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Copywork
About This Passage
This sentence is worth slow study because of how Marie Lu uses a single complex sentence to do real psychological work. The two clauses are linked by 'and,' but the relationship between them is more complicated than simple addition. The first clause ('I have enough of my own dreams to haunt me') is an admission — June is acknowledging her own pain. The second clause ('I'm not sure I have the courage to know about his') is at first glance an excuse, but on closer reading it is something more honest: a confession that hearing another person's nightmares requires a kind of courage June is not sure she possesses. The word 'courage' lands strangely here — we usually associate courage with action, with facing physical danger. Lu is using it for the harder thing: the work of holding another person's grief without flinching. Notice the rhythm: the sentence is just long enough to feel like a thought happening in real time, not a polished epigram, and the 'I'm not sure' admits doubt where a less honest narrator would have asserted certainty.
I have enough of my own dreams to haunt me, and I'm not sure I have the courage to know about his.
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell the chapter, then identify the single sentence that does the most work in establishing the tone of June's voice for the rest of the book. Defend your choice with reference to specific craft details.
Discussion Questions
- Marie Lu opens the second book of her trilogy with a chapter that is almost entirely interior — a train ride, a small painful exchange about food, and a long stretch of June's thoughts about Day, the Patriots, and her own old life. This is a deliberately quiet opening for a book whose plot will accelerate quickly. What is Lu accomplishing by opening slowly? What does the slowness EARN that a more dramatic opening could not?
- June was raised wealthy in the Republic — privileged, educated, prized as a prodigy. Day was raised on the streets — abandoned, hunted, kept alive by his own wits. They are now traveling together as equals. But the chapter shows the reader that 'equals' is more complicated than it sounds. Identify three specific moments where the class difference between them shows up — sometimes obviously, sometimes invisibly. What is Lu saying about what it actually takes for people from different worlds to be in each other's company?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
the experience of being moved out of one's familiar context — used in literary criticism for characters who have lost their accustomed place in the world and must rebuild
Item 2
becoming worse rather than better over time — used both for physical wounds and for unresolved emotional injuries that compound when ignored
Item 3
describing a relationship in which each side gives only what they expect to receive in return — the opposite of a relationship built on shared loyalty or unconditional regard
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Critical Thinking
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