The Adventures of Pinocchio — Chapter 21

Narration Prompt

Read Chapter 21 as a unified moral descent: the trap, the Firefly's Socratic interruption, the farmer's verdict, the watchdog punishment, and the dog-house confession. Trace what Collodi accomplishes by giving each station of the descent its own register, and where in the sequence Pinocchio shifts from sufferer to moral agent.

Discussion Questions

1. The Firefly's first words to Pinocchio in the trap are interrogative — 'But are the grapes yours?' and 'Then who has taught you to steal other people's things?' Argue what Collodi accomplishes by giving the chapter's first helper a Socratic method rather than a rescuing hand. Is moral inquiry, in this novel, a form of severity disguised as mercy or a form of mercy disguised as severity, and what does the chapter's structure reveal about Collodi's claim regarding the conditions under which a question can do moral work?
2. The farmer's syllogism — 'He who steals grapes is also capable of stealing chickens' — fails as a verdict on Pinocchio (he did not steal the chickens) and succeeds as a categorical claim about the way small wrongs cast long shadows over reputation. Argue what Collodi exposes about the social epistemology of judgment. Why does the chapter give the farmer a partly-true accusation rather than a wholly fair or wholly unjust one, and what is Collodi teaching about the relationship between particular acts and categorical character?

+ 2 more questions in the complete study guide