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Copywork
About This Passage
Here Poe turns naturalist, painting the royal penguin so exactly that a wild bird begins to look human. Notice how the second sentence builds: short observations chained by commas and dashes of logic ('and, as their tails project... the resemblance... is very striking') until the strange claim arrives — that the bird could 'deceive the spectator' in dim light. Copying it trains the long, accumulating sentence and shows how careful, ordered detail makes wonder feel earned and almost scientific.
These birds walk erect, with a stately carriage. They carry their heads high with their wings drooping like two arms, and, as their tails project from their body in a line with the legs, the resemblan...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell this chapter in order: how the schooner Jane Guy rescues Peters and the narrator and they slowly recover, how she sails far south and weathers a sudden squall off the Cape of Good Hope, how she reaches cold Kerguelen, or Desolation Island, and how the narrator turns naturalist to study the royal penguins and the strange, orderly towns the penguins and albatrosses build together. Pause at the moment you find most striking and say why.
Discussion Questions
- Once aboard the Jane Guy after the rescue, the narrator says the wreck feels like 'a frightful dream' and that he remembers the events but not the feelings. Why might Poe pause to tell us this here, and what in the chapter helps you decide what the change means?
- On Kerguelen Land, why do you think the narrator spends so much time describing the royal penguins as almost human, and what does the comparison make us notice about how he is seeing this island? Use details from the chapter.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
The lack of basic needs like food and water; hardship.
Item 2
The state of forgetting, or of being completely forgotten.
Item 3
Dignified, grand, and impressive in bearing.
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Critical Thinking
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