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Copywork
About This Passage
Chosen for moral weight, syntax, and authorial craft: this three-paragraph exchange is the hinge of the chapter. Fern's question about her own birth forces her father to name the difference between a little girl and a runty pig, and her reply — "I see no difference" — is the conviction the whole story grows from. The dialogue is also worth copying for its attribution phrases: "looking down at his daughter with love" and "still hanging on to the ax" hold affection and protest in the same breath while the argument does its work.
"But it's unfair," cried Fern. "The pig couldn't help being born small, could it? If I had been very small at birth, would you have killed me?" Mr. Arable smiled. "Certainly not," he said, looking do...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell this chapter as the story of one argument: how it begins while the breakfast table is being set, what each person says and does as it moves outdoors to the ax, and how it ends with a carton wobbling at Fern's place.
Discussion Questions
- When Mrs. Arable explains what the ax is for, she keeps setting the table and says the pig "would probably die anyway." Fern hears the same explanation, shrieks "You mean kill it?", and runs outdoors with her sneakers sopping. Why does this news stay ordinary farm business for the mother and become an emergency for Fern? Weigh each one's words and actions in this scene to explain what the runt's death means to each of them.
- Fern's first plea outdoors — "Please don't kill it! It's unfair." — earns her "Now run along!" Her question "If I had been very small at birth, would you have killed me?" earns a smile, a queer look, and finally "All right." Why does the question reach Mr. Arable when the plea could not? Use the words of both attempts and his response to each to explain what the question forces him to compare.
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Vocabulary
Item 1
The smallest and weakest animal born in a litter — the one a farmer expects will never amount to anything.
Item 2
A serious wrong done to someone who cannot defend themselves; unfairness deep enough to demand action.
Item 3
A creature too feeble to survive on its own — and, to a farmer, a source of trouble rather than pity.
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Critical Thinking
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