Mercy Watson to the Rescue — Chapter 3

Narration Prompt

Summarize the chapter's narrative arc, then identify the central tension Kate DiCamillo is dramatizing and evaluate whether she handles it honestly.

Discussion Questions

1. The chapter pivots on a grammatical hinge — the word 'however' — which does the work of an entire scene of contrast. Mr. Watson is afraid; Mercy is hungry. What does it tell you about Kate DiCamillo's confidence in her form that she trusts a single conjunction with this much structural weight? Where else in literature have you seen so much depend on so small a word?
2. Adam Smith argued in The Wealth of Nations that the butcher and the brewer serve us not from benevolence but from regard to their own interest, and that this self-interested action is what produces the goods of common life. Mercy's pursuit of toast saves the Watsons by accident. Is Kate DiCamillo writing a small Smithian fable — that creatures pursuing their own goods produce common goods they did not aim at?

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