5. What is the answer to the following question posed to Patty by her father in "Patricia Westerford"? "If you carved your name four feet high in the bark of a beech tree, how high would it be after half a century" (113)?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Neelay Mehta come to love computers and coding?

2. What was the Stanford Prison Experiment?

3. What leads to the downfall of Patricia Westerford's career? How is it revived?

4. How do Olivia's parents respond to the change in her life after electrocution?

5. How does Johnny Appleseed factor into the novel?

6. What does Adam Appich go on to study as an adult? Why?

7. Who is Dennis Ward and what is his relationship to Patricia Westerford?

8. What is Olivia Vandergriff's life like prior to her electrocution?

9. How does Olivia's electrocution change her outlook on life?

10. What is the significance of the mulberry tree in Mimi Ma's backstory?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Describe and discuss the different settings in The Overstory. What do these settings have in common? How are they unique? What imagery is used in describing these settings?

Essay Topic 2

Analyze and discuss the backstory and character of Patricia Westerford in The Overstory. What compels Patricia to become a dendrologist? How successful is her career? What does she do at the end of the novel and why?

Essay Topic 3

Analyze and discuss the character of Douglas Pavlicek in The Overstory. What is Douglas's backstory? How does he become involved in environmental activism? What happens to Douglas over the course of the novel?

(see the answer keys)

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