Immortality by Dana Schwartz: 20-Question Quiz

About the Quiz

Welcome to the ultimate study companion for Immortality, the second book in Dana Schwartz’s Anatomy series. This quiz tests your understanding of the entire novel, from the opening epigraph to the final chapter. Each question is based directly on the story’s plot, character motivations, themes, and symbols. After answering all questions, check your responses against the detailed answer key.

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Quiz: 20 Questions

Plot and Sequence (8 questions)

What event opens the prologue of Immortality?
- A) Hazel performing surgery on Martin Potter
- B) The execution of Antoine Lavoisier in Paris, 1794
- C) Princess Charlotte’s broken engagement
- D) Jack Currer’s escape from the hanging
After Hazel is arrested for murder, what crime is she formally accused of?
- A) Performing an illegal abortion that caused the death of Florence Fitzpatrick
- B) Stealing corpses from the Edinburgh Medical School
- C) Poisoning the Earl of Hammond’s son
- D) Assaulting a high constable during the opera
How does Hazel discover the location of the Companions to the Death’s secret meeting?
- A) Gaspar tells her the address
- B) She deciphers a riddle from a red envelope sealed with a brain stamp
- C) Lord Byron invites her in person
- D) She follows Jack Currer to the Seven Dials
What happens when Hazel first visits the Companions’ clubhouse at Seven Dials?
- A) She is immediately offered the Tincture of immortality
- B) Lord Byron shoots Voltaire during an argument
- C) She meets Dr. Beecham alive and well
- D) She undergoes the pinkie-finger initiation
How does Princess Charlotte fake her death?
- A) She drinks a sleeping potion that mimics death
- B) Hazel and Jack substitute a corpse from the Royal College of Surgeons for Charlotte’s body
- C) She escapes to America in disguise before anyone notices
- D) Eliza pretends to be Charlotte and dies in her place
What injury does Hazel sustain at the end of the novel, and how does she survive?
- A) She is stabbed by Marie-Anne; she takes the Tincture just in time
- B) She is shot in the chest by Marie-Anne; the bullet lodges in her immortal heart
- C) She falls from a carriage and breaks her neck; Jack revives her
- D) She drinks poison to fake her own death; Simon gives her an antidote
Where does Jack hide after surviving his hanging, before becoming a sailor?
- A) In a cottage on Hawthornden grounds
- B) He walks to Hawthornden Castle but does not enter; he steals a horse and rides to Greenock
- C) He stows away on a ship leaving Leith
- D) He returns to the Edinburgh Medical School to confront Beecham
What discovery does Hazel make about King George III’s illness?
- A) He is being slowly poisoned by arsenic from green wallpaper in his room at Kew
- B) He suffers from a hereditary madness that cannot be treated
- C) Marie-Anne is secretly feeding him the Tincture to control him
- D) He has a brain tumor that Simon successfully removes

Character Motivation (5 questions)

Why does Marie-Anne Lavoisier want Hazel to join the Companions to the Death?
- A) She needs a new surgeon to repair the members’ injuries
- B) She hopes Hazel will help her assassinate the Prince Regent
- C) She wants Hazel to steal the Tincture formula from Beecham
- D) She desires a female protégée to continue her scientific legacy
What is Jack Currer’s primary reason for rejecting a relationship with Hazel after their reunion?
- A) He has fallen in love with another woman at sea
- B) He believes his immortality makes a future together impossible because he cannot bear to watch her age and die
- C) He is ashamed of his missing eye and wants Hazel to marry someone whole
- D) He plans to join a naval expedition that will take him away forever
Why does Princess Charlotte initially refuse to let Hazel examine her?
- A) She is terrified of doctors because of a past trauma
- B) She is faking illness to avoid an arranged marriage and fears her secret will be discovered
- C) She dislikes Hazel due to her scandalous reputation
- D) She has been instructed by the Prince Regent to distrust any female physician
What motivates Dr. Beecham to frame Jack for the kirkyard murders?
- A) Jack refused to help him steal bodies from the medical school
- B) Beecham needed a scapegoat to cover up the true source of the bodies used for his experiments
- C) Jack discovered Beecham’s illegal abortion practice and threatened to expose him
- D) Beecham was jealous of Jack’s relationship with Hazel
Why does Simon von Ferris propose marriage to Hazel?
- A) He is ordered to by the Prince Regent to secure her loyalty
- B) He loves her and wants to protect her reputation after the scandal of Charlotte’s death
- C) He hopes to gain access to the Tincture through her connection to the Companions
- D) He wants to take her to Sweden to study medicine together

Theme and Symbol (4 questions)

What does the epigraph from Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (contrasting a romanticized view of dead leaves with a practical one) foreshadow?
- A) The central conflict between emotional idealism and scientific realism regarding death
- B) The rivalry between Hazel and Charlotte for Jack’s affection
- C) The importance of gardening in the royal court
- D) The seasonal setting of the novel’s climax
What does the blue dress that Hazel wears to the Regent’s ball symbolize?
- A) Her wealth and status as a royal physician
- B) Her armor of professionalism and self-possession in a society that tries to define her
- C) Her lingering grief for Jack and her inability to move on
- D) Her secret allegiance to the Companions to the Death
How does the clockwork doll metaphor (used by Princess Charlotte) reflect a major theme of the novel?
- A) It illustrates the mechanistic view of the human body promoted by Enlightenment science
- B) It emphasizes the lack of autonomy women have in a patriarchal society, especially royal women
- C) It foreshadows the artificial nature of immortality through the Tincture
- D) It represents the repetitive nature of court life
What does the mold that Hazel finds in the locked drawer labeled “Kew” reveal about the Companions?
- A) The society has been secretly experimenting on King George
- B) Marie-Anne is deliberately poisoning the King to maintain influence over the monarchy
- C) The Tincture has dangerous side effects that the Companions are hiding
- D) Hazel’s old medical bag contaminated the laboratory

