Number the Stars — Chapter 10

About This Passage

This passage was chosen because it contains the most virtuosic moral performance in the book — Mama's improvised counter-bluff. The repeated 'directly to' verbs, the false agreement, the strategic dismissal of the country doctor, the false longing, the eager exclamation, and the ellipsis where the soldier interrupts her form a textbook study in dramatic irony and rhetorical jiu-jitsu. Pathfinders will examine how a person uses pretended weakness, false eagerness, and contagious disease to defeat a man with a gun.

Narration Prompt

Retell the chapter, focusing on the sequence of escalating threats and counter-moves: the officer's question, Annemarie's lie, the officer's order to open the casket, Mama's counter-bluff, the slap, the candle, Peter's psalm, and Annemarie's interior collapse.

Discussion Questions

1. Annemarie answers 'My Great-aunt Birte' in 'a firm voice,' even though she has just swallowed first. What does the text reveal about the relationship between physical signs of fear and the moral act of speaking calmly anyway? Does Lowry seem to define bravery as the ABSENCE of fear or as something different, and what evidence supports your reading?
2. Mama's counter-bluff works because she invents a danger — typhus germs — that the officer cannot verify but cannot dismiss either. What does Lowry imply about the role of strategic fiction in moral resistance? Is there a difference between the lies told by oppressors and the lies told by people resisting oppressors, and how does the chapter shape your answer?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide