Chains
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
50 free Chains trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Chains, the first book in Laurie Halse Anderson's trilogy about the founding of the United States, tells the story from a side that textbooks often skip. Its narrator, Isabel, is thirteen and enslaved in New York in 1776, caught between two armies that both talk about liberty while neither offers it to her. This quiz covers the full book: Isabel and Ruth being sold to the Locktons, the spying Curzon talks her into, the punishment that marks her, the months in the occupied city, and the night she finally runs. Several questions look at the real people and events woven into the plot, and at the author and the prizes the novel earned. It works as a check after finishing the novel, as revision for a class test on the middle chapters or the whole book, or as a round for a book club. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still teaches something.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Wanted by the Patriots, how does Elihu Lockton slip out of New York in the novel Chains?
Inside a cheese crate
Inside a cheese crate is how Lockton leaves: a man nails him into a box labelled as cheese, while his wife is told to stay behind and guard the house.
Q 02In Chains, Isabel's cheek is branded with the letter I as a court's punishment for which offence?
Insolence
Insolence is the charge Madam Lockton asks the judge to burn into Isabel's face. By the end of the novel Isabel decides the letter stands for her own name instead.
Q 03In Chains, Isabel overhears Lockton and the mayor plotting to kill which Continental Army general?
George Washington
George Washington was the target of a real conspiracy in New York in June 1776, and a soldier from his own guard was hanged for his part in it.
Q 04Which pamphlet by Thomas Paine does a New York stationer secretly give Isabel to read in Chains?
Common Sense
Common Sense, Paine's case for breaking with Britain, is slipped to Isabel just before Christmas. She has to read its first sentence four times before she understands it.
Q 05From which New England colony are Isabel and Ruth taken before being shipped to New York in Chains?
Rhode Island
Rhode Island is the home Isabel spends the whole novel trying to get back to. The voyage from its port of Newport takes two days, spent below deck with the livestock.
Q 06In Chains, Isabel pretends Curzon has died so she can smuggle him out of prison in what?
A wheelbarrow
A wheelbarrow carries the feverish Curzon out past the guards and down to the wharf, where Isabel helps him into a rowboat as fireworks go off over the river.
Q 07Which medical condition of Ruth's does Madam Lockton mistake for possession by the devil in Chains?
Epilepsy
Epilepsy causes the fits that terrify Madam, who beats the five-year-old with a broom and orders her kept away from the milk in case it curdles.
Q 08In Chains, what are the false eyebrows made of that Madam Lockton wears to her victory banquet?
Mouse fur
Mouse fur brows prove a poor choice: as the dining room warms up the glue melts, and one of Madam's eyebrows drops into her rice pudding during a toast.
Q 09In Chains, a New York crowd topples and hacks apart a gilded lead statue of which British king?
George III
George III sat on horseback on Bowling Green in Roman dress. When the crowd pulls him down, Isabel sees the gold is only a skin over lead and pockets a small piece.
Q 10At the end of Chains, where do Isabel and Curzon come ashore after she rows them away from Manhattan?
New Jersey
New Jersey is where the stolen rowboat drifts into the bushes. Isabel wakes before dawn, coated in ice, and sees New York behind her across the river.
Q 11Which document is read from the steps of City Hall in Chains just before a royal statue is toppled?
Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence changes New York overnight: days later the judge at Isabel's trial has to be corrected that he now sits in a state, not a colony.
Q 12Which real soldier's hanging do Isabel and Ruth watch in Chains after the assassination plot fails?
Thomas Hickey
Thomas Hickey, a guard to the army's commander, was hanged on 28 June 1776 before a crowd of some 20,000, the first Continental soldier executed for mutiny and sedition.
Q 13In which New York prison is Curzon held with other captured American soldiers in Chains?
The Bridewell
Q 21Which disease killed Isabel's mother a year before Chains begins?
Smallpox
Smallpox took Momma and left both her daughters covered in scars. Isabel had to bury her without knowing the proper rites and fears her mother's ghost is angry about it.
Q 22Which biblical river does Grandfather tell Isabel to look for as her way to freedom in Chains?
