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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 is Nat's execution date?
(a) Thanksgiving Day.
(b) November 12th.
(c) November 11th.
(d) November 1st.

2. According to Nat's confession, he had originally intended the rebellion to begin on what day?
(a) July 4th.
(b) His master's birthday.
(c) His birthday.
(d) July 1st.

3. Why does Gray say he published the Confessions?
(a) In order to set the record straight.
(b) For punishment of the guilty.
(c) For the gratification of public curiosity.
(d) To include them in his memoirs.

4. What do the Negroes in church use to fan themselves?
(a) Folded pieces of paper.
(b) Starched, ironed pieces of cloth.
(c) Pine boughs.
(d) Thin, pine-bark shingles.

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

Short Answer Questions

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

2. What reason does Gray give in his introduction for publishing Nat's confessions?

3. Who did Nat confide his plans for the insurrection to?

4. What is an insurrection?

5. What does T. R. Gray mean by "this population"?

Short Essay Questions

1. When Gray addresses the court, he blames "pure Negro cowardice" as a partial reason for the rebellion's failure, but then later in that same paragraph, Gray describes devoted slaves fighting "as bravely as any man" against Nat and his band. Why is he saying these things? Is he trying to confuse the justices?

2. In Part 1, Gray reads back Nat's account of the killings, and Nat yells at him to stop. Why did Nat say that? Did he feel remorse? Nat says, "We done what had to be done!" Was he was talking about his "visions" and what they told him, or what Nat, personally, felt needed to be done?

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. What do readers know about Gray from the Introduction? What is implied, or what can be inferred from what Gray says? From this information, what kind of person might Gray be?

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

6. Prejudice is "an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought or reason". (Dictionary.com) Do you think Nat displays prejudice toward Gray? Toward whites in general? How? List specific examples from Part 1.

7. Part 1 is told partly in the court as Nat's sentence is being handed down and partly through flashbacks to earlier times in Nat's life. Why might Styron have opened the book this way? What purpose does it serve?

8. 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?

9. In Part 1, Nat says "a white man's discomfiture, observed on the sly, has always been a Negro's richest delight." Is this true? If so, why? If not, why would Nat think such a thing? Either way, what does that quote suggest about Nat?

10. Gray says that all the other insurgents who were examined tried to exculpate themselves. What does that mean? And why Nat didn't do it?

(see the answer keys)

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