Quiz Alone Megan E. Freeman

Alone Quiz: 20 Questions to Test Your Survival Knowledge

Plot & Sequence (8 Questions)

  1. Multiple Choice – What event directly causes Maddie to be left behind during the evacuation?
    A) She oversleeps and misses the bus
    B) She is staying at her grandparents’ empty apartment for a secret sleepover
    C) Her parents forget to pick her up from school
    D) She hides in a closet and refuses to leave

  2. Multiple Choice – How does Maddie first confirm that she is completely alone in Millerville?
    A) She sees an empty parking lot and unused pool from her window after watching a news broadcast
    B) She hears a recorded announcement that the town is evacuated
    C) She walks downtown and finds all stores closed
    D) She calls 911 and gets a disconnected number

  3. Short Answer – What item does Maddie use to signal for help early in her isolation, and what happens to it?

  4. Multiple Choice – Which natural disaster destroys Maddie’s mother’s house and forces her to relocate to her father’s home?
    A) A tornado
    B) A flood
    C) A lightning-sparked fire
    D) An earthquake

  5. Multiple Choice – What does Maddie discover inside a pawnshop that convinces her to avoid the group of looters?
    A) The looters are armed with guns
    B) The leader kills a kitten by slamming it against a truck
    C) The looters are wearing military uniforms
    D) The looters find a map with her address

  6. Short Answer – How does Maddie finally calculate how long she has been alone (seventeen months, eleven days)?

  7. Multiple Choice – What happens to George during the tornado?
    A) He runs away and is never seen again
    B) He stays with Maddie and helps her escape the basement
    C) He is injured but survives
    D) He drowns in the flood

  8. Multiple Choice – Which vehicle does Maddie learn to drive, and why does she need it?
    A) A bicycle, to travel faster for supplies
    B) A minivan, to move supplies from her mother’s house to her father’s house before winter
    C) A pickup truck, to haul firewood
    D) A motorcycle, to scout neighboring towns

Character Motivation (5 Questions)

  1. Multiple Choice – Why does Maddie initially refuse to consider driving the minivan?
    A) She is afraid of getting caught by looters
    B) She remembers a past driving experience that angered her mother
    C) She doesn’t know where the keys are
    D) She thinks the van is out of gas

  2. Short Answer – What does Maddie hope to achieve by cleaning her mother’s house in Chapter 24 (“Productivity”)?

  3. Multiple Choice – Why does Maddie cut off her braid on her thirteenth birthday?
    A) She wants to look like her favorite movie star
    B) She is marking a transition from childhood to adult self-reliance
    C) She accidentally gets gum stuck in it
    D) She wants to use the hair to make a rope

  4. Multiple Choice – What drives Maddie to finally search for other humans by biking to Peakmont?
    A) She runs out of food and needs to find a grocery store
    B) She overhears looters talking about needing to reach the border, making her wonder if she is the only person left in the west
    C) She sees a smoke signal in the distance
    D) George runs away and she follows him

  5. Short Answer – After surviving the flash flood, why does Maddie decide to “go home” even though she is injured?

Theme & Symbol (4 Questions)

  1. Multiple Choice – The epigraph quotes Island of the Blue Dolphins and states that nothing equals the sound of a human voice. What theme does this line introduce?
    A) The importance of technology in survival
    B) The irreplaceable value of human connection during isolation
    C) The dangers of the natural world
    D) The necessity of self-sufficiency

  2. Multiple Choice – What does the Twinkie that Maddie finds flattened in her backpack after the fire symbolize?
    A) Her wasted childhood
    B) A relic of normalcy and memory from her life before evacuation
    C) The dangers of processed food
    D) Her skill at hiding snacks

  3. Multiple Choice – Why does Maddie reject the popular teen dystopian novels she finds in the library?
    A) She finds them too violent
    B) She argues those heroines have friends, teammates, and a cause, while she faces total isolation
    C) They are too long and she has no time to read
    D) She prefers poetry instead

  4. Short Answer – What does the act of planting a garden and later eating the first radish represent for Maddie’s emotional state?

