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Copywork
About This Passage
Dahl escalates the siege through accumulation. The exact count (108), the polysyndeton of the weapons list, and the sweeping final clause ('quite impossible for a fox or indeed for any other animal') transform Boggis, Bunce, and Bean from farmers into a war machine. The reader now feels the hill the way the foxes feel it: sealed.
So the order went down to the farms, and that night one hundred and eight men formed a tight ring around the bottom of the hill. They were armed with sticks and guns and hatchets and pistols and all s...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Summarize Chapter 8 in one tight paragraph. Include what Boggis, Bunce, and Bean set up on the hill, how they tempt the foxes, how Bean organizes the ring of 108 men, and how Mr Fox closes the chapter.
Discussion Questions
- Boggis deliberately holds a steaming chicken close to Mr Fox's hole and calls down the tunnel. What does this taunting act reveal about Boggis that ordinary hunting would not?
- Dahl writes that Bean answered 'pretending he had' when Boggis challenged him about Mr Fox digging through the hill. Point to at least two other textual details that show Bean is improvising the 108-man plan on the spot.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
So difficult or unlikely that it cannot happen.
Item 2
To break free from confinement or danger.
Item 3
Drifted gently through the air, usually said of a scent.
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Critical Thinking
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