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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 a smudge pot used for?
(a) Keeping the house fires lit.
(b) Lighting gentlemen's cigarettes.
(c) Providing heat on the veranda.
(d) Keeping mosquitoes away.

2. When Gray questions Nat, does Nat say he feels any remorse over the killings?
(a) None at all.
(b) At little.
(c) A lot.
(d) He'd like to go back in time and stop himself.

3. When Moore meets Isham on the road, what does Isham do?
(a) Asks for medicine for his sick baby.
(b) Asks for work.
(c) Swears at Moore.
(d) Asks to rent Nat for the day.

4. Who ends up killing the first victim in the insurrection?
(a) Will.
(b) Nat.
(c) Hark.
(d) Sam.

5. Who tries to take over the insurrection from Nat?
(a) Hark.
(b) Will.
(c) Sam.
(d) Nelson.

Short Answer Questions

1. While driving Miss Margaret to the Vaughans' farm, what dying animal do she and Nat see?

2. After Benjamin died, who inherited the plantation?

3. What upcoming event does Nat take as his new "sign" to start his insurrection?

4. Benjamin said that saves were as unteachable as a what?

5. How did Benjamin die?

Short Essay Questions

1. The story of Hark's escape and eventual return takes up a large section of Part 3. Why might Styron have devoted so much time to this story? What was he trying to show? What do readers learn from Nat's telling of the story?

2. After Nat spells the word columbine, he lies awake that night thinking about it. He says it's a dream filled with 'inchoate promise'. What does he mean by that? How can one word be a promise?

3. One of the slaves chained by the drover tells Nat that he's "just like him." Do you think this is true? Why or why not?

4. After Nathaniel Francis forces Will and Sam to fight, Nat feels called to preach for the first time. Why do you think that was the event that brought Nat out in public as a preacher? Quote at least one reason from the book.

5. In Part 1, Marse Samuel speaks to Dr. Ballard about the existence of slavery in the South. He says "it is evil to keep these people in bondage, yet they cannot be freed. They must be educated!" Samuel's brother Benjamin does not agree with him and argues the other point. Who makes the better argument?

6. In Part 2, Nat tells of Little Morning spying on him as a jealous response to the realization that Nat could read. This is the first time Nat tells of a negative reaction to his reading and learning. Why might Little Morning have reacted like this?

7. In Part 3, when Nat is owned by Thomas Moore, he says that he fell into the kind of save work that he had believed before could "not ever become my lot, not in a thousand lifetimes." Yet now it had become his lot. How did Nat react to that? How does this turning point relate to his earlier childhood and education, as well as his eventual killing spree?

8. Nat equates Isham to John the Baptist. Nat speaks of a warning after the incident with Isham. Is this related?

9. In Part 2, Nat describes two events: "one causing me the bitterest anguish, the other premonitions of joy." What were these two events, and why might they have been told together?

10. When Nat preaches in town in Part 3, he does not use proper English. Why do you think he does that?

(see the answer keys)

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