Ordinary People
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40 free Ordinary People trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Ordinary People follows the Jarretts, a comfortable suburban family trying to look normal after losing one son and nearly losing the other. The 1976 novel is told from inside the heads of a father and his surviving teenage son, and the 1980 film version became one of the most honored dramas of its decade. This quiz covers both. Expect questions on Conrad, Calvin, Beth and Buck, the psychiatrist who helps Conrad find his feet, the friends and classmates around him, and the turning points of the story. Other questions go behind the scenes: how the book found a publisher, who was cast and who nearly was, the music, and a famous night at the Academy Awards. It is written for readers studying the novel and for anyone who has seen the film. The opening questions are ones most people who know the story can answer, and the later ones reward a close reading.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Oscars where Ordinary People won Best Picture were delayed a day after which president was shot?
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan survived the shooting on March 30, 1981, and the ceremony moved to the following night. Johnny Carson hosted for the third year running.
Q 02Which pope named Ordinary People as one of his four favorite films?
Leo XIV
Leo XIV, the first pope born in the United States, listed it beside It's a Wonderful Life, The Sound of Music and Life Is Beautiful. He was born in Chicago, the city whose suburbs the film depicts.
Q 03Which Hollywood leading man won the Best Director Oscar for Ordinary People, the first film he directed?
Robert Redford
Robert Redford bought the rights to the novel before it was even published, planning to direct it and not to act in it.
Q 04Which sitcom star, once TV's Laura Petrie, played the icy mother Beth Jarrett in Ordinary People?
Mary Tyler Moore
Mary Tyler Moore won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama for the part and an Oscar nomination, a sharp break from The Dick Van Dyke Show and her later hit as Mary Richards.
Q 05Which actor became the youngest Best Supporting Actor winner as Conrad Jarrett in Ordinary People?
Timothy Hutton
Timothy Hutton was 20 and known only for television movies when he was cast. In his speech he thanked his father, the actor Jim Hutton, who had died in 1979.
Q 06Which Robert De Niro film lost the Best Picture Oscar to Ordinary People at the 1981 ceremony?
Raging Bull
Raging Bull arrived with eight nominations, the joint most that year, and won two, for its lead actor and its editing. Its director Martin Scorsese also went home empty-handed.
Q 07Which Baroque piece, obscure for centuries, did the film Ordinary People help make popular?
Pachelbel's Canon
Pachelbel's Canon is heard in the film in Jean-François Paillard's arrangement. The Paillard recording then climbed to number one on Billboard's classical chart in 1982 and stayed there for months.
Q 08Which future sitcom star auditioned for Ordinary People while the director flossed his teeth?
Michael J. Fox
Michael J. Fox was then unknown, newly arrived in Los Angeles, and read for the part of Conrad. He reportedly failed to impress, but Family Ties soon made him a star.
Q 09What were Buck and Conrad Jarrett doing when a sudden storm killed Buck, before Ordinary People begins?
Sailing
Sailing together, the brothers were caught by the weather and only Conrad came home. His guilt at outliving the brother everyone admired drives the whole story.
Q 10Which former teacher wrote Ordinary People, a first novel that began life as a short story?
Judith Guest
Judith Guest gave up her teaching job to finish it and spent three years on the book. She was some 200 pages in before she realized the short story had become a novel.
Q 11Which star of the sitcom Taxi earned an Oscar nomination as psychiatrist Dr. Berger in Ordinary People?
Judd Hirsch
Judd Hirsch lost the award to his young co-star, then waited 42 years for his second nomination, for The Fabelmans.
Q 12Which Canadian actor played Calvin Jarrett in Ordinary People yet missed out on an Oscar nomination?
Donald Sutherland
Donald Sutherland was the only one of the four leads left off the Oscar ballot, an omission Entertainment Weekly ranked among the biggest acting snubs ever. He did receive a Golden Globe nomination.
Q 13Which actress, later Cora in Downton Abbey, made her film debut as Conrad's girlfriend in Ordinary People?
Elizabeth McGovern
Q 21Which wealthy suburb north of Chicago is home to the Jarrett family in Ordinary People?
Lake Forest
Lake Forest gives the story its setting of manicured comfort. Roger Ebert praised the film for tracing the family's troubles to the people themselves rather than to suburban affluence.
Q 22In the novel Ordinary People, which school activity is the one place Conrad Jarrett feels at peace?
