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About This Passage
These closing passages from Chapter 2, still resonant in Chapter 3's aftermath, juxtapose Matthew's moral dread with Anne's animistic tenderness. The 'murdering' metaphor operates within Matthew's agricultural consciousness (lambs, calves), while Anne's whispered personification of trees reveals the perceptual generosity the novel values. Montgomery places the violence of truth-telling against the beauty of imaginative perception, making the reader complicit in wanting to preserve the latter at the cost of the former.
When he thought of that rapt light being quenched in her eyes he had an uncomfortable feeling that he was going to assist at murdering something — much the same feeling that came over him when he had ...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Give a concise summary, then identify the single most important sentence or moment and explain why it matters to the book as a whole.
Discussion Questions
- Anne's insistence on 'Anne spelled with an E' and her desire to be called 'Cordelia' constitute a sustained argument about the relationship between names and selfhood. What philosophical position about identity does Anne's naming practice embody — and does Montgomery's novel ultimately validate or complicate it?
- Matthew's 'We might be some good to her' and Marilla's 'What good would she be to us?' articulate two competing ethical frameworks. How would Kant, who insisted persons must never be treated merely as means, evaluate this exchange — and does the novel's resolution of this debate satisfy or disappoint?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
With an expression communicating helpless uncertainty — the shared look between Matthew and Marilla reveals their mutual inadequacy before Anne's grief
Item 2
An eccentric or unexpected preference — Montgomery's comic comparison (Matthew wanting to keep Anne is like wanting to stand on his head) measures the distance between Marilla's worldview and Matthew's emerging advocacy
Item 3
Marked by turbulent, uncontrolled force — applied to the bed, it externalizes Anne's emotional violence in a domestic register
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Critical Thinking
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