praj-17/QA-MCQ-Open-ended huggingface dataset:
Title: To_Kill_a_Mockingbird
Context: After finishing the first draft and returning it to Lippincott, the manuscript, at that point titled "Go Set a Watchman", fell into the hands of Therese von Hohoff Torrey — known professionally as Tay Hohoff — a small, wiry veteran editor in her late 50s. Hohoff was impressed. “[T]he spark of the true writer flashed in every line,” she would later recount in a corporate history of Lippincott. But as Hohoff saw it, the manuscript was by no means fit for publication. It was, as she described it, “more a series of anecdotes than a fully conceived novel.” During the next couple of years, she led Lee from one draft to the next until the book finally achieved its finished form and was retitled To Kill a Mockingbird.

question: The first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird was named what? 

answer: Go Set a Watchman

question: Who was the editor who got their hands on the first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird? 

answer: Tay Hohoff

question: What was the name of  the editor who helped Lee finish her book? 

answer: Therese von Hohoff Torrey
Title: To_Kill_a_Mockingbird
Context: Lee had lost her mother, who suffered from mental illness, six years before she met Hohoff at Lippincott’s offices. Her father, a lawyer on whom Atticus was modeled, would die two years after the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird.

question: What ailment did Harper Lee's mother suffer from? 

answer: mental illness

question: What profession did Harper Lee's father hold? 

answer: lawyer

question: Lee modeled the character Atticus after what laywer? 

answer: Her father
Title: To_Kill_a_Mockingbird
Context: Ultimately, Lee spent over two and a half years writing To Kill a Mockingbird. The book was published on July 11, 1960. After rejecting the "Watchman" title, it was initially re-titled Atticus, but Lee renamed it "To Kill a Mockingbird" to reflect that the story went beyond just a character portrait. The editorial team at Lippincott warned Lee that she would probably sell only several thousand copies. In 1964, Lee recalled her hopes for the book when she said, "I never expected any sort of success with 'Mockingbird.' ... I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers but, at the same time, I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement. Public encouragement. I hoped for a little, as I said, but I got rather a whole lot, and in some ways this was just about as frightening as the quick, merciful death I'd expected." Instead of a "quick and merciful death", Reader's Digest Condensed Books chose the book for reprinting in part, which gave it a wide readership immediately. Since the original publication, the book has never been out of print.

question: What date did To Kill a Mockingbird begin to circulate? 

answer: July 11, 1960

question: How long did Lee spend writing the book? 

answer: over two and a half years

question: What publication's partial reprinting gave the book wide public exposure? 

answer: Reader's Digest Condensed Books
Title: To_Kill_a_Mockingbird
Context: The story takes place during three years (1933–35) of the Great Depression in the fictional "tired old town" of Maycomb, Alabama, the seat of Maycomb County. It focuses on six-year-old Jean Louise Finch (Scout), who lives with her older brother, Jem, and their widowed father, Atticus, a middle-aged lawyer. Jem and Scout befriend a boy named Dill, who visits Maycomb to stay with his aunt each summer. The three children are terrified of, and fascinated by, their neighbor, the reclusive Arthur "Boo" Radley. The adults of Maycomb are hesitant to talk about Boo, and, for many years few have seen him. The children feed one another's imagination with rumors about his appearance and reasons for remaining hidden, and they fantasize about how to get him out of his house. After two summers of friendship with Dill, Scout and Jem find that someone leaves them small gifts in a tree outside the Radley place. Several times the mysterious Boo makes gestures of affection to the children, but, to their disappointment, he never appears in person.

question: Where is the setting for To Kill a Mockingbird? 

answer: Maycomb, Alabama

question: How many years does the story of To Kill a Mockingbird take place? 

answer: three

question: How many children does the protagonist, Atticus Finch, have? 

answer: two

question: Atticus Finch's children make friends with whom during the story? 

answer: Dill

question: What is the name of the town the story takes place in? 

answer: Maycomb, Alabama

question: In what historical era does the book take place? 

answer: the Great Depression

question: Who is the main character of the book? 

