Sounder
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
40 free Sounder trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Sounder is a short book that stays with people for life. In barely a hundred pages it follows a poor Black sharecropper family through an arrest, a shooting and years of waiting, and it does so with a spare, almost biblical plainness. Generations of students have met it in class, and many more know the story from the acclaimed 1972 movie. This quiz covers both. Most questions follow the book the way a study guide would: what happens to the father and the dog, what the boy searches for and finds, and the small details a careful reader remembers. Others look at the writer and where the story came from, and at the screen version, its cast, its changes to the plot and its night at the Oscars. It suits students checking their reading before a test, teachers who want a ready-made review round, and anyone who remembers the story and wants to see how much has stuck. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In the novel Sounder, the dog has something the boy, his parents and every other character go without: what?
A name
A name belongs to the dog alone: everyone else is just the boy, the mother, the father or the teacher. The author said Bible stories taught him to cut every detail he could.
Q 02In the novel Sounder, the sharecropper father is arrested for stealing what to feed his hungry family?
A ham
A ham boiling on the stove is the first the children know of it, and the family feasts for three days before the sheriff arrives. The mother later carries what is left back.
Q 03In the novel Sounder, the dog is named Sounder for which trait of his?
His booming bark
His booming bark rings out so loudly that most of the neighbors can hear it. After he is shot he falls silent for years, and regains his voice only on the day his master comes home.
Q 04Which leading American award for children's literature did the novel Sounder win in 1970?
Newbery Medal
Newbery Medal judges chose it the year after it was published, and the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award followed. Its author kept teaching history to ninth graders for decades afterward.
Q 05Which actress earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination as the mother, Rebecca, in the 1972 film Sounder?
Cicely Tyson
Cicely Tyson and Diana Ross were both up for Best Actress that night, the first time two Black women were nominated for it together. Liza Minnelli won for Cabaret.
Q 06The 1972 film Sounder was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar but lost to which other nominee?
The Godfather
The Godfather took Best Picture, though Cabaret won eight Oscars to its three that night. Sounder went home empty-handed from four nominations.
Q 07In the novel Sounder, who shoots the dog as he chases the wagon carrying the arrested father away?
A deputy
A deputy fires a shotgun from the wagon, and the shot costs Sounder an eye and the use of a leg. The dog drags himself off and is gone for about two months.
Q 08What does the boy's mother bake for him to carry to his father in jail in the novel Sounder?
A cake
A cake is her Christmas gift, but the guard breaks it to pieces, saying it might hide something to help an escape. The boy hands his father the crumbs anyway.
Q 09What does the boy in the novel Sounder long to learn, a wish an old man finally grants?
To read
To read is his dream from the start, when an eight-mile walk keeps him out of class. He teaches himself from scraps of newspaper until the old man offers him a home and lessons.
Q 10James Best, the sheriff in the 1972 film Sounder, later played bumbling Rosco P. Coltrane on which TV series?
The Dukes of Hazzard
The Dukes of Hazzard made him famous as a comic lawman from 1979 to 1985, far from the cold sheriff who arrests Nathan. He built Rosco's voice from one he used to amuse his children.
Q 11After Sounder is shot and vanishes in the novel, the boy finds which part of the dog lying in the road?
An ear
An ear is all he finds, and he sleeps with it under his pillow, wishing the dog back alive. That night he also fills Sounder's food dish and sets it outside, just in case.
Q 12How does the mother in the novel Sounder earn money for the family while the father is locked away?
Shelling walnuts
Shelling walnuts at night, she picks out the kernels and carries them to town to sell. With the father gone, four children depend on every bit of extra money.
Q 13In the novel Sounder, the father limps home with one side crippled after what accident at a prison quarry?
A dynamite blast
Q 21During their meeting in the town jail in the novel Sounder, the father tells the boy never to do what?
Visit him again
Visit him again is what the father forbids: he sends word to the mother not to send the boy back. The guard had been cruel, and father and son had struggled to find a single thing to say.
Q 22Which writer, a history master at a Connecticut school for 52 years, wrote the novel Sounder?
