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Copywork
About This Passage
White gives Templeton a rhetorical aria: a compact body description, a repeated exclamation, a catalog of pleasures, and a final triplet with a comma-doubled 'rich.' Three vocabulary words — SWOLLEN, HOARSELY, and CAROUSING — anchor the paragraph's register. Copying the passage trains the ear for how prose conveys the physical voice of excess: the rasp of a full throat, the adjectival swell of appetite, and the rhythm of a creature pleased with himself.
The rat was swollen to twice his normal size. His stomach was as big around as a jelly jar. "What a night!" he repeated, hoarsely. "What feasting and carousing! A real gorge! I must have eaten the rem...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Reconstruct Chapter 19 as a tightly engineered sequence: Charlotte's promised dawn arriving on cue; the egg sac named as magnum opus; the doubled vocabulary lesson (magnum opus and languishing); Templeton's bloated return with the Uncle-blue-tag news; Mrs. Zuckerman's tears; the buttermilk bath and crowd; the loud-speaker reversal; the pause before celebration; Charlotte's final image, unseen above, 'peaceful and contented.'
Discussion Questions
- Charlotte names the egg sac her 'magnum opus' and teaches Wilbur the Latin in the same breath. Later in the same conversation, she teaches him 'languishing.' Argue that this doubled vocabulary lesson — a great work and its maker's decline — is the scene's deliberate formal architecture, not merely Charlotte's habit of instruction.
- Templeton in Chapter 19 is the book's test case for whether satisfied appetite produces moral improvement. Swollen and hoarse from a night of feasting, he returns at his cruelest. Examine what Templeton's state in this chapter says about E.B. White's moral anthropology — specifically, his implicit rejection of the idea that contentment necessarily softens character.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Declining in strength or vigor; slowly fading, especially from age or unremitting effort.
Item 2
Enlarged beyond normal size, typically through distension rather than growth.
Item 3
Roughly and harshly voiced, as if the throat were strained.
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Critical Thinking
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