answer: Jean Louise Finch (Scout)
Title: To_Kill_a_Mockingbird
Context: Judge Taylor appoints Atticus to defend Tom Robinson, a black man who has been accused of raping a young white woman, Mayella Ewell. Although many of Maycomb's citizens disapprove, Atticus agrees to defend Tom to the best of his ability. Other children taunt Jem and Scout for Atticus's actions, calling him a "nigger-lover". Scout is tempted to stand up for her father's honor by fighting, even though he has told her not to. Atticus faces a group of men intent on lynching Tom. This danger is averted when Scout, Jem, and Dill shame the mob into dispersing by forcing them to view the situation from Atticus' and Tom's points of view.

question: What was the name of the woman who was allegedly raped in the book? 

answer: Mayella Ewell

question: What is the name of Atticus' client in the rape trial? 

answer: Tom Robinson

question: Who stopped the mob by shaming them? 

answer: Scout, Jem, and Dill
Title: To_Kill_a_Mockingbird
Context: Atticus does not want Jem and Scout to be present at Tom Robinson's trial. No seat is available on the main floor, so by invitation of Rev. Sykes, Jem, Scout, and Dill watch from the colored balcony. Atticus establishes that the accusers—Mayella and her father, Bob Ewell, the town drunk—are lying. It also becomes clear that the friendless Mayella made sexual advances toward Tom, and that her father caught her and beat her. Despite significant evidence of Tom's innocence, the jury convicts him. Jem's faith in justice becomes badly shaken, as is Atticus', when the hapless Tom is shot and killed while trying to escape from prison.

question: What are the names of Atticus Finch's children in the book? 

answer: Jem and Scout

question: Where do Jem, Scout, and Dill observe the trial of Tom Robinson? 

answer: balcony

question: Where do the three children watch the trial? 

answer: the colored balcony

question: What happens to Tom when he attempts to escape prison? 

answer: shot and killed
Title: To_Kill_a_Mockingbird
Context: Despite Tom's conviction, Bob Ewell is humiliated by the events of the trial, Atticus explaining that he "destroyed [Ewell's] last shred of credibility at that trial." Ewell vows revenge, spitting in Atticus' face, trying to break into the judge's house, and menacing Tom Robinson's widow. Finally, he attacks the defenseless Jem and Scout while they walk home on a dark night after the school Halloween pageant. One of Jem's arms is broken in the struggle, but amid the confusion someone comes to the children's rescue. The mysterious man carries Jem home, where Scout realizes that he is Boo Radley.

question: Who did Bob Ewell attack during the story? 

answer: Jem and Scout

question: What event did Jem and Scout attend right before they were attacked at night? 

answer: Halloween pageant

question: Who saved Jem and Scout from Bob Ewell? 

answer: Boo Radley

question: Who attacked Scout and Jem? 

answer: Bob Ewell

question: Who rescued Scout and Jem? 

answer: Boo Radley
Title: To_Kill_a_Mockingbird
Context: Sheriff Tate arrives and discovers that Bob Ewell has died during the fight. The sheriff argues with Atticus about the prudence and ethics of charging Jem (whom Atticus believes to be responsible) or Boo (whom Tate believes to be responsible). Atticus eventually accepts the sheriff's story that Ewell simply fell on his own knife. Boo asks Scout to walk him home, and after she says goodbye to him at his front door he disappears again. While standing on the Radley porch, Scout imagines life from Boo's perspective, and regrets that they had never repaid him for the gifts he had given them.

question: What was the name of the police officer who discovered Bob Ewell's body? 

answer: Sheriff Tate

question: According to Sheriff Tate's story, how did Ewell die? 

answer: fell on his own knife
Title: To_Kill_a_Mockingbird
Context: Lee has said that To Kill a Mockingbird is not an autobiography, but rather an example of how an author "should write about what he knows and write truthfully". Nevertheless, several people and events from Lee's childhood parallel those of the fictional Scout. Lee's father, Amasa Coleman Lee, was an attorney, similar to Atticus Finch, and in 1919, he defended two black men accused of murder. After they were convicted, hanged and mutilated, he never tried another criminal case. Lee's father was also the editor and publisher of the Monroeville newspaper. Although more of a proponent of racial segregation than Atticus, he gradually became more liberal in his later years. Though Scout's mother died when she was a baby, Lee was 25 when her mother, Frances Cunningham Finch, died. Lee's mother was prone to a nervous condition that rendered her mentally and emotionally absent. Lee had a brother named Edwin, who—like the fictional Jem—was four years older than his sister. As in the novel, a black housekeeper came daily to care for the Lee house and family.

