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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 Nat see in the Northern lady's eyes at the beginning of Part 3 that ignited his hatred?
(a) Fear.
(b) Pity.
(c) Revulsion.
(d) Anger.

2. Why do Marse Sam and the traveling salesman go out to the veranda?
(a) To buy seeds for next year's plantings.
(b) To make out a requisition.
(c) To calculate how much wood from the mill the salesman can sell.
(d) To decide which plow to buy.

3. Shortly after the trial, what happens to Nate?
(a) He gets a warning.
(b) He gets a fever.
(c) He gets a Bible.
(d) He gets a premonition.

4. Who almost discovers Nat reading right after he steals the book?
(a) Abraham.
(b) Nat's master.
(c) Kitchen.
(d) Nat's mother.

5. Which of Nat's followers was deaf?
(a) Nelson.
(b) Henry.
(c) Hark.
(d) Nat.

Short Answer Questions

1. In Part 3, how many Negroes did Gray say there were in Southampton County?

2. When Hark and Nat go to town on market day, what happens?

3. After Nat says his final prayer before beginning the insurrection, what does he do?

4. What does Nat do for the first time the Saturday he and Hark are at market?

5. Who eventually catches Nat with the stolen book?

Short Essay Questions

1. 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?

2. When Nat talks with Mrs. Whitehead in Part 3 after tracing the map, she alternately praises him and treats him as property, stating that she'd offered one thousand dollars for him. How did that make Nat feel?

3. After Nat's fast in Part 3, he said there were two events that helped him interpret his vision of the fighting angels as a mandate to kill whites. What were those two events?

4. 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?

5. 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?

6. Much of Part 2 is taken up with items from Nat's past. Why was so much of the book spent on the early times in Nat's life, rather than on his planning for the rebellion?

7. In Part 2, Nat talks about Samuel Turner's tampering with a slave's destiny by educating him. Immediately afterward, he talks about what his life might have been like if he had not been the subject of Marse Samuel's "experiment." What do you think of this description of his might-have-been life? Is it something that appeals to him?

8. 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?

9. The scene with Major Ridley's fiancee is very strong. A northern white woman, newly arrived in town, can't find her way around and can't understand the Negroes speech. According to Nat, she left, never to return. Why might Styron have had her interact with Arnold, an elderly slave who had been freed, but with no education and worse elocution?

10. 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?

(see the answer keys)

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