Synthesis (3 Questions)

  1. Multiple Choice – How does Elliott’s book report on Island of the Blue Dolphins directly foreshadow Maddie’s own experience?
    A) The main character in the book also lives alone for many years, just as Maddie does
    B) The book teaches her how to build a fire
    C) Elliott predicts that Maddie will be rescued by a helicopter
    D) The book is about a girl who never survives

  2. Short Answer – After realizing the evacuation was a hoax (a political scheme for land and election fraud), Maddie ignores the details and focuses on physical contact with her parents. What term does she coin to describe her condition of being starved of love for three years?

  3. Multiple Choice – In the final chapter, Maddie sees a “ghost self” still wandering the streets below as the helicopter lifts off. What does this ghost self most likely represent?
    A) The part of her that will always survive alone in Millerville
    B) Her desire to stay in the town forever
    C) The version of her that died in the flood
    D) Her regret for not leaving earlier

Answer Key with Explanations

  1. B – Maddie stays at her grandparents’ empty apartment for a secret sleepover with friends Emma and Ashanti. Because she is not at her family’s home, she is not evacuated with them (Chapters 6, 7).
  2. A – After waking to find an emergency alert and then turning on the television, Maddie sees an empty parking lot and unused pool, confirming that no one remains (Chapter 17).
  3. Sign she put up at the Park‑n‑Ride – Maddie posts a sign begging for help, but the looters find it later and try the phone number, though no rescue results (Chapters 30, 85).
  4. C – A lightning strike sets fire to a cottonwood tree, which then spreads to the Nortons’ house and eventually to Mom’s house, destroying it (Chapters 135–137).
  5. B – The leader wraps a kitten in a towel and kills it by slamming it against a truck; this cruelty convinces Maddie that the looters are dangerous (Chapter 83).
  6. She uses an almanac from the library – Maddie finds an almanac with detailed calendars and plots the days and months since the evacuation (Chapter 106).
  7. B – During the tornado, George jumps into the basement window well after Maddie and later presses against the bathtub to help her stand up (Chapters 96–98).
  8. B – Maddie learns to drive the minivan to move supplies from her mother’s house to her father’s house, which has a woodstove, before winter (Chapters 62–63).
  9. B – She recalls a single past driving experience that angered her mother, so she initially locks the car instead of moving it (Chapter 24).
  10. She hopes to make up for her past lies and show responsibility so her parents will forgive her when they return – Maddie tidies the house in anticipation of her family’s return (Chapter 24).
  11. B – Maddie cuts off her braid as a symbolic rite of passage, marking her decision to stop childish pretense and take full responsibility for survival (Chapter 56).
  12. B – She overhears looters say they need to reach the border, making her wonder if she is the only person left in the western United States; this spurs her to consider leaving Millerville (Chapter 107).
  13. Because she is truly alone and no one will come to help her – The short chapter “Of Course” (Chapter 155) states directly that she is alone, so she must simply get up and go home.
  14. B – The epigraph from Island of the Blue Dolphins establishes that human connection is irreplaceable, which Maddie’s three‑year solitude underscores.
  15. B – The Twinkie is a preserved snack from her life before the evacuation, unchanged despite the devastation around it (Chapter 138).
  16. B – Maddie explicitly argues those heroines have friends, teammates, and a cause, while she faces total isolation without any support network (Chapter 105).
  17. A movement from survival to hope and self‑sufficiency – The radish harvest brings Maddie euphoria and a sense of creating life; it marks her psychological shift from merely surviving to thriving (Chapters 146–149).
  18. A – Elliott’s book report describes a girl who lives alone for eighteen years, which directly parallels Maddie’s extended isolation and introduces the concept of the “Challenge Girl” (Chapters 7, 128).
  19. mal‑love‑nourished – In the final chapter, Maddie realizes she has been starved of love for three years and creates this term to describe her condition (Chapter 176).
  20. A – The ghost self represents the version of Maddie that will always remain in Millerville—the part of her forged by survival, which she can never fully leave behind (Chapter 176).

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