Anne of Green Gables — Chapter 2

About This Passage

This is the chapter’s pivotal narrative device: Lucy Maud Montgomery introduces the child through the eyes of an “ordinary observer” and then immediately overrides that view with the eyes of “an extraordinary observer.” The passage trains the reader to detect the very kind of attention the novel will reward. The vocabulary words wincey, vivacity, commonplace, and ludicrously all appear in this passage, and copying it slowly registers the rhythm by which Lucy Maud Montgomery moves the reader from category to person.

Narration Prompt

Summarize Chapter 2 in five or six sentences, attending to Matthew’s drive to Bright River, the discovery of the orphan girl on the platform, his decision to take her home rather than tell her about the mistake, the long monologue she delivers on the buggy seat, and the chapter’s closing arrival at Green Gables.

Discussion Questions

1. Lucy Maud Montgomery introduces the orphan girl on the Bright River station platform through the device of "the ordinary observer" and "the extraordinary observer," letting Matthew Cuthbert’s shy first glance stand for the ordinary view. Analyze the rhetorical work this device performs in the chapter’s opening encounter, and consider what kind of reading the device is implicitly asking the reader to practice for the rest of the novel about Avonlea.
2. Matthew Cuthbert, who has dreaded all women except Marilla and Mrs. Rachel, decides at the station that he cannot tell the child himself about the mistake and instead defers the explanation to Marilla. Examine what Matthew’s decision reveals about his moral character, and consider how this single deferral begins to set the pattern of his fatherhood for the chapters ahead.

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide