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Copywork
About This Passage
This is the passage in which Stanley, lying awake under a glittering sky, realizes he likes himself — perhaps for the first time in his life. Sachar embeds a complete psychological turning point in a series of quiet, unshowy sentences. Copying it asks a student to notice how Stanley measures his own interior life against the bullies and the bad luck that shaped him, and how he now chooses a different account of himself.
He liked himself now. He wondered if he was delirious. He looked over at Zero sleeping near him. Zero’s face was lit in the starlight, and there was a flower petal in front of his nose that moved back...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
In three or four sentences, reconstruct the movement of Chapter 42, from Zero's declaration that he has dug his 'last hole' to Stanley whispering, 'You want to dig one more hole?' at the end.
Discussion Questions
- Zero's 'last hole I will ever dig' is juxtaposed, within the same chapter, with Stanley's 'You want to dig one more hole?' What is Sachar doing by framing the chapter between these two lines? Consider how the meaning of a single act — digging — changes when the actor is free rather than compelled.
- Stanley concludes, 'It was more than a coincidence. It had to be destiny.' Evaluate this claim. Is Sachar affirming a metaphysics of destiny, or is he dramatizing a psychological move by which Stanley reorganizes his life story into a narrative of meaning?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
An instrument that shows time by the position of a shadow cast by the sun.
Item 2
A remarkable concurrence of events that appears to have no causal connection.
Item 3
The notion that events are fated or predetermined; a person's inescapable future.
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Critical Thinking
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