Mercy Watson to the Rescue — Chapter 12

Narration Prompt

Summarize the chapter and identify the central tension Kate DiCamillo is dramatizing.

Discussion Questions

1. The book uses ring composition — Homer, the Pentateuch, Old English elegy, and modern literary fiction all rely on the device. Kate DiCamillo's version is small in scale but precise in execution. Is the form working at the same level here as in its older uses, or is the picture-book form a different instrument that only resembles the older one?
2. Mercy's arc — from fear in the dark to peaceful sleep — is the structure of a bildungsroman. C. S. Lewis in The Discarded Image argues that pre-modern thinkers granted graduated forms of soul to creatures of every order. Is Kate DiCamillo making a Lewisian claim by giving the bildungsroman to a pig?

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