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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 in silence; how the wreck rolls completely over, hurling them into a shark-filled sea; how the capsize both feeds them and robs them of water; and how, after the longest suffering, the schooner Jane Guy turns toward them at last and saves them. Then name the moment you find most decisive and defend your choice.
Discussion Questions
- After the wreck rolls over, the narrator confesses that he and Peters wept 'aloud like children,' then pauses to argue that such weakness only 'appears unnatural' to those not similarly tried, since 'privation and terror' had left them past reason. Does this passage read more as a genuine account of how suffering breaks the mind, or as the narrator's after-the-fact defense of a humiliating collapse? Weigh the strongest objection to your reading, then defend your view. Use details from the chapter.
- The very capsize the narrator and Peters had dreaded most exposes barnacles that prove 'excellent and highly nutritious food,' yet the same accident destroys their means of catching water, so that it is at once 'a benefit rather than an injury' and a fresh torment. Explain what Poe suggests about fortune at sea through this one accident that both saves and torments them. Use details from the chapter.
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Critical Thinking
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