The Jordan
The Jordan, Grandfather says, is whatever stands between a person and freedom. On the novel's last page Isabel tells Curzon they have just crossed it.
Q 23Where does Isabel queue daily for the Locktons' drinking supply and hear the war gossip in Chains?
The Tea Water Pump
The Bridewell stood where City Hall Park is today. Isabel talks her way in by tempting its guard with rice pudding and finds Curzon shot in the leg.
Q 14Isabel escapes in Chains on the night of a grand ball honouring which British queen's birthday?
Charlotte
Queen Charlotte never attends, of course: the ball is held in her honour by occupied New York. Isabel dates her home-made pass 18 January and adopts the day as her own birthday.
Q 15Which surname does Isabel invent when she writes herself a pass as a free woman in Chains?
Gardener
Gardener is the name she settles on while thinking of home and of Ruth, having decided she is neither a Lockton nor a Finch.
Q 16Declaring Isabel a ridiculous name, what does Madam Lockton rename her new servant in Chains?
Sal
Sal Lockton is the name forced on her. Months later she tells a Patriot captain she is Sal with no last name, because Lockton tastes foul in her mouth.
Q 17In Chains, Madam Lockton admits Ruth was never sold but sent to the family estate in which city?
Charleston
Charleston is hundreds of miles to the south, but Isabel decides she can walk there, and the news that Ruth is alive is what drives her to run that same night.
Q 18Where does Madam Lockton have Isabel locked up on the night of the Queen's birthday ball in Chains?
The potato bin
The potato bin fails to hold her: once the house falls quiet, Isabel kicks at the boards until she finds wood softened by rain and breaks through.
Q 19What keepsake of her late mother's does Isabel manage to carry to New York in Chains?
A handful of seeds
A handful of seeds is all Isabel can take, since nothing else is legally hers. She has no idea what they will grow into, and the plants later die in the frost.
Q 20After Ruth's rag doll is left behind, Isabel makes her a new one in Chains out of what?
Cornhusks
Cornhusks make the doll Ruth clutches everywhere, even at a public hanging. After her sister is taken, Isabel keeps it and sleeps with it beside her head.
The Tea Water Pump is a mile's walk from the house, but wealthy families insist on it because it tastes best, so the line of servants doubles as a news exchange.
Q 24Which German troops hired by Britain are quartered a dozen strong in Lady Seymour's house in Chains?
Hessians
Hessians frighten Isabel at first, since rumour says they breathe fire, but Lady Seymour points out they are just men far from home who are fond of her cat.
Q 25Which language is the only one spoken by Lady Seymour's maid Angelika, who nurses Isabel in Chains?
Dutch
Dutch is Angelika's only tongue, so the two get by on smiles while she draws the injured Isabel a hot bath after six days of fever.
Q 26To which Patriot officer does Isabel carry the stolen list of plotters' names in Chains?
Regan
Regan promises to help the sisters get home in return, yet when Isabel later runs to him for protection he says he must follow the rules and lets Madam Lockton reclaim her.
Q 27Curzon enlists in the Patriot army in Chains as a substitute for which man, his enslaver?
Master Bellingham
Master Bellingham promises Curzon his freedom for serving in his place, a bargain the other enslaved men of the city openly laugh at.
Q 28Which tavern keeper's wife, once indentured with Isabel's mother, tries to buy the girls in Chains?
Jenny
Jenny makes the unheard-of offer to buy the girls herself for cash, but Madam Lockton calls them a bargain at twice the asking price and Jenny cannot match her.
Q 29Which August 1776 battle, the largest of the war, lets the British take New York in Chains?
Long Island
Long Island was a heavy Patriot defeat, but in the novel fog covers the survivors as they are ferried across the river overnight, which Becky takes as a sign of God's favour.
Q 30News of which surprise victory on 26 December 1776 does Isabel smuggle into the prison in Chains?
Trenton
Trenton fell after a night crossing of the Delaware River. In the novel the news reaches the captives as a note baked into a loaf, and minutes later cheers erupt from the cells.