atlanta. Years after her death, a short novel that she wrote in two notebooks in the mid-1920s called "Lost Laysen" was found, edited and published. "Gone with the Wind" is undoubtedly her masterpiece.