Quiz In Memoriam Alice Winn

In Memoriam Quiz: 20 Questions on Plot, Characters, and Themes

About This Quiz

This quiz covers the full arc of Alice Winn’s novel In Memoriam. It mixes multiple-choice and short-answer formats to test your recall of key events, character motivations, symbols, and larger ideas. After you finish, check the answer key for detailed explanations.

For a full summary of the novel, visit the main book page. Need help with confusions? See our questions and answers. Curious about the final chapters? Read the ending explained.

Quiz Questions

Plot and Sequence (8 questions)

  1. What event causes Henry Gaunt to feel deep shame and impulsively enlist at the end of Chapter One?
    A. His mother calls him a coward.
    B. He receives a white feather in public.
    C. Ellwood rejects his romantic overture.
    D. His German cousins are arrested.

  2. In Chapter Two, what secret society is Sidney Ellwood inducted into at Preshute?
    A. The Ardents
    B. The Guardians
    C. The Olympians
    D. The Inklings

  3. During their first night sharing a room after the platoon withdraws (Chapter Seven), what does Gaunt confess to Ellwood?
    A. That he plans to desert
    B. That he is afraid of dying and ashamed of his nightmares
    C. That he has been writing secret letters to Sandys
    D. That he never wanted to leave school

  4. In Chapter Eleven, after Gaunt and Ellwood are seen kissing by Burgoyne, what dangerous mission is ordered for them?
    A. To retrieve a fallen flag from No Man’s Land
    B. To capture a German prisoner that night
    C. To deliver a message to a distant battalion
    D. To guard a supply depot under shellfire

  5. What happens to Gaunt in Chapter Twelve during the trench raid?
    A. He is captured by the Germans.
    B. He is shot in the chest and presumed dead.
    C. He kills the German prisoner and deserts.
    D. He is wounded in the leg and evacuated.

  6. In Chapter Twenty-eight, what unusual item does Ellwood give his men to kick as they advance on July 1, 1916?
    A. A rugby ball
    B. A football
    C. A tin helmet
    D. A cricket bat

  7. After the failed tunnel escape (Chapter Twenty-three), who rescues Gaunt and Devi from the flooded tunnel?
    A. Pritchard Major
    B. MacCorkindale
    C. Lüneburg
    D. Evans

  8. At the end of the novel (Chapter Forty-five), where do Ellwood and Gaunt settle after the war?
    A. London
    B. Rio de Janeiro
    C. Berlin
    D. Paris

Character Motivation (5 questions)

  1. Why does Gaunt send Ellwood a curt letter in Chapter Four, telling him to stop writing unless he can be “appropriate”?
    A. Gaunt is angry that Ellwood enlisted.
    B. Gaunt believes his own letters were discovered by censors.
    C. Gaunt fears that Ellwood’s passionate letters could ruin him if intercepted.
    D. Gaunt has begun a relationship with a nurse.

  2. In Chapter Fourteen, why does Ellwood impulsively propose marriage to Maud Gaunt?
    A. He genuinely loves her and wants a future.
    B. He feels guilty about Gaunt’s death and seeks comfort in connection.
    C. He hopes to inherit the Gaunt family fortune.
    D. Maud pressures him to settle down.

  3. Why does Hayes warn Ellwood not to pursue the new officer Watts (Chapter Sixteen)?
    A. Watts is a German spy.
    B. Hayes is jealous of Ellwood’s attention.
    C. Hayes knows that homosexual relationships at the front can lead to execution.
    D. Watts has already been transferred.

  4. What motivates Gaunt to volunteer to seduce the Kommandant’s secretary Elisabeth (Chapter Twenty-two)?
    A. He is genuinely attracted to her.
    B. He needs German identification papers for the escape.
    C. Devi orders him to do it as a test.
    D. He wants to distract the Kommandant from searching the tunnel.

  5. Why does Maud decide not to marry Ellwood when he proposes again in the hospital (Chapter Thirty-six)?
    A. She is already engaged to another man.
    B. She has read Edward Carpenter and believes she should pursue her own ambitions.
    C. She finds Ellwood’s disfigurement repulsive.
    D. Her parents forbid the match.

Theme and Symbol (4 questions)

  1. What does the white feather symbolize throughout the novel?
    A. Heroism and honor on the battlefield
    B. Cowardice and social pressure to enlist
    C. Love letters and romantic longing
    D. Class privilege and school traditions

  2. The repeated引用 of Tennyson’s In Memoriam in the novel primarily represents:
    A. The beauty of nature in wartime
    B. Grief, memory, and the attempt to find meaning in loss
    C. The superiority of English literature over German
    D. Ellwood’s ambition to become a published poet

  3. What does the failed tunnel escape (Chapters Twenty-three to Twenty-five) symbolize?
    A. The impossibility of true freedom from war’s trauma
    B. The strength of German prison security
    C. Gaunt’s unwillingness to fight for his own survival
    D. The importance of teamwork and friendship

