The Adventures of Pinocchio — Chapter 34

Narration Prompt

Before opening the discussion, take a moment to articulate the chapter's full architecture: the surprise marionette pulled from the water, Pinocchio's first sustained narrative-of-self to the buyer, the ironic encomium, the swimming-away with the goodbye jokes, the blue Goat on the marble rock, the Dogfish chase and swallowing, and the philosophical exchange with the Tunny that ends on an unidentified glimmer of light. Notice where Collodi uses irony, where he uses simile, where he reaches for cosmological vocabulary, and where he refuses to resolve.

Discussion Questions

1. Pinocchio's address to the buyer constitutes a sustained ironic encomium — 'humane man,' 'delicate attention,' 'honorable,' 'goodness' — every term applied where the buyer's behavior fails to deserve it. Examine the rhetorical and ethical economy of this irony. What does Collodi's giving Pinocchio mastery of a sophisticated rhetorical figure at the moment of his rescue suggest about the relationship between recovered selfhood and recovered language, and what kind of moral confidence does ironic encomium presuppose in a speaker?
2. The Tunny's consolation — 'philosopher enough to console myself by thinking that it is more dignified to die under water than to be soaking in vinegar and oil' — and Pinocchio's refusal — 'I do not wish to be digested' — are placed in equipoise without authorial adjudication. Examine the ethical pluralism this withholding implies. What does Collodi argue by giving both positions full dignity, and what is at stake in the chapter's refusal to validate one as the right answer?

+ 2 more questions in the complete study guide