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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Gray feel that Nat's rebellion will further the cause of?
(a) Voting rights for blacks.
(b) Easing restrictions on blacks.
(c) Abolition.
(d) Anti-abolition.

2. In Part 1, how does Gray refer to Nat?
(a) As a victim.
(b) As a man among men.
(c) As animate chattel.
(d) As a thing.

3. Who was Nat's master at the time of the insurrection?
(a) Dr. Ballard.
(b) Samuel Turner.
(c) Joseph Travis.
(d) Jeremiah Cobb.

4. When did Nat first begin to plan his rebellion?
(a) While being punished by Joseph Travis.
(b) While trapping rabbits.
(c) While working with Hark.
(d) After overhearing plans for his sale to Jeremiah Cobb.

5. What does Gray state that Nat's confessions demonstrate about the laws?
(a) How they are unfair to the slaves.
(b) How they restrain the slaves.
(c) How they protect the white slaveholders.
(d) How they help locate runaway slaves.

Short Answer Questions

1. According to Nat's statements, the insurrection was ______.

2. When Gray speaks of understanding Nat's mind, what does he say about it?

3. What does Gray attribute the failure of the rebellion to?

4. How does Gray refer to himself in the introduction?

5. According to Gray, what excuse did Nat give for his participation in the rebellion?

Short Essay Questions

1. By the middle of Part 1, readers have met four white people: Gray, Kitchen, Miss Maria Pope, and Jeremiah Cobb. None of them are described positively. Why might that be? Since the book is supposedly written from Nat's point of view, why might he only describe white people (to this point in the book) in negative terms?

2. In the introduction, Gray refers to the insurrection as a "conspiracy." Do you agree with that term? Why or why not?

3. In the Introduction, Gray talks about an "annexed certificate of the County Court of Southampton" to prove the authenticity of Nat's "confession." Yet no one from the court, besides Gray, heard Nat's statements. Why might Gray have included the certificate?

4. Near the middle of Part 1, Nat says that treating blacks badly will make them "your for life", but treat him nice, and "he will want to slice your throat." What does Nat mean by that?

5. Styron published this book in 1967, 136 years after Nat Turner's rebellion and during a time of unrest in the United States over equal rights and race relations. In the Author's Note he says "the year 1831 was, simultaneously, a long time ago and only yesterday." What might he mean by that?

6. In Part 1, Nat gets very angry at Hark and chastises him for being so subservient to the whites. But Hark is a slave. Hark is doing what the whites expect, and being well treated because of it. Was Nat justified in what he did? Why or why not?

7. The Introduction opens in the jail, so the reader already know Nat has been caught. Why might the author have used this technique? Why not choose some other method of telling the story?

8. Gray tries to calm the fears of the people in Southampton County with his statement that's included in the Introduction. Yet he says "if Nat's statements can be relied upon." Why would he include a statement like this when he's trying to calm people?

9. Describe the world that Nat lived in from a slave's perspective. Now describe it from a white person's perspective.

10. At the end of the introduction, it states that the confession was read to Nat, and when asked if he had anything further to say, he said no. The rebellion was a complicated affair that involved planning. Why do you think Nat declined to say anything further?

(see the answer keys)

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