question: Harper Lee has stated that To Kill a Mockingbird is not what genre of book? 

answer: autobiography

question: What year did Harper Lee's father represent two black men accused of murder? 

answer: 1919

question: At what age did Harper Lee's mother die? 

answer: 25

question: What titles did Lee's father maintain at the local newspaper? 

answer: editor and publisher
Title: To_Kill_a_Mockingbird
Context: Lee modeled the character of Dill on her childhood friend, Truman Capote, known then as Truman Persons. Just as Dill lived next door to Scout during the summer, Capote lived next door to Lee with his aunts while his mother visited New York City. Like Dill, Capote had an impressive imagination and a gift for fascinating stories. Both Lee and Capote were atypical children: both loved to read. Lee was a scrappy tomboy who was quick to fight, but Capote was ridiculed for his advanced vocabulary and lisp. She and Capote made up and acted out stories they wrote on an old Underwood typewriter Lee's father gave them. They became good friends when both felt alienated from their peers; Capote called the two of them "apart people". In 1960, Capote and Lee traveled to Kansas together to investigate the multiple murders that were the basis for Capote's nonfiction novel In Cold Blood.

question: Where did Truman Capote live in relation to Lee? 

answer: next door

question: What year did Lee and Capote go to Kansas together? 

answer: 1960

question: Murders were the base for which story that Capote wrote? 

answer: In Cold Blood

question: Who was the character Dill modeled after? 

answer: Truman Capote

question: What did Lee and Capote write their childhood stories on? 

answer: old Underwood typewriter

question: What term did Capote use to describe Lee and himself? 

answer: apart people
Title: To_Kill_a_Mockingbird
Context: The origin of Tom Robinson is less clear, although many have speculated that his character was inspired by several models. When Lee was 10 years old, a white woman near Monroeville accused a black man named Walter Lett of raping her. The story and the trial were covered by her father's newspaper which reported that Lett was convicted and sentenced to death. After a series of letters appeared claiming Lett had been falsely accused, his sentence was commuted to life in prison. He died there of tuberculosis in 1937. Scholars believe that Robinson's difficulties reflect the notorious case of the Scottsboro Boys, in which nine black men were convicted of raping two white women on negligible evidence. However, in 2005, Lee stated that she had in mind something less sensational, although the Scottsboro case served "the same purpose" to display Southern prejudices. Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered for flirting with a white woman in Mississippi in 1955, and whose death is credited as a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement, is also considered a model for Tom Robinson.

question: At what age was Lee when a white woman accused a black guy of rape? 

answer: 10

question: What was the name of the black man who was accused of rape in Lee's town when she was 10? 

answer: Walter Lett

question: What was the name of the black teenager that Tom Robinson was supposedly based on? 

answer: Emmett Till

question: Emmett Till's death sparked which political movement in the '50s? 

answer: Civil Rights Movement

question: What purpose did Tom Robinson's trial serve in the book? 

answer: display Southern prejudices

question: Who's death was a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement? 

answer: Emmett Till
Title: To_Kill_a_Mockingbird
Context: Writing about Lee's style and use of humor in a tragic story, scholar Jacqueline Tavernier-Courbin states: "Laughter ... [exposes] the gangrene under the beautiful surface but also by demeaning it; one can hardly ... be controlled by what one is able to laugh at." Scout's precocious observations about her neighbors and behavior inspire National Endowment of the Arts director David Kipen to call her "hysterically funny". To address complex issues, however, Tavernier-Courbin notes that Lee uses parody, satire, and irony effectively by using a child's perspective. After Dill promises to marry her, then spends too much time with Jem, Scout reasons the best way to get him to pay attention to her is to beat him up, which she does several times. Scout's first day in school is a satirical treatment of education; her teacher says she must undo the damage Atticus has wrought in teaching her to read and write, and forbids Atticus from teaching her further. Lee treats the most unfunny situations with irony, however, as Jem and Scout try to understand how Maycomb embraces racism and still tries sincerely to remain a decent society. Satire and irony are used to such an extent that Tavernier-Courbin suggests one interpretation for the book's title: Lee is doing the mocking—of education, the justice system, and her own society by using them as subjects of her humorous disapproval.

