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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. According to Nat's statements, the insurrection was ______.
(a) Confined to two counties.
(b) Spread across twelve miles.
(c) Confined to five farms.
(d) Local.

2. Who is the last slave captured who participated in the rebellion?
(a) Nat.
(b) Sam.
(c) Hark.
(d) Nelson.

3. What does Gray refer to the insurgent slaves as?
(a) The "ebony slaughterers."
(b) A "ravaging band of murderers."
(c) A "band of ferocious miscreants."
(d) "Heartless heathens set upon vengeance."

4. How does Nat encounter Jeremiah Cobb the first time?
(a) Cobb stops by to visit Joseph Travis.
(b) Cobb requests water from the Travis well.
(c) Cobb is considering buying Nat.
(d) Cobb needs repairs to his dogcart.

5. How does Gray refer to himself in the introduction?
(a) Your respectful author.
(b) Your obedient servant.
(c) Your dutiful recorder.
(d) Your impartial ear.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Nat wonder about after sentencing?

2. What does Gray say was the "only principle of restraint" for the band of slaves?

3. Who is Jeremiah Cobb?

4. Nat tells Gray of an event that "laid the groundwork" for his later actions, including the insurrection. What was that event?

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

Short Essay Questions

1. Read Nat's description of Gray when they first meet in Part 1. Read Nat's thoughts about Gray immediately after the description. What does Nat think and/or feel about Gray? Does that have an effect on Nat's decision to confess? What does he think whites expect of him?

2. 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?

3. 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?

4. 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?

5. 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?

6. In the "Author's Note", Styron says he has "rarely departed from the known facts about Nat Turner and the revolt of which he was the leader." But the written text of the Confession is only around twenty pages. This book is over 400 pages long. Surely this can't be all fact; Styron himself says he allowed himself the "utmost freedom" in reconstructing the events. So which is true? Do you think this book will be mostly fact or fiction?

7. 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?

8. 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?

9. 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?

10. 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.

(see the answer keys)

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