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Copywork
About This Passage
In the middle of a chapter full of family squabbles, Barrie pauses to invent an entire mythology for the stars: lovely but powerless watchers, serving an ancient sentence for a forgotten crime, speaking only by winking. The passage's calm, matter-of-fact tone makes a fantastical idea feel like established fact, the same technique by which Barrie smuggles all his magic past the reader. Copying these three sentences trains attention to how an author can deepen a scene by stepping briefly outside it into myth.
Stars are beautiful, but they may not take an active part in anything, they must just look on for ever. It is a punishment put on them for something they did so long ago that no star now knows what it...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Summarize this chapter, then explain what you think Barrie most wanted the reader to feel about the Darlings' last evening at home. What techniques, his hindsight narration, his comic-yet-painful tone, his sudden turn to the stars, did he use to achieve that effect?
Discussion Questions
- Barrie narrates this whole disaster in hindsight, letting the grieving Mr. and Mrs. Darling interrupt the story with 'if only' and even cry 'Mea culpa.' What does Barrie gain by filtering the evening through the parents' later guilt rather than telling it straight as it happened, and why? Use the chapter's details about the parents looking back to explain.
- The narrator both mocks Mr. Darling, a man who 'knew about stocks and shares' yet could not master his tie, and pities him as the 'wretched father' sitting with his 'knuckles to his eyes.' How does Barrie hold ridicule and sympathy together in his portrait of Mr. Darling, and why might he refuse to let us simply despise or simply forgive him? Use the chapter's details about Mr. Darling to explain.
+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide
Vocabulary
Item 1
Wanting to hurt or get back at someone out of spite.
Item 2
In a way that shows disappointment or gentle blame.
Item 3
Acting boldly without thinking about the consequences.
+ 5 more vocabulary words in the complete study guide
Critical Thinking
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