question: What two forms of humor are most found in To Kill a Mockingbird? 

answer: Satire and irony

question:  Lee uses which writing styles to express humor in a tragic story? 

answer: parody, satire, and irony
Title: To_Kill_a_Mockingbird
Context: Critics also note the entertaining methods used to drive the plot. When Atticus is out of town, Jem locks a Sunday school classmate in the church basement with the furnace during a game of Shadrach. This prompts their black housekeeper Calpurnia to escort Scout and Jem to her church, which allows the children a glimpse into her personal life, as well as Tom Robinson's. Scout falls asleep during the Halloween pageant and makes a tardy entrance onstage, causing the audience to laugh uproariously. She is so distracted and embarrassed that she prefers to go home in her ham costume, which saves her life.

question: Where does Jem trap a fellow peer of school in the story? 

answer: church basement

question: What is the name of the maid who works in the Finch's household? 

answer: Calpurnia

question: How does Scout respond to the audience? 

answer: distracted and embarrassed

question: What saves Scout's life? 

answer: ham costume
Title: To_Kill_a_Mockingbird
Context: Scholars have characterized To Kill a Mockingbird as both a Southern Gothic and coming-of-age or Bildungsroman novel. The grotesque and near-supernatural qualities of Boo Radley and his house, and the element of racial injustice involving Tom Robinson contribute to the aura of the Gothic in the novel. Lee used the term "Gothic" to describe the architecture of Maycomb's courthouse and in regard to Dill's exaggeratedly morbid performances as Boo Radley. Outsiders are also an important element of Southern Gothic texts and Scout and Jem's questions about the hierarchy in the town cause scholars to compare the novel to Catcher in the Rye and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Despite challenging the town's systems, Scout reveres Atticus as an authority above all others, because he believes that following one's conscience is the highest priority, even when the result is social ostracism. However, scholars debate about the Southern Gothic classification, noting that Boo Radley is in fact human, protective, and benevolent. Furthermore, in addressing themes such as alcoholism, incest, rape, and racial violence, Lee wrote about her small town realistically rather than melodramatically. She portrays the problems of individual characters as universal underlying issues in every society.

question: What genre of book is To Kill a Mockingbird typically called? 

answer: Southern Gothic and coming-of-age or Bildungsroman novel

question: What term did Lee use to describe the town's courthouse? 

answer: Gothic

question: Who does Scout revere above everyone else? 

answer: Atticus
Title: To_Kill_a_Mockingbird
Context: As children coming of age, Scout and Jem face hard realities and learn from them. Lee seems to examine Jem's sense of loss about how his neighbors have disappointed him more than Scout's. Jem says to their neighbor Miss Maudie the day after the trial, "It's like bein' a caterpillar wrapped in a cocoon ... I always thought Maycomb folks were the best folks in the world, least that's what they seemed like". This leads him to struggle with understanding the separations of race and class. Just as the novel is an illustration of the changes Jem faces, it is also an exploration of the realities Scout must face as an atypical girl on the verge of womanhood. As one scholar writes, "To Kill a Mockingbird can be read as a feminist Bildungsroman, for Scout emerges from her childhood experiences with a clear sense of her place in her community and an awareness of her potential power as the woman she will one day be."

question: What was the name of the neighbor that Jem speaks too after Tom Robinson's trial? 

answer: Miss Maudie

question: What des Jem struggle to understand? 

