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Copywork
About This Passage
This passage was chosen because it is a textbook example of Dahl's narrative technique for dramatizing intelligence. Notice how the structure operates on three levels: a topic sentence (too clever), an explanation of the method (walks into the wind), and a concrete test case (Boggis at Chicken House Number One becomes a redirect to Number Four). Dahl refuses to leave cleverness abstract — he shows it in operation, with exact distances and exact alternatives. The passage also contains the vocabulary words 'lurking,' 'approached,' and 'delicately/change direction' in their natural syntax, allowing students to study how a master prose stylist makes a small animal's survival feel like tactical intelligence.
But Mr Fox was too clever for them. He always approached a farm with the wind blowing in his face, and this meant that if any man were lurking in the shadows ahead, the wind would carry the smell of t...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
In a paragraph of six to eight sentences, retell Chapter 2 with attention to both plot and structure: the opening zoom-in on the fox's home, the domestic ritual inside, the farmers' rage, Mr Fox's counter-strategy of walking into the wind, the escalating curses from Boggis, Bunce, and Bean, and Bean's revelation that he has already located the hole.
Discussion Questions
- Dahl dedicates the opening four sentences of Chapter 2 to a slow zoom — hill, wood, tree, hole — before naming a single character. In what way does this telescoping structure function as argument rather than mere description, and how does the ending of the chapter (Bean recounting these same landmarks) convert that opening from cozy geography into dramatic irony?
- Consider the contrast between Mr Fox's household ('Well, my darling, what shall it be this time?') and the farmers' solitary hoarding in Chapter 1. Dahl never moralizes directly, yet most readers emerge firmly on the side of the foxes. What does this reveal about how ethical sympathy is built in fiction, and what role do domestic details — food, conversation, courtesy — play in establishing moral authority?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Moved nearer to something, usually with a purpose in mind.
Item 2
Waiting in hiding, often with sinister or threatening intent.
Item 3
In a careful, precise, or gentle manner, as if handling something fragile or refined.
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Critical Thinking
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