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

2. How does Gray say the "band" resisted when the white people finally caught up to them?
(a) With great force.
(b) Desperately.
(c) Feverishly.
(d) Feebly.

3. What does T. R. Gray mean by "this population"?
(a) Shopkeepers.
(b) White people.
(c) Slave owners.
(d) Slaves.

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

5. While in jail, about how many blacks does Hark say were killed while Nat hid?
(a) One hundred fifty.
(b) One hundred.
(c) Two hundred.
(d) Fifty.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Gray say Nat will be punished?

2. According to Gray's "Introduction" people in the Southampton area were __________.:

3. According to Nat's confession, he had originally intended the rebellion to begin on what day?

4. What was Nat's rebellion not motivated by?

5. What three adjectives does Gray use to describe Nat Turner's mind?

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

3. 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.

4. 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?

5. Nat tells Gray in the Introduction, "I don't think you understand about this business and I don't know but whether it's too late to make it all plain". If Gray took down what Nat said and is reading it back to him, why would Nat think Gray didn't understand?

6. 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?

7. 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?

8. 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?

9. 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?

10. 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?

(see the answer keys)

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