The Overstory

Chapters 1-5

READING CHECK

1. What sort of seeds do the Hoels bring with them to Iowa?

2. How does Nick Hoel’s family die?

3. Why does Sih Hsuin (“Winston”) Ma leave China for the U.S.?

4. What heirlooms from China does Winston Ma leave his daughters?

5. What book inspires Adam Appich to study psychology in college?

6. How do Ray Brinkman and Dorothy Cazaly meet?

7. What kind of law does Ray practice?

QUIZ

1. How does the novel’s short prologue relate to the work’s title?

A) It contextualizes human history within the full history of life on Earth.

B) It takes the reader on a tour of the component parts of a forest, from roots to canopy.

C) It provides an overview of the various ways the story’s narrative threads will intersect.

D) It suggests that there are multiple layers to stories, many of which humans aren’t aware.

2. How do the Hoels commemorate the chestnut tree they planted on their farm?

A) They collect chestnut shells.

B) They use its wood to build a table.

C) They photograph it every month.

D) They commission a portrait of it.

3. What does Winston Ma do when faced with a bear at Yellowstone?

A) He speaks to it in Chinese.

B) He weeps and screams.

C) He climbs a tree.

D) He throws a rock at it.

4. The sickness of Winston’s mulberry parallels which of the following conflicts?

A) his family’s financial losses

B) his wife’s dementia

C) his daughters’ estrangement

D) Yellowstone’s decline

5. What does Adam mean when he worries about picking the “wrong” tree to celebrate Charles’s birth?

A) that Charles might not like the tree

B) that the tree might not reflect who Charles is

C) that the tree might be sickly

D) that the tree might look out of place

6. Adam has an intuitive feel for which of the following interests?

A) socializing

B) music

C) science

D) language

7. In what community theater production do Ray Brinkman and Dorothy Cazaly take part shortly after they meet? (short answer)

Chapters 6-9

READING CHECK

1. In what well-known social psychology experiment does Douglas Pavlicek take part?

2. How does a tree "save” Douglas’s life while he is in Thailand?

3. Who teaches Neelay Mehta to code?

4. Where does Neelay attend college?

5. What disability does Patricia Westerford have?

6. Why is Patricia forced to leave her academic career for several years?

7. What is Olivia Vandergriff celebrating when the novel first introduces her?

8. How does Olivia "die”?

QUIZ

1. What aspect of the experiment in which he participates especially haunts Douglas?

A) the fact that he did not help a fellow prisoner by giving up his blanket

B) the fact that he gave up information on the “insurrection” to secure special treatment

C) the fact that the guards punished him by making him do push-ups

D) the fact that the guards forced him to write humiliating letters to his family

2. Which of the following best describes the significance of the moment when Douglas stumbles across the clear-cutting of national forests?

A) It reflects the interconnectedness of people and nature.

B) It reflects the power of names to shape reality.

C) It symbolizes humans’ willingness to sacrifice themselves for the greater good.

D) It symbolizes humans’ willful ignorance of environmental destruction.

3. How does Neelay become paralyzed?

A) He falls from a tree.

B) He is in a car accident.

C) An infection damages his nervous system.

D) A degenerative disease damages his nervous system.

4. What work, given to Patricia by her father, has a lasting influence on her?

A) Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads

B) Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

C) Thoreau’s Walden

D) Ovid’s Metamorphosis

5. Patricia’s research on trees relates most directly to which of the following themes?

A) the human preference for fantasy over reality

B) the importance of altruism and sacrifice

C) the interconnectedness of living things

D) the escalating pace of environmental destruction

6. What is Olivia studying in college?

A) business

B) political science

C) actuarial science

D) accounting

7. What sets Neelay’s games apart, especially as time goes on? (short answer)

Chapter 10

READING CHECK

1. How do Olivia and Nick Hoel meet?

2. What does Neelay call the game he designs that allows players to build their own civilizations from scratch?

3. What hobby do Ray and Dorothy adopt to take the place of the children they’re unable to have?

4. Who suggests that Adam get involved with the plants’ rights protesters?

5. What is the name of the redwood in which Olivia and Nick live to prevent it from being cut down?

6. What is the immediate result of the lawsuit in which Patricia testifies as an expert witness?

7. How does Mimi lose her engineering job?

8. What environmentalist project does Patricia help launch?

9. What name does Adam take when he joins the other protesters?

10. What goes wrong during the group’s final planned bombing?

QUIZ

1. Which of the following best describes how Olivia’s near-death experience changes her?

A) It awakens her to a new layer of reality and provides her with purpose.

B) It invests her with a heightened awareness of her own mortality.

C) It clarifies feelings of discontent she was already beginning to experience.

D) It causes her to lose interest in human relationships.

2. What event precipitates Mimi’s involvement in environmental activism?

A) the death of her father’s mulberry

B) the clearing of some trees outside her place of work

C) a news report on clear-cutting in the Amazon

D) a brief relationship with an activist

3. How does Neelay describe the future of virtual reality in his interview with Chris?

A) He suggests that VR technology will augment human sensing and cognition.

B) He suggests that virtual reality will serve as a time capsule to preserve the past.

