1. Home
  2. GK Questions
  3. English Literature
  4. American Fiction

American Fiction — GK Questions with Answers

Current Affairs 2026 Today's GK Quiz Static GK हिन्दी
30 questions
  1. The hero of Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales is —
    1. Ichabod Crane
    2. Natty Bumppo
    3. Rip Van Winkle
    4. Uncas
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Natty Bumppo

    Natty Bumppo, across five novels including The Last of the Mohicans.

  2. In The Scarlet Letter, the letter A stands on the dress of —
    1. Pearl
    2. Hester Prynne
    3. Dimmesdale
    4. Chillingworth
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Hester Prynne

    Hester Prynne wears it as the public mark of adultery.

  3. Who is the narrator of Moby-Dick?
    1. Ahab
    2. Ishmael
    3. Starbuck
    4. Queequeg
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Ishmael

    The novel opens "Call me Ishmael."

  4. Moby-Dick is dedicated to —
    1. Emerson
    2. Hawthorne
    3. Whitman
    4. Poe
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Hawthorne

    Melville dedicated it to Nathaniel Hawthorne.

  5. "I would prefer not to" is the refrain of —
    1. Ahab
    2. Bartleby
    3. Ishmael
    4. Billy Budd
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Bartleby

    Melville’s story "Bartleby, the Scrivener".

  6. Mark Twain’s real name was —
    1. Samuel Clemens
    2. William Porter
    3. Theodore Dreiser
    4. Stephen Crane
    Show answer

    Answer: (A) Samuel Clemens

    Samuel Langhorne Clemens; "mark twain" is a riverboat depth call.

  7. The escaped slave who travels with Huck is —
    1. Tom
    2. Jim
    3. Pap
    4. Duke
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Jim

    Jim, whose freedom Huck finally chooses over his own conscience.

  8. The phrase "stream of consciousness" was coined by —
    1. Henry James
    2. William James
    3. James Joyce
    4. Virginia Woolf
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) William James

    William James, the psychologist, in 1890 — Henry’s brother.

  9. Henry James called the loose Victorian novels —
    1. penny dreadfuls
    2. large loose baggy monsters
    3. three-deckers
    4. sensation novels
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) large loose baggy monsters

    From his preface to The Tragic Muse.

  10. The heroine of The Portrait of a Lady is —
    1. Daisy Miller
    2. Isabel Archer
    3. Milly Theale
    4. Maggie Verver
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Isabel Archer

    Isabel Archer.

  1. Sister Carrie (1900) was written by —
    1. Frank Norris
    2. Theodore Dreiser
    3. Stephen Crane
    4. Jack London
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Theodore Dreiser

    Dreiser; his own publisher suppressed it as immoral.

  2. The first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction was —
    1. Willa Cather
    2. Edith Wharton
    3. Pearl S. Buck
    4. Harper Lee
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Edith Wharton

    Edith Wharton, 1921, for The Age of Innocence.

  3. The narrator of The Great Gatsby is —
    1. Jay Gatsby
    2. Nick Carraway
    3. Tom Buchanan
    4. Jordan Baker
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Nick Carraway

    Nick Carraway, Daisy’s cousin.

  4. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg look out over —
    1. West Egg
    2. the valley of ashes
    3. Long Island Sound
    4. the Plaza Hotel
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) the valley of ashes

    A faded billboard above the valley of ashes.

  5. The title For Whom the Bell Tolls comes from —
    1. Shakespeare
    2. John Donne
    3. the Bible
    4. Milton
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) John Donne

    Donne’s Meditation XVII — "never send to know for whom the bell tolls".

  6. Hemingway’s "iceberg theory" is also called the theory of —
    1. objectivity
    2. omission
    3. impersonality
    4. understatement
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) omission

    The writer may omit what he knows, and the story is stronger for it.

  7. Faulkner’s fictional county is —
    1. Jefferson
    2. Yoknapatawpha
    3. Maycomb
    4. Winesburg
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Yoknapatawpha

    Yoknapatawpha County, whose seat is Jefferson.

  8. The first section of The Sound and the Fury is narrated by —
    1. Quentin
    2. Jason
    3. Benjy
    4. Dilsey
    Show answer

    Answer: (C) Benjy

    Benjy, in a radically disordered stream of consciousness.

  9. The family in The Grapes of Wrath is the —
    1. Comptons
    2. Joads
    3. Bundrens
    4. Finches
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Joads

    The Joads, driven from Oklahoma by the Dust Bowl.

  10. The narrator of The Catcher in the Rye is —
    1. Phoebe
    2. Holden Caulfield
    3. Allie
    4. Stradlater
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Holden Caulfield

    Holden Caulfield.

  1. Invisible Man (1952) was written by —
    1. Richard Wright
    2. Ralph Ellison
    3. James Baldwin
    4. Langston Hughes
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Ralph Ellison

    Ralph Ellison — not to be confused with H. G. Wells’s The Invisible Man.

  2. The hero of Catch-22 is —
    1. Billy Pilgrim
    2. Yossarian
    3. Augie March
    4. Herzog
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Yossarian

    Yossarian, the bombardier.

  3. "So it goes" is the recurring phrase in —
    1. Catch-22
    2. Slaughterhouse-Five
    3. The Naked and the Dead
    4. Gravity’s Rainbow
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Slaughterhouse-Five

    Vonnegut repeats it after every death in Slaughterhouse-Five.

  4. The lawyer in To Kill a Mockingbird is —
    1. Boo Radley
    2. Atticus Finch
    3. Tom Robinson
    4. Jem Finch
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Atticus Finch

    Atticus Finch, who defends Tom Robinson.

  5. Beloved opens with the words —
    1. "Call me Ishmael."
    2. "124 was spiteful."
    3. "All this happened, more or less."
    4. "I am an invisible man."
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) "124 was spiteful."

    Toni Morrison’s famous three-word opening.

  6. Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize in —
    1. 1983
    2. 1988
    3. 1993
    4. 1998
    Show answer

    Answer: (C) 1993

    1993; the Pulitzer for Beloved came in 1988.

  7. The Color Purple is written in which form?
    1. stream of consciousness
    2. epistolary
    3. verse
    4. dramatic monologue
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) epistolary

    An epistolary novel — Celie’s letters.

  8. The Native American Renaissance is usually dated from —
    1. Ceremony
    2. House Made of Dawn
    3. Love Medicine
    4. The Woman Warrior
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) House Made of Dawn

    N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn (1968), Pulitzer 1969.

  9. Which writer is known for "minimalism" or "dirty realism" in the short story?
    1. Flannery O’Connor
    2. Raymond Carver
    3. John Cheever
    4. Shirley Jackson
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Raymond Carver

    Raymond Carver — "Cathedral", "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love".

  10. The first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature was —
    1. Eugene O’Neill
    2. Sinclair Lewis
    3. Pearl S. Buck
    4. William Faulkner
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Sinclair Lewis

    Sinclair Lewis, 1930.

More chapters in this subject