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Copywork
About This Passage
Three small acts compose a single moral diagnostic in this passage. The boys laugh impertinently at a small fall — registering that the country's atmosphere has already corroded their fellow-feeling before the country has even been entered. The driver, conspicuously, does not laugh — registering that this is business and not entertainment. He approaches the rebellious donkey under cover of an affectionate gesture and bites off a piece of its ear. Copying this slowly forces attention to what each character does in their unobserved moment: who laughs, who does not, who feigns, who attacks.
Just imagine the impertinent laughter of all those boys who saw it! But the driver did not laugh. He went to the rebellious donkey and, feigning to kiss him, bit off a portion of his right ear.
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Reconstruct the chapter from the silent arrival of the carriage with twenty-four donkeys in white kid boots, through the chant of "Come with us and always be happy," through Pinocchio's three sighs and the donkey's repeated rebellion, through the donkey's whispered warnings, to the arrival in the Country of Playthings and the five months that pass before Pinocchio wakes one morning to find what has happened.
Discussion Questions
- The carriage arrives at midnight, with wheels bound in tow and rags, carrying boys packed like sardines who do not complain. Each detail makes the trip's apparent celebration suspect. What does Collodi accomplish by letting the FORM of the departure indict the trip itself before any consequence has been narrated, and what does this technique demand of the reader that explicit moralizing would not?
- Pinocchio's surrender does not come from new evidence about the country. It comes from sequence: Lamp Wick urges, then four boys chant, then all the rest. Pinocchio describes feeling pulled by his sleeve. Examine what Collodi is registering about the difference between argument and chant — between persuasion that engages the reasoning faculty and pressure that bypasses it — and what this implies about where individual conscience can and cannot survive.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
comfort offered to mitigate distress; in the chapter the consolation of imagining the country is strong enough to override the boys' actual physical misery, registering how a sufficiently desired future can suppress present sensation
Item 2
having accepted a difficult state without protest, often through the abandonment of objection rather than through agreement; the chapter pairs the word with "happy" to mark how strange the boys' acceptance of suffocation is
Item 3
pretending to perform an action or feeling while doing the opposite; the driver bites the donkey's ears feigning to kiss him, registering an exact pairing of outward gesture and inward intention that runs throughout the chapter
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Critical Thinking
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