The Adventures of Pinocchio — Chapter 5

About This Passage

Pinocchio’s first extended confession. He names three truths at once — the Cricket was right, his conduct toward Geppetto was wrong, and hunger is a teacher. The passage carries three vocabulary words (DESPAIRING, BEHAVED, RUNNING) and shows Collodi’s trick of pairing a moral admission with a comic image (‘dying of yawns’) so the reader can laugh and learn in the same breath. Attend to the curly quotation marks opening and closing the whole speech.

Narration Prompt

Retell Chapter 5 following Pinocchio’s stomach: the slow rise from appetite to hunger ‘like that of a wolf,’ the painted pot, the empty drawers, the egg, the escaped chick, and the decision to run to the neighboring town.

Discussion Questions

1. Collodi tells us that Pinocchio’s nose, ‘which was already long, began to grow longer, nearly equal to four fingers’ the moment he discovers the painted pot. What do you think makes the nose grow here — being tricked, being disappointed, or something else? Use details from the chapter.
2. What does the painted pot of boiling water on Geppetto’s wall tell us about Geppetto’s life before Pinocchio arrived? Why do you think Collodi shows us this empty painted kitchen only now, in the chapter where Pinocchio begins to understand his father?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide