Reading Questions

1. Who wrote this story? When did he write it?

2. Who narrates the story? What is his position?

3. What dates are covered by the action of the story?

4. Why was it important to keep Nolan's story secret while he was alive (108-9)?

5. Do reference work to learn about Aaron Burr. Why was he tried for treason? Was he convicted? When does Burr try to "seduce" Nolan? What are Burr and Nolan suspected of doing (109)?

6. What is Nolan's response to the president of the court that tries him? What is the court's response (109)?

7. Where was Nolan raised? Why was the United States to him "scarcely a reality" (110)?

8. When does Nolan first begin to regret his outburst against his country (112)?

9. What happens to Nolan at the ball when the ship he is on is in the Mediterranean Sea (114-5)?

10. What does Nolan do when the ship he is on is attacked during the War of 1812 (115)? What is the Commodore's response (116)?

11. When does the narrator first meet Nolan (117)?

12. Why is Nolan so affected when the ship he is on comes across a ship carrying slaves from Africa (118)?

13. What is Nolan's advice to the narrator after the encounter with the slave ship (118-9)?

14. What happens when the narrator "moved heaven and earth to have [Nolan] discharged" (119)?

15. Bragg and Beauregard were officers in the US Army, who, before Civil War broke out, resigned and joined the Confederate Army. Maury and Barron were officers in the US Navy, who, before war broke out, resigned and joined the Confederate Navy. The narrator compares Nolan's fate to their imagined fate after the war. Whose fate is imagined to be worse? Why? What is the narrator's point (119)?

16. How does the narrator learn of Nolan's last hours alive (120-3)?

17. Describe Nolan's room (121).

18. Why doesn't Danforth tell Nolan about the Civil War (122)?

19. What is Nolan's dying wish (123)?

Discussion Questions

1. At the beginning of the story, most readers are as shocked as the court officers at Nolan's lack of patriotism. By the end of the story, most readers sympathize with Nolan. How does Hale bring about this transformation in readers' sympathies? Point to specific incidents in the story.

2. Writing in the midst of the Civil War, Hale, like Lincoln, wants people to give their primary allegiance to the country as a whole, not to an individual state or to a region. How does the story work to accomplish this goal? Refer to specific evidence.

3. Nolan compares a country to a home and to a family. He claims that you belong to your country "as you belong to your own mother" (119). What sorts of duties and obligations does that sense of belonging entail? Do you agree with Nolan's analogy? Why or why not?

4. Lincoln and Hale share many beliefs about the nature of the nation/country to which people should owe their allegiance. Nonetheless, their views are not identical. Discuss some of the differences and the implications of those differences. Compare, for instance, Lincoln's notion of a "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" with Nolan's statement that "behind the officers, and government, and people even, there is the Country Herself" (118-9).

5. Nolan is imprisoned in secret for many years. Is the US government ever justified in keeping someone a prisoner in secret?

6. At the end of the story, does Danforth do the right thing to tell Nolan about the United States, even though he is disobeying orders? Are there conditions in which someone is justified to disregard the law or proclamations of the government? If so, what are those conditions? If not, why not?