Synthesis (3 questions)

In what ways does Hazel’s decision to write a medical treatise “for ordinary people” challenge the power structures of her time?
- A) It directly criticizes the royal family’s medical care
- B) It democratizes medical knowledge, breaking the monopoly held by male physicians and the elite
- C) It exposes the Companions’ secret immortality to the public
- D) It argues that women should be forbidden from practicing surgery
Compare Hazel’s approach to death with Jack’s. How do their views on immortality drive the plot?
- A) Hazel seeks to reverse immortality to live a mortal life with Jack; Jack accepts immortality but fears the loneliness of outliving loved ones
- B) Both want to live forever but disagree on the method
- C) Hazel wants Jack to die so she can move on; Jack wants to live forever without her
- D) Neither character cares about immortality; the plot is driven by Princess Charlotte’s escape
How does the novel use the historical figure of Antoine Lavoisier to explore the tension between scientific progress and ethical responsibility?
- A) By showing his execution for tax fraud, the novel criticizes the French Revolution’s rejection of science
- B) Through the discovery of the Tincture, Lavoisier represents the potential for science to transcend death, but the secret society’s manipulation of the monarchy shows the corruption of that power
- C) The novel suggests that Lavoisier’s work on oxygen was ultimately useless
- D) Lavoisier is a minor character who only appears in a flashback

Answer Key

Plot and Sequence Answers

B — The prologue begins with the guillotining of Antoine Lavoisier in Paris during the Reign of Terror. Marie-Anne gives him a vial of the Tincture before his execution.
A — Hazel is charged with performing an illegal abortion on Florence Fitzpatrick, the woman she saved from a botched self-abortion. Florence testifies against her under coercion.
B — The red envelope contains a riddle that Hazel deciphers to find the meeting location at Seven Dials, near Great White Lion Street.
B — After a debate between Lord Byron and Voltaire, Byron shoots Voltaire, and Hazel tends the wound, discovering the immortality of the group.
B — Hazel and Jack procure a corpse from Simon von Ferris, and Charlotte alters its appearance before fleeing in disguise. The body is discovered as hers.
B — Marie-Anne shoots Hazel in the chest. Because Hazel secretly drank the Tincture at her wedding, she survives with the bullet lodged in her heart.
B — Jack walks to Hawthornden but decides not to enter. He steals a horse and rides to Greenock to join a ship under the alias Jack Ellis.
A — Hazel deduces that the damp walls in the King’s room are releasing arsenic from the green wallpaper, causing his symptoms. She and Simon remove the paper and save him.

Character Motivation Answers

A — Marie-Anne needs a skillful surgeon to reattach the limbs and fingers that the immortal members frequently lose. She sees Hazel as a replacement for Dr. Beecham.
B — Jack cannot bear to watch Hazel age and die while he remains forever young. He tells her that every time he looks at her, the rip in his heart grows bigger.
B — Charlotte is faking illness to avoid marrying the Prince of Orange and to hide her relationship with Eliza. She fears Hazel will report her to the Prince Regent.
B — Beecham needed a scapegoat to cover up the source of bodies for his resurrectionist activities. Jack was an easy target because of his background.
B — Simon loves Hazel and proposes as a way to protect her after the scandal of Princess Charlotte’s “death.” He offers to take her away from London.

Theme and Symbol Answers

A — The epigraph contrasts Marianne’s romantic fascination with dead leaves with Elinor’s practical view, foreshadowing the novel’s central tension between poetic idealism about death and the scientific quest to overcome it.
B — The dress is a gift from Mrs. Thire at the atelier and represents Hazel’s armor—her ability to present herself as a capable professional despite social ostracism.
B — Charlotte describes herself as a clockwork doll to emphasize her lack of freedom in deciding her own life, marriage, and future, mirroring the theme of patriarchal control.
B — Hazel realizes Marie-Anne has been using the mold from the locked drawer to poison King George III, revealing the Companions’ corrupt plan to control the monarchy.

Synthesis Answers

B — By writing a treatise in plain language for ordinary people, Hazel challenges the elite male monopoly on medical knowledge, making healing accessible to all. This subverts the power structures of class and gender.
A — Hazel wants to find a cure for immortality so she can grow old with Jack. Jack, already immortal, fears the pain of outliving her. This central conflict leads Hazel to eventually take the Tincture herself to be with him forever.
B — Lavoisier’s discovery of the Tincture enables immortality, but the Companions use it to manipulate the monarchy. This shows how scientific progress, without ethical boundaries, can become a tool for control rather than liberation.

Quiz Score Guide

16–20 correct: Master of Immortality
11–15 correct: Skilled Resurrectionist
6–10 correct: Apprentice Surgeon
0–5 correct: Time to consult the study resources

Good luck, and remember: “As long as we both shall live” takes on a whole new meaning in this novel.