Bunnicula — Chapter 6

Narration Prompt

Summarize Chapter 6's narrative arc, identify the central moment when Chester crosses from misunderstanding into attempted violence, and evaluate whether Howe handles this crossing with the moral seriousness it deserves while maintaining the comic register.

Discussion Questions

1. Chester's apology is a precise instance of what Hannah Arendt called moral preparation in her account of the banality of evil — the verbal work that allows ordinary people to perform terrible actions through small steps of self-justification. Argue whether Howe's children's book belongs in the same conceptual lineage as Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem, Festinger's cognitive dissonance research, and Tavris and Aronson's Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me).
2. The steak that carries different meanings to different observers (weapon to Chester, food to Harold, dinner to the Monroes) is a precise dramatization of meaning holism in the philosophical sense (Wittgenstein, Quine, Davidson). Argue that Howe is making a real philosophical contribution despite the comic register, and consider what literature can offer that academic philosophy cannot.

+ 2 more questions in the complete study guide