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Copywork
About This Passage
Kate DiCamillo stages the chapter's central irony in a single image: Eugenia, insisting she is never wrong, pressed nose-to-nose with the very creature she is wrong about. The two sentences 'Mercy stared at Eugenia. Eugenia stared at Mercy.' use deliberate parallel structure to flatten the species hierarchy Eugenia is trying to defend.
'I am not wrong,' Eugenia shouted. 'I am never wrong. I know a pig when I see one.' Eugenia scowled. She pressed her nose against the windowpane. Mercy stared at Eugenia. Eugenia stared at Mercy.
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Summarize the chapter, then explain what you think the author wanted you to notice and how she uses technique to push you toward that response.
Discussion Questions
- Eugenia insists 'I am never wrong' while being demonstrably wrong about almost everything in the chapter. Why do confidently wrong people often LOUDLY insist on their certainty? Is Eugenia a comic figure, a tragic figure, or both?
- Baby finally speaks up out loud in this chapter — but only when Eugenia threatens to hurt Mercy's feelings. Baby has stayed silent through every wrongness until cruelty appears. What does the line of Baby's silence tell us about her moral world?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
contracted the brow into an expression of anger or displeasure
Item 2
the deliberate use of identical grammatical shapes to create equality or rhythm
Item 3
emotional states experienced inwardly; here, the contested ground between Eugenia and Baby
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Critical Thinking
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