Choir
Choir suits Conrad because its perfectionist director cares only about the sound and takes no personal interest in the singers. Being left alone lets him relax.
Q 23In Ordinary People, what does Conrad angrily say his mother never did during his months in hospital?
Visit him
Elizabeth McGovern was still a student at Juilliard and needed special permission to film. A year later Ragtime brought her an Oscar nomination.
Q 14Which school sport does Conrad Jarrett secretly quit in Ordinary People, to his mother's fury?
Swimming
Swimming keeps Conrad around water, which reminds him too much of his late brother, so he leaves the team and tells no one at home. When Beth hears it from a friend, the family's worst argument follows.
Q 15Which of the Great Lakes claimed Buck Jarrett's life in the accident that haunts Ordinary People?
Lake Michigan
Lake Michigan borders the wealthy suburbs north of Chicago where the family lives. The accident happened more than a year before the story opens and is revealed only in fragments and flashbacks.
Q 16Which friend from the psychiatric hospital dies by suicide in Ordinary People, sending Conrad into crisis?
Karen
Karen had left the hospital before Conrad, and he treated her recovery as proof that his own could last. News of her death sends him to Dr. Berger for the session that finally breaks his guilt.
Q 17Which new girl at school becomes Conrad Jarrett's girlfriend in Ordinary People?
Jeannine
Jeannine has a difficult recent past of her own, which lets the two confide in each other. Comforting her when she cries shows Conrad that he is able to help someone else.
Q 18Which sport takes Beth and Calvin Jarrett to Texas in Ordinary People, on a trip that ends in a fight?
Golf
Golf is the reason for the trip, a tournament Calvin hopes will let them forget their troubles. Instead Beth tells him there that she will never forgive Conrad.
Q 19In the film Ordinary People, what does Beth refuse to do with Conrad, sparking his pre-Christmas outburst?
Pose for a photo
Asked to pose for a photo with her son, Beth keeps putting it off until Conrad swears at her in front of his grandparents. Soon afterwards she learns he has been lying about where he goes after school.
Q 20What is Calvin Jarrett's profession in Ordinary People, the source of the family's comfortable life?
Tax attorney
Tax attorney Calvin runs a small firm with his partner Ray Hanley. Providing so well for his wife and sons was long a source of great pride to him.
Beth did not visit him once, and in the film Conrad adds that she would have come for Buck. Her reply is that Buck would never have been in the hospital at all.
Q 24Which actress, playing Loretta Lynn, beat the star of Ordinary People to the Best Actress Oscar?
Sissy Spacek
Sissy Spacek won for Coal Miner's Daughter, in which she did her own singing. Goldie Hawn, Ellen Burstyn and Gena Rowlands were the other nominees passed over that night.
Q 25In the novel Ordinary People, which Christmas present does Conrad Jarrett receive with little enthusiasm?
A car
A car is the big surprise, and his grandfather Howard is thrilled about it, but Conrad neither needs nor wants one. His flat reaction sets his parents quarrelling on Christmas Day.
Q 26In the novel Ordinary People, what is Conrad Jarrett given in the hospital for his severe depression?
Shock treatment
Shock treatment, the electric kind, was part of his months as an inpatient. He came to trust only one doctor there, Dr. Crawford, who then referred him to Berger.
Q 27Which actor was originally cast as Calvin Jarrett in Ordinary People before a pay dispute with the studio?
Gene Hackman
Gene Hackman dropped out when he and the studio could not agree terms. His replacement gave a performance that Entertainment Weekly later counted among the great Oscar snubs.
Q 28Which friend, who drives Conrad to school, makes peace with him at the end of the novel Ordinary People?
Joe Lazenby
Joe Lazenby was close to both brothers and grieves for Buck too, which is why Conrad finds him painful to be around. In the epilogue Conrad calls at his house and the friendship resumes.
Q 29Which organization ranked the novel Ordinary People among the 100 most challenged books of the 1990s?
American Library Association
The American Library Association tracks such challenges. Schools assign the novel for its teenage hero, and objections have focused on the subject matter and a brief love scene near the end.
Q 30Which composer, an Oscar winner for The Way We Were, is credited with the music for Ordinary People?
Marvin Hamlisch
Marvin Hamlisch followed this score with Sophie's Choice two years later. On Broadway his music for A Chorus Line had already won a Tony Award and a Pulitzer Prize.