ROUND 6: Literature - Literary Interrogations

Literature is full of questions, many of them rhetorical. While it could be 
amusing to debate the answers to such questions as "Am I my brother's keeper?" 
your task this evening is to give the answers (or sometimes the questions) 
put forward by the authors of some well-known literary works.


1. "On this home by horror haunted--tell me truly, I implore:
   Is there--is there balm in Gilead?--tell me--tell me I implore!"

   The next line in the poem ends with the one-word answer to
   the question. What is this word?

A. (Quoth the Raven) "Nevermore"


2. According to John Donne (DUN), for whom does the bell toll?

A. (It tolls) for thee


3. Who killed Cock Robin?

A. The sparrow


4. Other than perhaps the narrator of the nursery rhyme, how many
   were going to St. Ives?

A. Zero


5. According to Christina Rosetti, "who has seen the wind?" There 
   are two forms of the answer in the poem in question: give 
   either one, exactly as she wrote it.

A. "Neither I nor you" OR "Neither you nor I"


6. "God save thee, ancient mariner, 
    from the fiends that plague thee thus! 
    Why look'st thou so?"

    You may provide the exact line explaining the subject's
    distress, or just paraphrase.

A. ("With my crossbow, I) shot the albatross." 
   (accept "killed an albatross")
   (if they answer "albatross", say "more specific")

 

7. John Keats asked: "Oh what can ail thee, knight at arms, 
   alone and palely loitering?" Well, the real answer is that 
   he's in love, but the the title of the poem says with whom. 
   Name it.

A. La Belle Dame Sans Merci


8. This time we'll give you the answer, and you tell us the
   question, which happens to be the preceding line in the play.
 
   "It is the east, and Juliet is the sun."

A. "But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?"


9. Again we're going to ask for the answer in the form of 
   a question. This one has at least nine answers, by even a
   conservative reckoning. We'll give you three of them, and you
   tell us the question that was asked.

   "...freely, as men strive for right" AND
   "...purely, as they turn from praise" AND
   "...with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life"

A. "How do I love thee?"


10. In this case we want you to tell us not what the answer
    is, but where it can be found, according to the author.
    And the question is:

    "How many times must a man look up, before he can see the sky?"
    
A. (The answer is) blowin' in the wind