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Copywork
About This Passage
Kate DiCamillo turns Baby's chronic agreement into a small revelation about invisibility. Eugenia waits for an automatic response that never comes because Baby has slipped away. The chapter makes a structural moral observation: those who never push back become wallpaper to those they agree with.
Eugenia paused, waiting for Baby to say 'yes sister.' Baby said nothing. Baby was saying nothing because Baby was not there.
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Give a concise summary, then identify the most important moment.
Discussion Questions
- Eugenia waits for an automatic 'yes sister' from a sister who is no longer there. The structure makes the chronic invisibility visible. Is Kate DiCamillo making a small but serious philosophical observation about how the agreeable disappear?
- Kate DiCamillo deploys dramatic irony for moral effect — the reader sees Baby's absence before Eugenia does. Augustine in De Magistro argues that what we fail to notice reveals what we have stopped attending to. Is the chapter Augustinian in form?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
happening without thought; the form of agreement that becomes invisible
Item 2
continuous, persistent; describing patterns that have become structural
Item 3
the literary technique in which the reader holds knowledge the characters lack
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Critical Thinking
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