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Copywork
About This Passage
This is the famous 'dying act' passage that wins Rowdy his trip to town. Copying it trains trailblazers to recognize how an author builds personification — parts of the body treated as if they each have their own will ('his tail was the first part of him to die'). Notice the five-verb sequence that carries the sentence: dropped, stopped, squirmed, hanging, hung. Rawls slows the action down so the reader can watch the tail fail, inch by inch. The final simile — 'like a dead grapevine' — is a specifically Ozark image: grapevines on the fence, withering in late summer, are the natural reference for a country boy trying to describe something gone slack. The humor is in the contrast between Rowdy's mock-dying and the boy's knowing-it-is-an-act, and in Grandpa falling for it completely.
Rowdy dropped his old head and wouldn't even look at me. His tail was the first part of him to die. Very slowly, it stopped wiggling. To make things worse, he squirmed his rear end around until his ta...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell Chapter 11 in five or six sentences. Be sure to include the pre-dawn departure, Rowdy's successful 'dying act' manipulation, the coon-chase in the river bottoms, Grandpa letting Jay Berry hold the reins across the river, the arrival in Tahlequah with its Cherokee Nation college, the night at the Eubanks Hotel, the library visit with Grandpa being shushed and Rowdy bawling, and the discovery of Trapping Monkeys in the Jungles of Borneo.
Discussion Questions
- Rowdy's 'dying act' works on Grandpa first, not on Jay Berry. What does this tell us about Rowdy — and about Grandpa?
- When Grandpa hands Jay Berry the reins at the river, Grandpa still taps the mares with the buggy whip himself. What is Grandpa teaching Jay Berry by letting him 'drive' when Grandpa is really doing the work?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
let fall or sank down; in this scene, Rowdy lets his head sink when he hears he cannot come
Item 2
came to an end; ceased moving; the tail ceases its wagging as the 'dying act' begins
Item 3
moving back and forth with small quick motions; the happy motion of a dog's tail before it collapses
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Critical Thinking
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