Average Literature Trivia: You Can't Take It With You | 10 Questions

Answer: Martin "Grandpa" Vanderhof

Grandpa used to be a successful businessman, before the day he realised that the most important thing in life is enjoying yourself. His philosophy is the source of the play's title. As well as indulging in any activity that grabs his interest, he has spent his life avoiding paying income tax, as he believes that the government wouldn't know what to do with the money if he gave it to them.

Herein lies the source of the problems when the IRA realises he is 24 years in arrears and sends someone to collect.

Answer: Penny Sycamore

Her official line of work is writing plays (full of melodrama and romance/sex scenes), although she doesn't actually seem to produce much in the course of this play. The dinner party in Act II gets off to a bad start when the arriving guests find a scene of family chaos that includes Penny working on a painting of Mr De Pinna, who is posing as a classical discus thrower.

Answer: Paul Sycamore

Of course, this provides just another bit of embarrassment during the dinner party, when Mr Kirby compliments what he thinks is a child's construction, only to find it belongs to the father of his son's fiancee! Paul's hobby is conducted around his commitments to the production of fireworks in the household's basement. An accidental explosion caused by a misplaced burning pipe provides the final touch to Act II, as the Kirbys are on their way home, and the Department of Justice agents have placed everyone under arrest on suspicion of plans to bomb government buildings.

Answer: Essie Carmichael

Although she spends most of her day making candy, which her husband sells after placing printed slogans in each box, Essie dreams of being a ballerina. At the time of the play, she has been studying for nearly ten years, and is absolutely dreadful, but her family uniformly praise her, encouraging her to pursue her dream.

The Kirbys arrive for the dinner party in Act II while Essie is having a ballet lesson from her teacher, Boris Kolenkhov, while her father provides music for them on the xylophone.

Answer: Boris Kolenkhov

Having escaped from Russia shortly before the Russian Revolution, Boris follows international politics with a keen interest. He feels equally strongly about the virtues of classical cultures, and demonstrates how Romans wrestled during the dinner party by throwing Mr Kirby to the floor.

His actual occupation is ballet teaching, and he is well aware that Essie has no talent for the art, but encourages her to continue her studies because he knows how much she enjoys it.

Answer: Mr De Pinna

Mr De Pinna started out as the ice delivery man, but moved in years ago after he came inside to have a word, and found himself sucked into the family vortex. It is his pipe that, left unattended when the Department of Justice agent drags him upstairs after finding him down in the basement surrounded by dynamite, causes the explosion that provides the climax of Act II.

Answer: Ed Carmichael

The xylophone is part of the chaotic start to the Act II dinner party, as he is playing it to accompany Essie in her ballet lesson. The slogans are the reason the Department of Justice invades the house - they had included a number of phrases with a distinctly anarchistic twist, and when they were found inside the boxes of candy he had sold, suspicions were aroused that there was a plot underway to blow up a government building, possibly the White House.

Answer: Anthony Kirby

During the dinner party's discussion of hobbies, Mr Kirby mentions his love of raising orchids, which seems somewhat tame in the circumstances. However, his son Tony later reveals that Anthony had always longed to engage in more interesting activities than going into the family business, producing letters in which he declares that he wanted to be a trapeze artist, and later a musician. Tony reveals that his father still has a saxophone hidden in the closet.

While he does not leave the business himself, this conversation leads him to give Tony his blessing to leave the firm and try to find what he really wants to do with his life.

Answer: Miriam Kirby

This is revealed during the dinner party discussion of hobbies, and leads to Penny mocking it as being fake. Mrs Kirby's responses in the free association game that Penny then launches lead to quite embarrassing personal revelations, and the Kirbys prepare to leave in humiliation just as the Department of Justice officers arrive.

She is not present in the final scene when Mr Kirby has reconciled himself to the Vanderhof philosophy, and one suspects that this very proper lady will never be comfortable with the changes that are underway.

Answer: Grand Duchess Olga Katrina

Although she only appears in Act III, Olga gives Boris a chance to reminisce with her about the glorious days before the Russian Revolution, and to bemoan the way in which Russian aristocrats have come down in the world. Olga waits in a restaurant, while her uncle runs an elevator. (Who remembers the days when you entered an elevator, and told the man running it which floor you wanted, then waited while he closed the doors, took the elevator to the desired floor, and opened the door for you?) Olga loves to cook, and spends most of Act III preparing the final dinner, which is eaten in celebration of Tony and Alice sorting themselves out, and Grandpa getting the IRS agents off his back.