North Woods Quiz: 20 Questions on Plot, Characters, Themes, and Big Ideas
How to Use This Quiz
Test your grasp of Daniel Mason's North Woods with 20 questions spanning the full sweep of the book—from the epigraph's opening image to the house's final destruction. Questions are grouped into four sections: plot and sequence, character motivation, theme and symbol, and synthesis. A complete answer key with brief explanations follows the quiz. If you get stuck, revisit the book overview or check the questions and answers page.
Plot and Sequence (Questions 1–8)
1. What does the epigraph that opens North Woods describe?
A) A shipwreck on a rocky coast
B) Kindling a blaze on Mount Ararat from the leftover timbers of Noah's ark
C) A farmer burning his fields before planting
D) A forest fire sweeping through a valley
2. In Chapter One, which sequence correctly describes the couple's journey?
A) They flee by boat, then travel overland for a month
B) They hide in a cave, then return to their village
C) They flee their village, marry in an oak hollow, and reach a valley on the seventh day
D) They are captured, escape, and settle near a river
3. What happens to the apple seeds after the man who offered the apple dies?
A) They are eaten by rats
B) One seed sprouts from his shattered rib cage
C) They are carried away by birds
D) They rot in the soil beneath the cabin
4. Who discovers the bodies of Alice and Mary Osgood beneath the floorboards?
A) A real estate agent
B) Phalen, the slave catcher
C) The town sheriff
D) A group of children playing in the orchard
5. What happens to the Osgood sisters?
A) They both die of fever in the same winter
B) Mary kills Alice with an axe and buries her, then lies down beside her
C) They move to Boston and sell the orchard
D) Alice marries George Carter and Mary lives alone
6. What is the Nightmaids letter?
A) A recipe book for poisonous mushrooms
B) A confession by a woman who poisoned three English scouts
C) A warning about dangerous plants in the forest
D) A letter from a mother to her daughter about gardening
7. In Chapter Twelve, what happens to Nora after her car crashes?
A) She walks to a nearby town and catches a bus home
B) She is rescued by a search party
C) She hitches a ride with an elderly man named Charles Osgood and experiences a time shift
D) She stays by the car until help arrives
8. What happens in the final chapter, Succession?
A) The house is sold to a developer
B) The house burns down in a brush-clearing fire and the cycle begins again
C) The house is restored as a museum
D) The house is abandoned and slowly collapses
Character Motivation (Questions 9–13)
9. Why does Mary kill Alice?
A) Alice plans to sell the orchard
B) Mary is jealous of Alice's relationship with George Carter
C) Alice refuses to share the inheritance
D) Mary believes Alice poisoned their father
10. Why does the unnamed nurse tear up Nash's letter agreeing to visit?
A) She fears Nash's arrival will take William away from her
B) She is angry that Nash never wrote sooner
C) She believes the letter is a forgery
D) She wants to protect William from bad news
11. Why does Phalen pose as an insurance salesman?
A) He is genuinely selling insurance to earn money
B) He is tracking down Esther, a fugitive slave, for a Maryland planter
C) He is investigating a fraud scheme
D) He is looking for a place to settle
12. Why does Lillian write to prisoners?
A) She is a prison chaplain
B) She joined the Women's Benevolence League pen-pal program
C) She is researching a book about crime
D) She is seeking a husband
13. (Short answer) Why does Robert record his hallucinations on Super 8 film?
Theme and Symbol (Questions 14–17)
14. What does the apple symbolize throughout North Woods?
A) Wealth and social status
B) Continuity, regeneration, and temptation
C) The fall of civilization
D) The bitterness of lost love
15. What does the epigraph's image of Noah's ark timbers being used for fire represent?
A) The destruction of sacred things
B) Salvage and transformation—repurposing what remains
C) The danger of fire
D) The end of the world
16. What do the chestnut blight and Dutch elm disease represent in the book?
A) The natural cycle of forest growth
B) Ecological disruption caused by human activity and chance
C) The triumph of native species over invaders
D) A metaphor for political corruption
17. (Short answer) What does the yellow house represent across the book's many chapters?
Synthesis (Questions 18–20)
18. (Short answer) How does North Woods connect human history with natural history?
19. (Short answer) What is the function of the recurring ballad form in the book?
20. (Short answer) How does the book treat the relationship between death and renewal?
Answer Key
1. B — The epigraph, attributed to Nathaniel Hawthorne, describes kindling a blaze on Mount Ararat from the leftover timbers of Noah's ark, establishing a motif of salvage and transformation that resonates throughout the book.
2. C — The couple flees their village, marries in an oak hollow in the woods, and reaches a valley on the seventh day, where the man declares they are no longer hunted.
3. B — One apple seed, sheltered in the man's shattered rib cage, sprouts and grows into a sapling, symbolizing regeneration from death.
4. B — Phalen, posing as an insurance salesman while hunting for the fugitive Esther, pries open a trapdoor and finds the bodies of Alice and Mary Osgood, dead for thirteen years.
5. B — After Mary chops down the apple trees and kills Alice with an axe, she buries her sister beneath the pantry floor and lies down beside her, pulling the board shut.
6. B — The Nightmaids letter is a confession by a woman who poisoned three English scouts with mushrooms and buried their bodies.
7. C — After her car crashes, Nora hitches a ride with an elderly man named Charles Osgood and experiences a time shift in which the landscape transforms—chestnuts and healthy elms appear.
8. B — In Succession, a brush-clearing fire consumes the house in two hours, and the cycle begins again.
9. B — Mary kills Alice out of jealousy after Alice becomes intimate with George Carter, who had returned from Rio de Janeiro and courted her.
10. A — The nurse, who has grown devoted to William Teale, fears that Nash's visit will take him away, so she tears up the letter and burns it in the stove.
11. B — Phalen is a slave catcher hired by a Maryland planter to retrieve Esther, an eighteen-year-old fugitive who fled with her infant child.
12. B — Lillian joined the Women's Benevolence League pen-pal program after an invitation from town librarian Agnes Taylor, and became the most prolific correspondent.
13. Robert recorded his hallucinations on Super 8 film to try to prove that his visions—his Stitchings and Soul Heirs—were real, as evidence for his sister Helen and others who doubted him.
14. B — The apple recurs throughout as a symbol of continuity and regeneration (the sprouting seed, the orchard, Osgood's Wonder) as well as temptation (the apple offered to the woman in Chapter Two).
15. B — The epigraph introduces a motif of salvage and transformation—repurposing what remains after catastrophe—that resonates throughout the book.
16. B — The chestnut blight and Dutch elm disease represent ecological disruption caused by human activity and chance, showing how interconnected events can devastate landscapes.
17. The yellow house represents an enduring constant—a witness to the layered history of the land and its succession of inhabitants, from the Osgood sisters to the modern owners.
18. The book connects human and natural history by showing how the same land and house are shaped by both human events (settlement, war, love, murder) and natural processes (succession, disease, fire, regeneration), with each chapter revealing another layer of this intertwined history.
19. The recurring ballad form functions as oral tradition and storytelling, preserving the memory of events (the catamount attack, the squirrel and the owl, the December song) in a folk form that echoes the book's themes of memory, loss, and the passage of time.
20. The book treats death and renewal as inseparable: the apple seed sprouts from the dead man's rib cage, the squirrel's buried hoard reforests the land, the lovesick maiden finds union in death, and the house burns down only for the cycle to begin again. Death is consistently portrayed as enabling rebirth.
For a deeper look at how the book's final chapters resolve its central tensions, see the ending explained page.