Summer of the Monkeys — Chapter 5

About This Passage

This passage shows Rawls's precise mechanical description — the narrator slows down and tells us exactly how an unfamiliar object is built. Copying it trains the student to notice the discipline of concrete nouns (pole, eyelets, celluloid ring) and the work a writer does when he wants a reader to see, not just imagine.

Narration Prompt

Retell Chapter 5 in four to six sentences. Include Jay Berry's return to Papa, the trip back to the bottoms, the visit to Grandpa, the reveal of the monkey-catching net, and the butterfly-professor story.

Discussion Questions

1. When Jay Berry comes flying over the rail fence and Papa calls him over, Jay Berry says, 'After all the bragging I had done about what a good monkey catcher I was, I hated like the dickens to go and face him, but I couldn't just run away.' What in the chapter tells you the most about Jay Berry's character — the running, or the turning back?
2. Why does Rawls spend so much of Chapter 5 on Grandpa's mechanical description of the net and his step-by-step plan for the hole and the leaves? What does this slow, specific explanation do for the reader that a short summary could not?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide