Summer of the Monkeys — Chapter 9

Narration Prompt

Offer a reading of Chapter 9 as a chapter in which Rawls fuses THREE literary traditions at once: the Southern humorist sketch (the drunk-at-the-still set piece with strong antecedents in Twain and Harris), the tall-tale bestiary (animals performing human social rituals), and the moral fable (an action produces its consequence with almost parabolic directness). Argue which tradition is dominant in the chapter's structure, and which of the other two most complicates the dominant one.

Discussion Questions

1. Rawls puts the ethically compromised Rowdy-fake-cry sequence at the chapter's opening and makes it Jay Berry's own confession. Interrogate this placement as a piece of moral architecture — why does Rawls require the reader to accept Jay Berry's AKRASIA (knowing the better and doing the worse) before the sour mash plot begins? Does acknowledging the opening dishonesty change the ethical stakes of the closing dishonesty (the Jimbo-stole-my-britches accusation)?
2. The chapter's causal chain runs from an off-page still (the Gravely boys) through a child's unsupervised wandering (Jay Berry in the bottoms) to a semi-wild animal's misapplied training (Jimbo offering mash as reciprocal gift). Evaluate Rawls's implicit politics: is this chapter gently indicting a culture of adult non-interference that leaves children exposed to hazards the adults have normalized, or is it simply reporting such a culture without critique?

+ 2 more questions in the complete study guide