They said WHAT?
Drama queens (and kings)
Culture and context
Important folks
Poetry corner
100

This character says that “It’s a terrible thing to take a person’s life - it’s the worst thing that anyone can ever do. Even God doesn’t forgive that. You know that, don’t you? And yet you did it. You are murderers."

Who is Baby Kochamma?

100

She just wanted to protect her 'daughter' from a world that its "dark and wild"

Who is The Witch?

100

Wide Sargasso Sea is a work of speculative fiction telling the backstory of the "mad woman in the attic" from this Charlotte Brontë novel.

What is Jane Eyre?

100

A native of Worthington Minnesota, he served with the 23rd infantry division as a rifleman from the autumn of 1969 until the winter of 1970.

Who is Tim O'Brien?

100

This noteworthy locale off the Gulf Coast, ravaged by a hurricane in the 1960s, serves as the destination of the speaker in Trethewey's "Theories of Time and Space"

What is Ship Island?

200

This character says "When I'm out there at night, I feel close to my own body, I can feel my blood moving, my skin, my fingernails, everything...I'm on fire - I'm burning away into nothing"

Who is Mary Anne Bell?

200

After suffering ingestion by a deceitful lupine carnivore, this crimson-shrouded juvenile is emancipated, along with her elderly progenitor, via blade, and reflects upon the seductive nature of blossoms and the distinction between niceness and goodness.

Who is little Red Riding Hood?

200

The tale of Grenouille in Perfume coincides with the lead-up to this earthshaking, violent societal upheaval in 1787, ending the Ancien Régime

The French Revolution

200

Although they are in a moment of passionate intimacy, Mustafa Sa'eed nevertheless plunges a knife into her chest, killing her.

Who is Jean Morris?

200

This poet wrote that although a personified America feeds him "bread of bitterness" and "sinks into (his) throat her tiger’s tooth, stealing (his) breath of life, (he) will confess (he) loves this cultured hell that tests (his) youth"

Who is Claude McKay?

300

She said "Sometimes I'll look up at the clock and it's half past five and I'm sure he's on his way home from the office and I'll panic, thinking 'I should have started the rice by now'"

Who is the The Woman/Mother from WTEWD?

300

This character says: "The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty! Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers..."

Who is Lady MacBeth?

300

As reflected in her poetry, Natasha Trethewey seems deeply influenced by this major 1969 Gulf Coast weather event

Hurricane Camille

300

During The Enlightenment, This Frenchman proved himself a master of satire and societal/political/religious criticism. 

Who is Voltaire?

300

This Frost poem, in which the inconsistent form mimics the speaker's mindset, features ladders, fruit, dreamlike auditory imagery, hyperbole, and a hibernating rodent.

What is "After Apple Picking"

400

This character remembers "I pursued her for three years and then married her. My bedroom became a theatre of war; my bed a patch of hell. when I grasped her it was like grasping at clouds, like bedding a shooting star, like mounting the back of a Prussian military march"

Who is Mustafa Sa'eed?

400

He thinks ambitious thoughts, but he does not translate those thoughts into action. He stands as a rebuke to Macbeth, representing the path Macbeth chose not to take: a path in which ambition need not lead to betrayal and murder. It is his ghost—and not Duncan’s—that haunts Macbeth.

Who is Banquo?

400

This elaborate performative dance style, unique to south India and featured as a plot device in The God of Small Things, is used in temples to tell Hindu stories and legends.

What is Kathakali dancing?

400

Although he never won an Emmy®, he did manage a Pulitzer®, an Oscar®, eight Grammys®, eight Tonys®, and a bunch of other accolades for his song-smithing and storytelling skill.

Who is Stephen Sondheim?

400

In Trethewey's "Pilgrimage", the poet takes us on a tour of this once besieged riverside Mississippi town with "old mansions hunkered on the bluffs" in which "the whole city is a grave".

What is Vicksburg?


500

She says “All women, all colours, nothing but fools. Three children I have. One living in this world, each one a different father, but no husband, I thank my God. I keep my money. I don’t give it to no worthless man...  Have spunks and do battle for yourself. Speak to your husband calm and cool…Don’t bawl at the man and don’t make crazy faces. Don’t cry either."

Who is Christophine? (WSS)

500

Her focus is on family, loyalty and goodness, creating a foil for Lady MacBeth, who schemes for power and slides toward depravity

Who is Lady MacDuff

500

The December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor that led to the eventual internment of Japanese Americans was ordered by this divine Japanese emperor.

What was Hirohito?

500

According to this Enlightenment figure, we live in the 'BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS' that God could have possibly created.

Who is Gottfried Leibniz?

500

These are the two reptiles found in the Frost poems we read - one bright green, and one bound in a "shell of gritty leather"

What are a snake and a turtle?

M
e
n
u