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Copywork
About This Passage
This passage yokes the chapter's two great visual moves — the elaborate costume and the master's speech — into a single rhetorical unit. The bridle, the camellias, the ribbons, and the gold-and-silver band dress Pinocchio as spectacle; the master's speech then frames the dressing as the polite end of a long pedagogical project that began with 'gentleness' and was 'obliged' to escalate to 'the dialect of the whip.' Copying this passage trains the student to feel how Collodi places ornament and cruelty in adjacent sentences without comment — letting the reader notice that the most decorated donkey in the world is still a donkey who has been beaten for three months. The phrase 'dialect of the whip' is the lexical heart of the chapter, and it must be felt next to the camellias to register fully.
He was dressed up beautifully. He had a new bridle of shining leather with buckles of polished brass; two white camellias tied to his ears; his mane divided in many curls tied with red silk; a large b...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Tell what happens in this chapter from the moment the driver kicks down the door to the moment the buyer throws Pinocchio off the cliff. Be sure to include the bridling, the sale, the hunger and hay, the three months of training, the costume, the performance, the recognition of the Fairy, the slip and lameness, and the second sale.
Discussion Questions
- Collodi pauses the action to ask the reader directly, 'do you understand what the trade of the driver was?' What does this question do to the reader's relationship with the story, and why might Collodi choose to reveal the driver's whole operation in this rhetorical way rather than letting it stay implied?
- The master tells the audience that gentleness was 'received with scorn' and that he was therefore 'obliged to talk to him in the dialect of the whip.' What does the phrase 'dialect of the whip' reveal about how the master understands his own cruelty, and what is gained by giving violence the language of culture?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
the leather straps that go on a horse or donkey's head, with buckles and a bit, used to lead and control the animal. Pinocchio wears a 'new bridle of shining leather with buckles of polished brass' for the show.
Item 2
tricked into believing something false; misled. Collodi calls the boys in the Country of Playthings 'poor deluded boys' because they thought the place was paradise.
Item 3
a remarkable public display, usually for entertainment. The master announces 'a most extraordinary spectacle' and pastes posters everywhere to advertise it.
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Critical Thinking
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