Anne of Green Gables — Chapter 15

Narration Prompt

Hold the chapter's full architecture in mind: the morning's pastoral approach to school through Lover's Lane, Willowmere, Violet Vale, and the Birch Path; the schoolroom provocation in which Anne, abstracted in her 'gorgeous dream-land,' is wrenched out of reverie by Gilbert's piercing 'Carrots! Carrots!'; the slate-blow and Mr. Phillips' chalked legend ('Ann Shirley has a very bad temper,' the missing 'e'); the next day's selective punishment of Anne alone among a dozen late pupils; Anne's vow never to return, the candy heart ground to powder, the destruction of language by language; Marilla's consultation with Mrs. Lynde and the rendering of distributed verdict; the closing tableau of Anne weeping luxuriously over Diana's hypothetical future wedding while Marilla — Marilla — bursts into the heartiest laughter Matthew has ever heard from her. The chapter's argument depends on the asymmetry between provocations and responses, and on the structural rhyme with Chapter 14's apology and beatification afternoon.

Discussion Questions

1. Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics distinguishes proper anger (orge — directed at a real wrong, in proportion, willing to be set down once dignity is restored) from vindictiveness (the desire to inflict harm beyond what justice requires). Mr. Phillips brands Anne's slate-blow 'a vindictive spirit'; the chapter's framing — Anne's interior life, Gilbert's confession, Mrs. Lynde's verdict, the narrator's irony toward Mr. Phillips — pushes back. Distinguish the slate-blow from Anne's later vow to hate Gilbert 'to the end of life,' and argue under which Aristotelian category each act belongs. Connect to the difference between an act of self-defense of dignity (the slate-blow) and the longer-term commitment to refuse forgiveness (the vow), and consider why the chapter would have Anne pass through both rather than only one.
2. Mr. Phillips' selection of Anne for punishment among a dozen equally late pupils is described by the chapter, in plain language, as the search for 'a scapegoat.' Read this against René Girard's analysis of the scapegoating mechanism (a community discharges its collective tension by selecting a single victim whose punishment is structurally convenient because it does not require punishing everyone) and Leviticus 16, where the term is sacred. Examine the moral structure of scapegoating in Mr. Phillips' particular case — why is Anne the convenient victim, what exactly is being discharged onto her, and what does the chapter's invocation of the scapegoating language say about the relationship between institutional convenience and individual injustice? Connect to the chapter's later disclosure that Mr. Phillips holds his post by patronage, his uncle being a school trustee.

+ 2 more questions in the complete study guide