  4. Ellwood’s facial disfigurement (Chapter Thirty-six onward) most directly represents:
    A. The physical cost of war and the loss of identity
    B. His Jewish heritage
    C. His hatred of England
    D. The moral stain of killing

Synthesis (3 questions)

  1. How does the character of Hayes serve as a foil to Gaunt and Ellwood?
    (Short answer: mention class and background)

  2. Both Gaunt and Ellwood struggle with their homosexual desires in a homophobic era. How does the war act as a catalyst for their self-acceptance?
    (Short answer: refer to at least two specific events)

  3. In the Historical Note, Alice Winn credits several real-life sources. Name one specific person or event that inspired a character or plotline in the novel.
    (Short answer: from the note)

Answer Key

1. B. He receives a white feather in public.
The public shame of being given a white feather drives Gaunt to enlist despite his pacifist beliefs. (Outline Chapter One)

2. A. The Ardents
Ellwood is inducted into the Ardents society in Chapter Two, a secret group at Preshute.

3. B. That he is afraid of dying and ashamed of his nightmares
In the shared bedroom, Gaunt admits his terror and shame, leading to their first physical intimacy. (Outline Chapter Seven; Evidence chapter 7)

4. B. To capture a German prisoner that night
Burgoyne engineers this near-suicidal mission after witnessing their kiss. (Outline Chapter Eleven)

5. B. He is shot in the chest and presumed dead.
Gaunt is recognized by a German soldier and shot; Ellwood believes he has died. (Outline Chapter Twelve)

6. B. A football
Ellwood gives his men a football to kick across No Man’s Land, a historical detail from the East Surrey Regiment. (Outline Chapter Twenty-eight; Evidence chapter 28)

7. A. Pritchard Major
Pritchard grabs Gaunt’s ankle and helps pull both Gaunt and Devi out of the flooded tunnel. (Outline Chapter Twenty-three)

8. B. Rio de Janeiro
By December 1918, Gaunt and Ellwood are living in Rio de Janeiro near the British embassy. (Outline Chapter Forty-five)

9. C. Gaunt fears that Ellwood’s passionate letters could ruin him if intercepted.
Earlier, Maitland censored one of Ellwood’s letters and warned that such writing could be dangerous. (Outline Chapter Three; recall of Maitland’s warning)

10. B. He feels guilty about Gaunt’s death and seeks comfort in connection.
Still grieving Gaunt, Ellwood proposes to Maud as a way to escape his numbness. (Outline Chapter Fourteen)

11. C. Hayes knows that homosexual relationships at the front can lead to execution.
Hayes explicitly warns Ellwood of the lethal consequences. (Outline Chapter Sixteen)

12. B. He needs German identification papers for the escape.
The stolen chest contains no papers; Gaunt volunteers to obtain them by seducing Elisabeth. (Outline Chapter Twenty-two)

13. B. She has read Edward Carpenter and believes she should pursue her own ambitions.
Maud reveals her aspiration to be a politician and refuses to marry Ellwood. (Outline Chapter Thirty-eight)

14. B. Cowardice and social pressure to enlist
The white feather is given to men perceived as cowards; Gaunt receives one, and later Ellwood snarls at a woman who gives him one. (Outline Chapters One and Fourteen)

15. B. Grief, memory, and the attempt to find meaning in loss
The poem In Memoriam is a recurring motif for processing death, Tennyson’s own grief, and the soldiers’ experiences. (Outline Chapters One, Ten, Twenty-one)

16. A. The impossibility of true freedom from war’s trauma
Though the tunnel represents escape, it collapses; even after escaping, both men remain haunted. (Outline Chapters Twenty to Twenty-five; thematic conclusion)

17. A. The physical cost of war and the loss of identity
Ellwood cannot bear to look at his reflection; his scar becomes a permanent marker of the war’s brutality. (Outline Chapters Thirty-six and Forty-one)

18. Hayes comes from a working-class background and did not attend Preshute, highlighting the class divide that Gaunt and Ellwood, as public school officers, often ignore. Hayes’s practicality and war-weariness contrast with their romantic idealism. (Outline mentions Hayes’s class outsider status in Chapters Sixteen, Twenty-seven, and Thirty-seven.)

19. The war forces both men into extreme circumstances that strip away social pretense. For example, Gaunt admits his love for Ellwood to his sister Maud (Chapter Thirty-eight), and Ellwood finally allows himself to be called “Sidney” by Gaunt (Chapter Forty-five). The constant threat of death makes their emotional honesty possible.

20. Acceptable answers: Erroll Chunder Sen (inspired Gideon Devi), the Holzminden prison escape (inspired the tunnelling plot), Siegfried Sassoon’s poems, Captain Wilfred Nevill (football anecdote), Alec Waugh’s The Loom of Youth (Caruthers/Sandys plotline), or the death of Vera Brittain’s brother Edward. (Historical Note, Chapter Forty-seven)

For further discussion of these themes and characters, visit our ending explained page.