The Adventures of Pinocchio — Chapter 29

About This Passage

This is the chapter's most precise demonstration of its theory of lies. The flattering untruth — that Pinocchio wants to obey his parents — grows the nose; the unflattering truth — vagabond, scoundrel, bad companions — restores it. The chapter is teaching that there is no exception in your own favor; lying to make yourself look better is structurally identical to lying to harm someone else, and the body of the marionette is constructed to register the difference between truth and self-flattering speech.

Narration Prompt

Retell Chapter 29 with attention to its three-part structure: Aladdin's payment of the rescue debt, Pinocchio's encounter with the old man and the lie that grows his nose, and the long curriculum at the Fairy's door (Snail, knocker-eel, foot through the door, chalk-cardboard breakfast, faint, pardon, promise of transformation).

Discussion Questions

1. Examine the structural rhyme between Pinocchio's rescue of Aladdin in Chapter 28 and Aladdin's rescue of Pinocchio in Chapter 29. Argue that the chapter is articulating a theory of moral causation in which good actions are not closed accounts but open deposits that generate further good actions over time. What does Aladdin's line 'In this world all ought to help one another' add to the theological reading of the chapter?
2. Examine the passage in which Pinocchio's nose grows when he speaks flattering untruths about himself ('a good boy, a boy that wants to go to school, to study, and to obey his parents') and shrinks when he speaks the unflattering truth. Argue that the chapter rejects any view in which flattering lies are a permitted exception to honesty, and consider how this construction shapes the kind of moral attention the novel is training in its readers.

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide