To Kill a Mockingbird 2: More Mocking Quiz

Answer: Wuthering Heights 2: Even More Wuthering

Emily Bronte's novel "Wuthering Heights" intricately weaves stories-within-stories-within-stories as the book's original narrator, Mr. Lockwood, listens to some Romantic on-goings on the Moors of northern England. Nelly Dean, Lockwood's housekeeper, spins a long tale about Lockwood's neighbor, Mr. Heathcliff.

Heathcliff, in the present a real grouch, was originally a gypsy boy adopted by Mr. Earnshaw, the owner of the estate called Wuthering Heights. He falls in love as a child with Earnshaw's daughter Catherine, but Catherine grows estranged from him and marries Edgar Linton, the heir to Thrushcross Grange, instead. Heathcliff then marries Edgar's sister Isabella and winds up inheriting Wuthering Heights. Neither marriage is happy. Catherine dies in childbirth. Heathcliff schemes to get Catherine's daughter, Cathy, to marry his own son Linton, but Cathy instead marries Hareton Earnshaw, the son of Catherine's brother Hindley.

As the novel shifts to the present, Heathcliff's behavior grows more and more erratic, as he wanders in the moors in the hopes that he will see Catherine as a ghost once more. He dies and is buried next to Catherine.

Answer: The Brothers Karamazov 2: Ivan's Idea of a Novella

The reference to Jesus and the Devil in the question refers to one of the most famous passages from "The Brothers Karamazov". In a "poem in prose" titled "The Grand Inquisitor", Ivan, the intellectual brother, explains his doubt to Alexei, the religious brother. Christ comes back to Seville in the middle of the Spanish Inquisition, where the Inquisitor explains to him that the burden of freedom placed upon Man by rejecting temptation is overwhelming.

Parables aside, the plot of "The Brothers Karamazov" is essentially a mystery: who killed the brothers' father, Fyodor? Blame is immediately cast on the eldest brother, Dmitry, a hedonist who was vying against his father for the hand of Grushenka. Dmitry is arrested and tried, even though, as the audience slowly finds out, the circumstantial evidence against him is inconclusive, and the real culprit in the matter was the fourth brother, an illegitimate epileptic villain named Smerdyakov. Ivan blames himself for the crime, believing that his anti-religious philosophizing may have driven Smerdyakov to the crime.

Answer: The Great Gatsby 2: The Adventures of Klipspringer

Adding insult to injury: at the end of "The Great Gatsby", Nick Carraway is making preparations for Gatsby's funeral, when he receives a phone call from Gatsby's personal piano-playing holder-on Klipspringer, who left his tennis shoes at the mansion and could he please go get them? Yeesh.

Klipspringer, of course, was just one of hundreds of inconstant attendees at Gatsby's famous parties at the mansion in New York. Nick, Gatsby's neighbor, narrates the whole tale. Gatsby had loved Nick's cousin, Daisy Buchanan, since childhood. He purchased the house and threw the parties every Saturday evening in the hopes that Daisy, who lived just across the bay with her brutish husband Tom, would come on over.

Of course, eventually Daisy and Gatsby do meet, and sparks fly. Unfortunately, Daisy's husband isn't too happy about the situation, even though he's carrying on a blatant affair with another woman. Unfortunately for Gatsby, he winds up in the wrong car, and later, in the wrong swimming pool. Daisy runs over Tom's mistress, Gatsby gets the blame, and the mistress' husband shoots Gatsby.

Answer: The Plague 2: Even More Plague

Albert Camus' classic 1947 novel "The Plague" is filled with social criticism and existential philosophy. Rats begin to die on the streets throughout the French-Algerian city of Oran; soon after, patients begin to fall sick with the bubonic plague, deaths skyrocketing. Quarantine is declared. Dr. Bernard Rieux, who had sent his wife away to a sanatorium, is left alone and helpless to counteract the deadly infection.

The social criticism is slathered on in voluminous helpings. The local priest uses the plague as an opportunity to increase church attendance and improve his self-importance. Greedy businessmen take advantage of the quarantine to make a lot of money. Camus, though never a self-declared existentialist, borrows the philosophy by pointing out that all men and women, no matter social standing, are equal before the plague, and can equally die from it.

Answer: The Catcher in the Rye 2: Ackley's Confession

Much of the first part of JD Salinger's 1951 novel "The Catcher in the Rye" consists of Holden Caulfield, the book's narrator, complaining about Ackley, his neighbor at a fancy prep school. (He also has some choice words for his roommate Stradlater, who doesn't appreciate good writing when he sees it.)

Holden then runs away from Pencey Prep--not for the first time, he drops out of school--and wanders around New York City, searching for a sympathetic soul. He calls up a few old girlfriends, talks to cabbies about ducks, chats up some nuns about "Romeo and Juliet", and finally reveals his inner turmoil: a teenager unwilling and afraid to join adulthood. Holden wishes he could be a "catcher in the rye"--an image from a Robbie Burns poem about a man who "catches" children as they fall off a cliff into maturity.

