Ohio Academic Challenge GR Question

[Peter Petto]

From yesterday’s first "Final Four” elimination rounds. I thought it might interest folk here to see this question and its relation to others in the same category. 


American Literature: Name these notable characters from American novels.

Team A: This divorcee pursues affairs with Jake Barnes, Robert Cohn, and Pedro Romero in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.

ANSWER: (Lady) Brett Ashley [accept either]


Team B: This character discovers the existence of a rocket with serial number 00000 that harbors the mysterious Schwarzgerat component in Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow.

ANSWER: Tyrone Slothrop [accept either]

Toss-up: In a lecture titled “How [this character] Was Born,” this character’s creator claimed that he was inspired by his job at the South Side Boy’s Club. After his girlfriend tells him about the criminals Leopold and Loeb, this character attempts to hatch a ransom scheme for a character by framing Jan Erlone, but the scheme falls apart and ends in the murder of Bessie Mears. In the section Flight, this character is chased across some rooftops by a vigilante mob that eventually turns him in to be tried for the accidental homicide of his employer’s daughter Mary Dalton. Name this protagonist of Richard Wright’s Native Son.

ANSWER: Bigger Thomas [accept either] 


I’m sad to report that we were Team B, and alas missed the question. No one on our squad has read GR, yet. A few have read Lot 49, one has read IV, and one BE.

   —Peter++


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