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Copywork
About This Passage
Four sentences of a mind talking itself out of something — and the craft is in whose voice we hear. The first sentence reports from outside: Stanley stared, unsure. Then the narration slips inside his head without quotation marks: 'what good would it do him?' is Stanley's own question, wearing the narrator's grammar. The next two sentences pile up his reasons — the promise, the effort — like a case being built. Copy the paragraph attending to the question mark in the second sentence: that is the hinge where the page stops describing Stanley and starts thinking as him. The very next thing he does will overrule every sentence you just copied.
Stanley stared at the pile a moment, unsure if he’d even seen it. Even if it was something, what good would it do him? He’d promised to give anything he found to X-Ray. It didn’t seem worth the effort...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Summarize the chapter twice: once as the camp might log it — a boy dug, found a metal tube, gave it to another boy — and once as the chapter actually stages it: the blurred days, the teasing cloud, the hesitation, the engraved heart, the failed lie, the managed handover, the new place in line. Then name the sentence where the two tellings split furthest apart, and use the chapter's words to defend your choice.
Discussion Questions
- In the hesitation paragraph, the narration asks a question with no quotation marks around it: 'Even if it was something, what good would it do him?' Whose voice is asking? Why might the writer let Stanley's reasoning run inside the narrator's sentences instead of putting it in quoted thought? Use the chapter's words from that paragraph to explain what hearing the argument from inside accomplishes.
- Stanley's secret-Warden plan dies in stages: first he looks across the lake at the cabin — 'The place scared him' — and then comes a second thought: 'Besides, he didn't know if the Warden would find the tube' interesting. Track the order of those reasons. Decide whether fear or doubt does more of the killing, and use the chapter's words from both sentences to defend your answer.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Now and then, at irregular moments — the cloud's cruel schedule.
Item 2
Serving no purpose — the chapter's one-word verdict on Stanley's lie.
Item 3
To sense that something hidden is going on.
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Critical Thinking
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