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Copywork
About This Passage
This exchange is the chapter's emotional pivot — the moment where Leslie's public confidence dissolves into private need. Her voice quivers; she says something generous ('you're worth shooting') and receives something cold ('so shoot me'). Paterson structures the dialogue as pursuit and retreat: Leslie 'catches up' and 'refuses to be shaken off' while Jess tries to escape. The passage models dialogue as character action: what each person says reveals not their ideas but their defenses. Leslie's vulnerability under her bravado and Jess's cruelty under his embarrassment are both visible here.
she caught up with him he took his hands out and began to trot toward the hill she speed it up and refused to be shaken off thanks she said yeah for what he was thinking you're the only kid in the Hol...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Summarize this chapter, then explain what you think the author most wanted the reader to notice or feel. What techniques did the author use to create that effect?
Discussion Questions
- The chapter's closing simile — Leslie runs like 'wild ducks in the autumn' — arrives through Jess's perspective, and 'the word beautiful came to his mind.' But Jess 'shook it away.' In chapter 1, the same pattern occurred: Jess perceived something genuinely but suppressed the perception. Analyze what Paterson is establishing through this repetition. Is Jess suppressing beauty specifically, or is he suppressing the capacity for genuine perception itself? What is the difference, and why does it matter?
- Leslie enters the boys' race uninvited, wins easily, and then seeks out the one boy who is most upset about it. Her approach to Jess is neither apologetic nor aggressive — she simply states what she thinks ('you're the only kid worth shooting') and waits. Evaluate Leslie's social strategy: is she displaying genuine confidence, or is she performing confidence to mask vulnerability? What evidence in the chapter supports each reading, and what does the quivering voice suggest?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
The active pushing down of a thought, feeling, or impulse — not its absence but its forcible containment
Item 2
Enacted for an audience rather than expressing genuine feeling — identity or authority displayed rather than inherently possessed
Item 3
Deriving from or maintained by an established system of rules and customs rather than from individual merit or natural ability
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Critical Thinking
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