Summer of the Monkeys — Chapter 7

Narration Prompt

Summarize Chapter 7 in one precise paragraph, tracking the dramatic arc from pre-dawn preparation through tactical victory, tactical collapse, and the return home under the limit of hunger. Note where Rawls makes his structural turns — which sentence is the hinge.

Discussion Questions

1. Chapter 7 is the book's first serious test of Jay Berry's model of his opponent. Before this chapter, the big monkey was an obstacle with a price tag; by the end, he is revealed to be a strategist capable of using kin as bait. What philosophical obligations does that revelation place on a hunter — and how does the text already suggest Jay Berry is not yet equipped to meet them?
2. Rowdy attacks a captured monkey inside the closed net and is immediately punished with a bite on the nose. Rawls stages this as slapstick — Rowdy jumping back, sitting down, whimpering — but the underlying act is ethically serious: attacking an already-captured creature. What moral work is the comedy doing here, and what is it allowing the reader to absorb without objecting?

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