William H. Armstrong
William H. Armstrong farmed, built his own house and taught at Kent School while he wrote. His first book, done at his headmaster's request, was a study guide for students.
Q 23The author of Sounder grew up on a farm near Lexington in which state, where he first heard the story?
Virginia
A dynamite blast crushed half his body, and he was set free only because he could no longer work. He tells the family he refused to die because he had to get home.
Q 14Where does Sounder crawl to die at the end of the novel, not long after his master's death?
Under the cabin
Under the cabin is where the old dog lies down for good, two weeks before the boy comes home for Christmas. He had told his mother that Sounder would not live long once the man he waited for was gone.
Q 15Which French essayist wrote the thick book the boy in Sounder rescues from a trash can?
Montaigne
Montaigne is far beyond the boy, but the volume is the first book he has ever owned. The old schoolmaster he meets that day knows the writer well, and their friendship starts there.
Q 16In the novel Sounder, the mother guesses the wounded dog went into the woods to heal himself with what?
Oak leaves
Oak leaves hold an acid that draws out poison and helps a wound scab over, she tells the boy. She expects the dog back in a few days, starved and weary; it takes far longer.
Q 17A road-camp guard in the novel Sounder strikes the boy with a piece of iron, bloodying which part of him?
His fingers
His fingers are still bleeding when he stops at a schoolhouse pump to wash them, and the teacher who comes out to help ends up changing his life.
Q 18The lawmen in the novel Sounder point to a rip in which piece of the father's clothing as proof of the theft?
His overalls
His overalls had a tear the mother mended after breakfast, and the lawmen say it happened during the theft. A tablecloth soaked in grease is their other clue.
Q 19In the novel Sounder, the boy has learned that his mother's humming is a sign she is feeling what?
Worried
Worried humming is what he hears on the morning the stolen meat appears, before he understands why. He wishes she would sing or tell a story instead, to ease the lonely nights.
Q 20The night before the stolen meat appears in the novel Sounder, the boy dreams of which Bible disaster?
A flood
A flood sets every house afloat in his dream, just as in the stories his mother tells. Her Bible tales of Joseph and David become his comfort on the long searches later on.
Virginia's Shenandoah Valley was his boyhood home, and the tale came from an elderly Black teacher who worked for his father after class. That man also taught the future novelist his letters.
Q 24The author of Sounder traced the novel to a boyhood tale about Argus, the faithful dog of which Greek hero?
Odysseus
Odysseus comes home after twenty years away and his old dog still knows him, which is just what Sounder does when the crippled father walks up the road.
Q 25Which 1971 novel by the author of Sounder follows the boy as a grown man and serves as a sequel?
Sour Land
Sour Land picks up the story with the boy as a grown man, though the book was never labelled a sequel.
Q 26In the novel Sounder, the dog is described as part bulldog and part which kind of Georgia hound?
Redbone
Redbone hounds descend from red foxhounds that Scottish immigrants brought to Georgia, and they are bred to chase game up a tree. The same breed is at the heart of Where the Red Fern Grows.
Q 27Which director, whose later hits include Norma Rae, made the 1972 film Sounder?
Martin Ritt
Martin Ritt turned to films after the Red Scare blacklist cut short his career directing television. Sounder and Norma Rae both went on to Best Picture nominations.
Q 28Which actor received a Best Actor Oscar nomination as the father, Nathan Lee, in the 1972 film Sounder?
Paul Winfield
Paul Winfield helped make Sounder the first film to earn Black performers nominations for both lead acting Oscars. He came back for the 2003 TV remake in a new part, as the teacher.
Q 29Which actor played the son David Lee in the 1972 film Sounder and later directed its 2003 TV remake?
Kevin Hooks
Kevin Hooks earned a Golden Globe nomination as most promising newcomer for the role. As a director he went on to make Passenger 57 with Wesley Snipes.
Q 30Which blues musician wrote the score for the 1972 film Sounder and also acts in it as Ike?
Taj Mahal
Taj Mahal built the score from hums, moans, claps and plucked fragments, like an old field recording. He was one of only two cast members to return for the 1976 sequel.