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Copywork
About This Passage
This passage shows Chester defending his vampire surveillance to Harold through a sequence of small rhetorical moves. First he claims uncertainty ('I'm not sure yet') as a kind of humility. Then he immediately reasserts certainty ('I know there's something funny about that rabbit'), undermining the humility. Then he frames his exhausted vigilance as a duty ('I have to keep alert'). When Harold points out that he is too tired to be alert, Chester escapes the contradiction with a non-falsifiable claim: 'I'm awake when it's important.' This last move is the key: it cannot be tested, because Chester gets to decide when 'important' is, and any moment he was actually asleep can be retroactively defined as not-important. The passage is teaching a writer how to render the small rhetorical maneuvers by which a believer protects an idea from the challenges that would falsify it. Howe is doing in two paragraphs what philosophers of science have spent careers trying to describe.
I'm not sure yet, but I know there's something funny about that rabbit. That's why I have to keep alert. But look at you. You're exhausted. You sleep all the time. How can you call that alert? I'm awa...
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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?
Discussion Questions
- When Harold points out that Chester is too exhausted to be alert, Chester escapes the contradiction by saying 'I'm awake when it's important.' This is what philosophers of science call a non-falsifiable claim — one that cannot be proven wrong because any possible evidence can be made consistent with it. Argue what Howe is showing about how vampire theories (and other false beliefs) protect themselves from challenge.
- The Monroe family encounters the white tomato and offers a series of natural explanations: chemistry experiment, vegetable blight, DDT poisoning, faulty refrigerator. Chester offers a supernatural explanation. Is the family's range of natural explanations more rational than Chester's single supernatural one, or merely more conventional? What is the difference between rationality and convention?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
serving as a desirable example or model worth imitating
Item 2
tolerantly permissive, especially in a way that may not benefit the recipient
Item 3
added a remark suddenly to a conversation, especially to interrupt or correct
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Critical Thinking
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