Though the novel has seen its fair share of controversy, especially with regard to its language and its apparent incitement to violence of John Hinckley Jr., it's well regarded as a staple of modern American literature and read widely.

Answer: Macbeth 2: The Return of the King

Perhaps the Bard was anticipating JRR Tolkien when, in "Macbeth", the Witches prophesy that Macbeth can only die when Birnham Wood comes to his castle. They also tell him that he can only be killed by a man "not born of woman." Unfortunately for our Scottish hero, Macduff was born in a Caesarean section, and his army had cut down some trees from the forest and brought them along. Oops.

Macbeth earned Macduff's vengeance in the first place when the general's ambition got the best of him. Under guidance from another prophecy and the even-more-ambitious glare of his wife, Macbeth kills King Duncan and is instated on the throne. Then he kills lots more people who stand in his way: Banquo, Banquo's family, and most of Macduff's family too, though Macduff gets away. Double oops.

Guilt-ridden, Lady Macbeth issues her famous "sleepwalking" scene, when she imagines blood staining her hands, and Macbeth, in his turn, speaks about "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" upon hearing of his wife's suicide. Not a good state of mind to be in when Macduff is coming to take revenge on your castle. They fight, and Macbeth loses, his head paraded on stage at the play's conclusion.

Answer: 1984 2: Or, 1986

In 1949 George Orwell published his terrifying view of 35 years into the future, titled "1984", so it's only logical that its sequel, "1984 2", should be set in 1986.

Not much has changed since the first installment. Telescreens, monitored cameras peeping into people's everyday lives, instill Party discipline. Food is scarce, society is heavily stratified, and any disobedient thought immediately gets its owner arrested by the Thought Police and sent to the torture chamber, Room 101 in the ironically-named Ministry of Love.

In the original novel, the Party of Oceania instills discipline in its citizens through war propaganda--the nation has been at war with Eurasia, it has always been at war with Eurasia, it has always been allied with Eastasia, and so on. Then there's Big Brother, the figurehead of the Party who may or may not actually exist. Winston, the book's protagonist, believes that hope lies with the proles (proletariat) to overthrow the Party and re-institute democracy in the futuristic year of 1984.

Answer: Dracula 2: The Vampire Strikes Back

Bram Stoker's "Dracula" begins with a real estate agent, Jonathan Harker, traveling to Transylvania to talk with the Count about his latest venture, a manor in London called Carfax. Unfortunately, he gets locked up in the castle and barely escapes with his life.

After those exciting events, we get treated to pages upon pages of correspondence between Lucy Westenra and Mina Murray talking about all their various suitors and isn't it so hard to pick one man when three of them love you at the same time? The boring bits do coalesce, though, when Lucy slowly transforms into a vampire after nightly visits from the Count. Harker, Mina, an expert in vampires named Abraham Van Helsing, and Lucy's three suitors then band together to stop Dracula from his reign of terror over London.

One of the suitors, Quincey Morris, hails from Texas. In the final climactic battle, he perishes. So it would only make sense that Texans would come to seek their revenge on the vampire-hunters in the sequel, right? And Seth Grahame-Smith would tell you, when it comes to American vampires, the only option you've got is: Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter.

(Apologies for the Star Wars puns!)

Answer: Waiting for Godot 2: Still Not Moving

Another play of nothing happening? It can only be Samuel Beckett's follow-up to "Waiting for Godot", "Waiting for Godot 2: Still Not Moving"!

In the original French-language play, two foolish young men named Vladimir and Estragon wait on stage for a mysterious man named Godot to show up. That's pretty much it.

Just kidding (kind of). The play typifies the Theater of the Absurd, a 20th century movement closely tied with existentialism. There's also some political undertones and a good deal of talk about Christianity, too. Two characters actually do join Vladimir and Estragon on stage: Pozzo, an pompous buffoon, and his slave Lucky. In the second act, Pozzo returns on stage, this time as a blind man.

Answer: Candide 2: Newton's Revenge

Voltaire's novella "Candide" couldn't possibly have a sequel, since there are no more conceivable bad things that could happen to the perennial optimist Candide and his lunacy-spouting teacher Pangloss. Candide gets kicked out of his home for kissing his love Cunegonde. Pangloss convinces him that, no worries, this is the "best of all possible worlds", and there's no reason to be down! Just because you get beaten to pieces by the Bulgarian army, and I've got syphilis, doesn't mean we should despair! Voltaire was specifically parodying the theodicy promulgated by German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Leibniz. Leibniz's other claim to fame was that he and Isaac Newton invented calculus.

The novella itself is darkly comical. Frequently, characters thought dead come back to life in miraculous circumstances. After Candide sees the horrors of the world first-hand, he finally starts to doubt the teachings of Pangloss and settles down, famously ending the novel by wishing to "cultivate our garden."