All GRE Subject Test: Literature in English Resources
Example Questions
Example Question #1 : Identification Of American Prose After 1925
Oedipa Maas, Pierce Inverarity, and Dr. Hilarius are characters from which of the following works of literature?
Finnegans Wake
Catch-22
Breakfast of Champions
Oryx and Crake
The Crying of Lot 49
The Crying of Lot 49
Oedipa Maas, Pierce Inverarity, and Dr. Hilarius are some of the main characters in Thomas Pynchon's 1966 novella, The Crying of Lot 49. The story followed Oedipa Maas in particular.
Example Question #1 : Identification Of American Prose After 1925
124, Paul D, Baby Suggs, and Denver are characters in which of the following literary works?
Beloved
The Left Hand of Darkness
Brave New World
The Sirens of Titan
Frankenstein
Beloved
These are characters from Toni Morrison's 1987 novel, Beloved. Set shortly after the American Civil War, the book tells the story of escaped slave Sethe and her daughter Denver.
Example Question #1 : Identification Of American Prose After 1925
This Pulitzer- and Nobel-Prize winning novelist and three-time recipient of the National Book Award wrote such novels as The Adventures of Augie March and Herzog. Who is he?
William S. Burroughs
Norman Mailer
Saul Bellow
Denis Johnson
Don DeLillo
Saul Bellow
This is Saul Bellow. In addition to The Adventures of Augie March (1953) and Herzog (1964), he wrote Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970), Seize the Day (1956), and Humboldt's Gift (1975). Bellow had one of the most prolific and successful literary careers of the 20th century. His first novel was released in 1944 and his last in 2000; he won the National Book Award three times in three decades, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1976.
Example Question #2 : Identification Of American Prose After 1925
Death Comes for the Archbishop and My Ántonia are by which American author?
Joy Williams
Willa Cather
Louise Erdrich
Alice Walker
Rachel Carson
Willa Cather
This is Willa Cather, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction focused on life on the American frontier, in addition to her many literary honors, Cather's image was also featured on a stamp. Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) is routinely in the discussion as one of the best "Western Novels" of all time, it details the fictional attempts of a Catholic bishop to establish a diocese in frontier New Mexico. My Ántonia (1918) is one of Cather's most highly regarded works, and the last novel in her Prairie Trilogy (the other two being O Pioneers! (1913) and The Song of the Lark (1915)).
Example Question #3 : Identification Of American Prose After 1925
Which of the following interconnected short story collections features a nameless recovering drug addict as its central narrator?
Winesburg, Ohio
The Things They Carried
The Martian Chronicles
Jesus' Son
A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You
Jesus' Son
This is Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson’s 1992 collection. The book takes its title from the famous Velvet Underground song “Heroin” and discusses addiction in rural America. The collection was adapted into a film of the same name in 1999.
Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles (1950), Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried (1990), Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio (1918), and Amy Bloom's A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You (2000) were all used as alternative answer choices. All of these books are collections of short fiction.
Example Question #2 : Identification Of American Prose After 1925
Although best known for the essay collection Notes of a Native Son, this author also wrote an acclaimed semi-autobiographical novel with characters named Sarah, Ruth, Roy, and John. Who is he or she?
James Baldwin
Alice Walker
Zora Neale Hurston
Ralph Ellison
W.E.B. DuBois
James Baldwin
This is James Baldwin, whose books include the essay collection Notes of a Native Son (1955), and the novels Giovanni’s Room (1956), Go Tell It On the Mountain (1953) (Baldwin's first novel, a semi-autobiographical work in which the above characters appear), and Just Above My Head (1979). Baldwin also wrote poetry and plays and was concerned with racial, sexual, cultural, religious, and class identities in twentieth-century America.
Example Question #113 : Gre Subject Test: Literature In English
This author wrote The Naked and the Dead and The Executioner’s Song. Who is he?
Hunter S. Thompson
Norman Mailer
Truman Capote
Philip Roth
Theodore Dreiser
Norman Mailer
This is Norman Mailer, who is also a journalist, an essay writer, and a screenwriter. He had a noted feud with Truman Capote, another of the options listed in the question.
The Naked and the Dead (1948) was Mailer's first novel, published when he was just 25 years old. The Executioner's Song won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Mailer's last book was published in 2007, making for an impressive fifty-nine year active publishing career.
Example Question #1 : Identification Of American Prose After 1925
This author’s renowned 1966 book, In Cold Blood, investigates an unsolved quadruple homicide in Kansas. Who is he?
Truman Capote
Hunter S. Thompson
Philip Roth
Tom Wolfe
Thomas Pynchon
Truman Capote
This is Truman Capote’s book. He was a pioneer in the genre of creative nonfiction, which combines the devices of literary fiction with journalistic reporting. His works of fiction include Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948) and Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958). In addition to being an author Capote was a noted personality in the 1960s and 70s, appearing frequently on late-night talk shows.
Example Question #2 : Identification Of American Prose After 1925
Which of the following novels is about the friendship between two deaf-mute men named John Singer and Spiros Antonapoulous?
The Awakening
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Color Purple
The Bell Jar
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
The work described is Carson McCullers’ The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, published in 1940 and set in a small town in 1930s Georgia.
Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar (1961), Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), Kate Chopin's The Awakening (1899), and Alice Walker's The Color Purple (1982) were all provided as alternative options.
Example Question #5 : Identification Of American Prose After 1925
This author’s novels include What I Lived For, Black Water, and Blonde. Who is she?
Louise Erdrich
Carson McCullers
Joyce Carol Oates
Leslie Marmon Silko
Alice Munro
Joyce Carol Oates
The stunningly prolific Joyce Carol Oates has published more than forty novels since 1963. She has won countless short story awards, in addition to the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Award.
Certified Tutor
All GRE Subject Test: Literature in English Resources
![Learning Tools by Varsity Tutors](https://vt-vtwa-app-assets.varsitytutors.com/assets/problems/og_image_practice_problems-9cd7cd1b01009043c4576617bc620d0d5f9d58294f59b6d6556fd8365f7440cf.jpg)