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Copywork
About This Passage
Poe records the death of Augustus with the bare, exact restraint of a diary, then measures the survivors' grief not by tears but by behavior: they sit 'motionless' all day, whisper, and cannot bring themselves to bury their friend until dark. Copying these three sentences teaches how a writer can make sorrow felt through plain fact and small actions rather than through declared emotion.
About twelve o’clock he expired in strong convulsions, and without having spoken for several hours. His death filled us with the most gloomy forebodings, and had so great an effect upon our spirits th...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell this chapter in order: how the narrator and Peters care for their dying friend Augustus, whose wounded arm has mortified, until he dies; how they grieve; how the wreck rolls completely over, hurling them into a shark-filled sea; how they survive on barnacles and crabs; and how, after the longest suffering, the schooner Jane Guy turns toward them at last and saves them. Then choose the moment you find most decisive and explain why.
Discussion Questions
- Poe records the death of Augustus in the bare, dated style of a diary, and shows the survivors' grief only by their sitting 'motionless by the corpse' and speaking 'in a whisper.' Explain what this restrained, behavioral way of presenting both the death and the grief achieves that a fuller, more emotional account might not. Use details from the chapter.
- After the capsize, the narrator says he and Peters wept 'aloud like children' and were no longer 'rational beings,' then adds that their 'mental condition made the difference.' Is this reflection a clear insight into how suffering breaks endurance, or does it partly excuse their collapse after the fact? Defend your view, and explain why, with details from before and after the capsize. Use details from the chapter to support your reading.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
The decay of body tissue; gangrene.
Item 2
By a fortunate intervention, as if guided by providence.
Item 3
Deserving of grief or pity; wretched.
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Critical Thinking
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