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Copywork
About This Passage
Two paragraphs from inside Stanley's fantasy — and the tense gives the game away. The whole novel speaks in past tense, but here the verbs flip to present: 'asks Squid,' 'says Armpit,' as if the imagined scene were live. This is the chapter's quiet claim about imagination: a story that eases real suffering earns real-event grammar. Copy both paragraphs exactly, keeping the quotation marks, the present-tense verbs, and the apostrophes in 'Caveman's' and 'Dunne's.' Notice what the fantasy supplies in eleven words — 'Caveman's our friend' — the sentence Stanley most needs said, spoken by a boy who, hours earlier, was passing his fossil around.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?” asks Squid, as he slams his hands into Derrick Dunne’s smug face. “Caveman’s our friend,” says Armpit, grabbing him by the shirt collar.
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Summarize the chapter as it is staged: the angry return, the visit's steps, the promise, the rationalization, the power analysis, the fantasy. Then state the chapter's thesis about how power works in D tent in one sentence of your own, and defend it with the chapter's words — naming the sentence that does the most work for your formulation.
Discussion Questions
- X-Ray's visit moves through a secret — 'No one knows this' — a fairness claim, and a question that leaves Stanley little room to refuse: 'That's only fair, right?' Why might the author make this exchange sound so calm? Use the chapter's words from the visit to explain what the scene shows about how power operates in D tent.
- Stanley thinks, 'The more he thought about it, the more he was glad that he agreed.' What do you make of that movement from thought to gladness? Use the chapter's words around the sentence to decide whether Stanley is reasoning clearly, comforting himself, or doing some mixture of both — and defend your answer.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Just and deserved — a word whose meaning shifts with the mouth that uses it.
Item 2
An unsure yes — here, the sound of consent under pressure.
Item 3
The one a group follows — a position recognized rather than appointed.
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Critical Thinking
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