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Copywork
About This Passage
This passage was chosen because it makes the invisible act of thinking visible. Wilson Rawls does not tell us Grandpa is reasoning — he shows it in the body: the mumbling, the pacing, the ear-pulling, the nose-rubbing, the whisker-digging. Jay Berry's boyhood patience is also shown rather than stated. And 'cut all kinds of didos' — a piece of Ozark-English dialect — brings the regional voice of the Cherokee bottoms directly onto the page. The copyist learns from Rawls that thought has a body, and that dialect is part of a character's soul.
Grandpa put his thinking cap on and started mumbling and grumbling. I couldn't understand one word he was saying. It always tickled me when Grandpa got something heavy like that on his mind. He did al...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Summarize Chapter 2 in a paragraph: Jay Berry's arrival at the store, Grandpa's portrait, the revelation of the circus-train wreck and the thirty monkeys, the staggered reward reveal (two dollars, then one hundred), the building of the padded trap, Grandpa testing it on his own finger, and the small concealed kindnesses at the end (candy, meat rind for Rowdy).
Discussion Questions
- Wilson Rawls dedicates a whole paragraph to Grandpa's physical appearance (short, bald, whiskery, tobacco-chewing) before pivoting to a single sentence about his inner self. Why does the author structure the description this way? What does the LENGTH of the outside description, compared to the brevity of the inside description, reveal about how Rawls wants us to read a person?
- Grandpa releases the reward money in two pieces — first the two-dollar bounty, and only later the hundred-dollar chimpanzee. Why does the author hold the larger figure back? How does this staggered revelation work on Jay Berry, and how does it work on the reader?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Speaking so softly and unclearly that the words cannot be distinguished; an outward sign of inward thinking.
Item 2
Complaining or muttering under one's breath; often paired with mumbling when a person is working a hard idea out.
Item 3
Amused or pleased in a quiet, affectionate way; not the physical sensation, but a figurative one.
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Critical Thinking
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