answer: separations of race and class
Title: To_Kill_a_Mockingbird
Context: The second part of the novel deals with what book reviewer Harding LeMay termed "the spirit-corroding shame of the civilized white Southerner in the treatment of the Negro". In the years following its release, many reviewers considered To Kill a Mockingbird a novel primarily concerned with race relations. Claudia Durst Johnson considers it "reasonable to believe" that the novel was shaped by two events involving racial issues in Alabama: Rosa Parks' refusal to yield her seat on a city bus to a white person, which sparked the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, and the 1956 riots at the University of Alabama after Autherine Lucy and Polly Myers were admitted (Myers eventually withdrew her application and Lucy was expelled, but reinstated in 1980). In writing about the historical context of the novel's construction, two other literary scholars remark: "To Kill a Mockingbird was written and published amidst the most significant and conflict-ridden social change in the South since the Civil War and Reconstruction. Inevitably, despite its mid-1930s setting, the story told from the perspective of the 1950s voices the conflicts, tensions, and fears induced by this transition."

question: When did the Montgomery Bus Boycott take place? 

answer: 1955

question: Many reviewers consider the second part of the book to be about what issue? 

answer: race relations
Title: To_Kill_a_Mockingbird
Context: Scholar Patrick Chura, who suggests Emmett Till was a model for Tom Robinson, enumerates the injustices endured by the fictional Tom that Till also faced. Chura notes the icon of the black rapist causing harm to the representation of the "mythologized vulnerable and sacred Southern womanhood". Any transgressions by black males that merely hinted at sexual contact with white females during the time the novel was set often resulted in a punishment of death for the accused. Tom Robinson's trial was juried by poor white farmers who convicted him despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence, as more educated and moderate white townspeople supported the jury's decision. Furthermore, the victim of racial injustice in To Kill a Mockingbird was physically impaired, which made him unable to commit the act he was accused of, but also crippled him in other ways. Roslyn Siegel includes Tom Robinson as an example of the recurring motif among white Southern writers of the black man as "stupid, pathetic, defenseless, and dependent upon the fair dealing of the whites, rather than his own intelligence to save him". Although Tom is spared from being lynched, he is killed with excessive violence during an attempted escape from prison, shot seventeen times.

question: The main jurors in Tom Robinson's trial were all which race? 

answer: white

question: How did Tom Robinson die in the novel? 

answer: shot seventeen times

question: At the time of the novel's setting, what punishment was often received by black males for percieved sexual contact with a white woman? 

answer: death

question: Who comprised Tom's jury? 

answer: poor white farmers

question: How many times was Tom shot? 

answer: seventeen
Title: To_Kill_a_Mockingbird
Context: The theme of racial injustice appears symbolically in the novel as well. For example, Atticus must shoot a rabid dog, even though it is not his job to do so. Carolyn Jones argues that the dog represents prejudice within the town of Maycomb, and Atticus, who waits on a deserted street to shoot the dog, must fight against the town's racism without help from other white citizens. He is also alone when he faces a group intending to lynch Tom Robinson and once more in the courthouse during Tom's trial. Lee even uses dreamlike imagery from the mad dog incident to describe some of the courtroom scenes. Jones writes, "[t]he real mad dog in Maycomb is the racism that denies the humanity of Tom Robinson .... When Atticus makes his summation to the jury, he literally bares himself to the jury's and the town's anger."

question: Atticus is tasked with killing what animal in the novel? 

answer: a rabid dog

question: What is Atticus shooting the rabid dog symbolic of? 

answer: fight against the town's racism
Title: To_Kill_a_Mockingbird
Context: In a 1964 interview, Lee remarked that her aspiration was "to be ... the Jane Austen of South Alabama." Both Austen and Lee challenged the social status quo and valued individual worth over social standing. When Scout embarrasses her poorer classmate, Walter Cunningham, at the Finch home one day, Calpurnia, their black cook, chastises and punishes her for doing so. Atticus respects Calpurnia's judgment, and later in the book even stands up to his sister, the formidable Aunt Alexandra, when she strongly suggests they fire Calpurnia. One writer notes that Scout, "in Austenian fashion", satirizes women with whom she does not wish to identify. Literary critic Jean Blackall lists the priorities shared by the two authors: "affirmation of order in society, obedience, courtesy, and respect for the individual without regard for status".

question: Who does the cooking at the Finch's house? 

answer: Calpurnia

question: Who is Atticus Finch's sibling? 

answer: Aunt Alexandra

question: Who does Scout Tease and humiliate at their house? 

answer: Walter Cunningham

question: Which author did Lee aspire to be like? 

answer: Jane Austen

question: Both authors valued what over social standing? 

answer: individual worth