Literature for grades 5–6: questions with answers
The Literature questions for grades 5–6 from the game, with the correct answers and an explanation for each.
What is the name of Robinson Crusoe's companion on the island?
- Monday
- Sunday
- Saturday
- Friday
Correct answer: Friday — Crusoe names the man after the day he rescued him; Daniel Defoe's novel of 1719 is often called the first English novel.
In Gulliver's Travels, what is the land of the tiny people called?
- Lilliput
- Brobdingnag
- Laputa
- Utopia
Correct answer: Lilliput — Jonathan Swift's 1726 satire takes Gulliver to Lilliput, where people are six inches tall, and to Brobdingnag, a land of giants.
Who wrote Dracula?
- Mary Shelley
- Edgar Allan Poe
- Bram Stoker
- Oscar Wilde
Correct answer: Bram Stoker — The Irish author published the novel in 1897; the vampire count travels from Transylvania to England.
Who wrote The Jungle Book?
- Rudyard Kipling
- Jack London
- Robert Louis Stevenson
- H. Rider Haggard
Correct answer: Rudyard Kipling — Kipling published Mowgli's stories in 1894 and in 1907 became the first English-language writer to win the Nobel Prize.
Who wrote The Old Man and the Sea?
- John Steinbeck
- William Faulkner
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Ernest Hemingway
Correct answer: Ernest Hemingway — The story of the Cuban fisherman Santiago and the giant marlin (1952) helped Hemingway win the Nobel Prize in 1954.
Which novel by George Orwell features Big Brother?
- Animal Farm
- 1984
- Brave New World
- Fahrenheit 451
Correct answer: 1984 — The slogan "Big Brother is watching you" comes from Orwell's novel about a totalitarian state that rewrites the past.
Who is Odysseus's faithful wife in the Odyssey?
- Helen
- Andromache
- Cassandra
- Penelope
Correct answer: Penelope — Penelope holds off her suitors for years by weaving a shroud by day and unpicking it at night.
In the Iliad, which Trojan hero is killed by Achilles?
- Paris
- Priam
- Hector
- Aeneas
Correct answer: Hector — Achilles kills Hector to avenge his friend Patroclus and drags the body around the walls of Troy.
Who commands the submarine Nautilus in Jules Verne's novel?
- Captain Ahab
- Captain Hook
- Captain Nemo
- Captain Flint
Correct answer: Captain Nemo — Nemo means "no one" in Latin; Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was published in 1870.
Quasimodo is the bell-ringer of which cathedral?
- Chartres Cathedral
- Notre-Dame
- Cologne Cathedral
- Westminster Abbey
Correct answer: Notre-Dame — Victor Hugo's 1831 novel revived public interest in the neglected Paris cathedral and led to its restoration.
Who wrote Doctor Zhivago?
- Boris Pasternak
- Mikhail Bulgakov
- Mikhail Sholokhov
- Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Correct answer: Boris Pasternak — Banned in the USSR, the novel was first published in Italy in 1957; Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1958 but was forced to decline it.
In Kafka's The Metamorphosis, what does Gregor Samsa turn into?
- An insect
- A crocodile
- A rat
- A wolf
Correct answer: An insect — The story opens with Gregor waking up transformed; Kafka never specifies the kind of insect and forbade drawing it on the cover.
Which war is the setting of All Quiet on the Western Front?
- The Franco-Prussian War
- The First World War
- The Spanish Civil War
- The Second World War
Correct answer: The First World War — Erich Maria Remarque drew on his own service in the trenches; the 1929 novel was later burned by the Nazis.
In which country was Gabriel García Márquez born?
- Mexico
- Colombia
- Argentina
- Peru
Correct answer: Colombia — He was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1927 and won the Nobel Prize in 1982.
Who wrote The Adventures of Pinocchio?
- Carlo Collodi
- Italo Calvino
- Gianni Rodari
- Edmondo De Amicis
Correct answer: Carlo Collodi — Collodi was the pen name of Carlo Lorenzini, taken from his mother's home village in Tuscany; the book appeared in 1883.
The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are epics of which country?
- China
- Persia
- India
- Japan
Correct answer: India — The Mahabharata, written in Sanskrit, is about ten times the length of the Iliad and Odyssey combined.
Who is the young Gascon who joins the Three Musketeers?
- Aramis
- Athos
- Porthos
- D'Artagnan
Correct answer: D'Artagnan — D'Artagnan was based on a real 17th-century captain of the king's musketeers, Charles de Batz de Castelmore.
Who wrote the Roman epic the Aeneid?
- Ovid
- Horace
- Virgil
- Cicero
Correct answer: Virgil — Virgil's poem tells how the Trojan Aeneas fled the burning city and founded the line that led to Rome.
Which country was Hans Christian Andersen from?
- Sweden
- Norway
- Netherlands
- Denmark
Correct answer: Denmark — Andersen was born in Odense in 1805, the son of a poor shoemaker; a statue of his Little Mermaid sits in Copenhagen harbour.
Who wrote the verse novel Eugene Onegin?
- Mikhail Lermontov
- Alexander Pushkin
- Nikolai Gogol
- Ivan Turgenev
Correct answer: Alexander Pushkin — Pushkin wrote the novel entirely in verse between 1823 and 1831; Tchaikovsky later turned it into an opera.