C) He suggests that virtual reality will increasingly supplant physical reality.

D) He suggests that simulations will provide solutions to humanity’s problems.

4. Patricia’s discussion of “giving trees” reflects which of the following key topics in the novel?

A) market growth

B) names

C) environmental collapse

D) self-sacrifice

5. What happens when Dorothy tells Ray she’s leaving him?

A) He plants a tree.

B) He joins the protesters.

C) He has a brain aneurysm.

D) He has a heart attack.

6. Which of the following characters visits Nick and Olivia while they are living in the redwood?

A) Douglas

B) Adam

C) Mimi

D) Patricia

7. How do Olivia, Nick, Douglas, Mimi, and Adam respond when federal authorities destroy the protestors’ camp?

A) They begin an arson campaign destroying logging equipment.

B) They hold the head of a logging company hostage.

C) They launch a cyberattack targeting several logging companies.

D) They take the government to court.

8. What two kinds of “growth” does Nick’s graffiti implicitly contrast?

A) capitalist versus natural

B) personal versus societal

C) human versus environmental

D) age versus wisdom

9. Why does Douglas stop planting trees? (short answer)

10. What do the protestors call the site they occupy in Oregon? (short answer)

Chapters 11-12

READING CHECK

1. Where does Nick go after Olivia’s death?

2. How does Mimi pay for her reinvention?

3. Which character writes a book about their past environmental activism?

4. Where are Patricia and her team researching and collecting samples when they burn down a poachers’ camp?

5. How do Neelay’s project managers react when he proposes incorporating environmental issues into Mastery?

6. What supposedly extinct tree do Dorothy and Ray identify in their yard?

7. How do the police know to arrest Adam for his involvement in the arsons and Olivia’s death?

8. What question does Patricia plan to “answer” with her suicide?

9. What word does Nick spell out with natural debris as part of his final art project?

QUIZ

1. Which of the following best describes how Chapter 11’s title (“Crown”) relates to its content?

A) The crown is the part of a tree that flowers, and the chapter depicts how Olivia’s death leads to new life.

B) The crown is the most noticeable part of the tree, and the chapter depicts the superficial details of the characters’ lives.

C) The crown is the branching part of the tree, and the chapter depicts the ways the characters’ lives could or do diverge.

D) The crown is the top part of the tree, and the chapter depicts the culmination of each character’s life.

2. Where does Douglas settle after Olivia’s death?

A) a ghost town

B) in San Francisco with Mimi

C) a VA home

D) in Nick’s old farmhouse

3. What sparks Neelay’s dissatisfaction with Mastery?

A) a visit to the redwood forest

B) a conversation with a player

C) attending Patricia’s lecture

D) his father’s death

4. What profession does Mimi take up after changing her name?

A) law

B) teaching

C) therapy

D) music

5. Which of the following best describes how Adam seems to view his arrest and sentencing?

A) as a sign

B) as a mistake

C) as justice

D) as atonement

6. What is the significance of Tachigali versicolor, the tree Patricia discusses at the conference in San Francisco?

A) It dies in order to ensure the survival of its offspring.

B) It holds potential medical relevance.

C) It is among the oldest species of tree on Earth.

D) It communicates with trees of other species.

7. What seems to be the message of the giant, living work of art Nick creates somewhere in Northern Canada?

A) That capitalism is killing the planet

B) That life will ultimately endure

C) That humans are part of nature

D) That death is necessary and natural

8. The humanoid tree Patricia finds in the Amazon rainforest harkens back to what earlier literary allusion? (short answer)

9. How do the Brinkmans respond to complaints about their decision to let their yard grow wild? (short answer)

DISCUSSION SUGGESTIONS

1. Use Reading Check Question 1 (Chapters 1-5) to discuss why The Overstory begins with the story of the Hoels and the blight that killed most of the chestnut trees in the U.S. Consider how the fate of the chestnut trees might foreshadow the rest of the novel, and what it means that the fate of the Hoel family so closely parallels it. Reference specific plot points, character names, and character reactions to strengthen your discussion.

2. Use Quiz Question 7 (Chapters 6-9) to discuss virtual reality in The Overstory. What role does virtual reality play in Neelay’s life, and why is it important to him that his programs remain free? How (if at all) is virtual reality related to denial (e.g., of environmental destruction)? Use plot details and character actions in your discussion to support your ideas.

3. Use Reading Check Question 10 (Chapter 10) to discuss this section’s overall depiction of environmental activism. How do certain characters’ traits befit or conflict with the general goals and/or methods of environmental activism? Consider the efficacy of peaceful protests, legal action, “eco-terrorism,” programs like the seed bank, etc. What hope does the novel offer in the face of the capitalist forces driving ecological collapse? Reference specific plot details and character actions from the text in your discussion.

4. Use Quiz Question 6 (Chapters 11-12) to discuss self-sacrifice versus self-destruction (or suicide versus “unsuicide”) in The Overstory. How does this distinction relate to Patricia’s (possible) suicide and to the actions of other characters (Adam, Olivia, etc.)? How does it relate to the novel’s broader ideas about life and the environment? Reference specific plot points, character names, and character reactions to strengthen your discussion.