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Copywork
About This Passage
These two sentences hold the chapter’s real decision. The first is short and plain: with fuel low and scurvy spreading, Captain Guy feels ‘the necessity of returning.’ The second is long and winding, piling up the narrator’s hopes — that land lies near, that it will not be the ‘sterile soil’ of the Arctic — until it lands on his choice to press ‘the expediency of persevering.’ Copying it shows how Poe sets a captain’s caution against a narrator’s eager ambition, and how a long, building sentence can carry the weight of a risky decision.
These considerations began to impress upon Captain Guy the necessity of returning, and he spoke of it frequently. For my own part, confident as I was of soon arriving at land of some description upon ...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell this chapter in order: how the schooner forces its way south through cracking ice until it breaks into open water; how, past the Antarctic circle, the air and sea grow milder instead of colder; how the crew loses Peter Vredenburgh overboard and passes a towering iceberg; how a giant white bear attacks the boat until Dirk Peters kills it with one stroke; how the crew lands on Bennet's Isle and finds a carved piece of wood; and how, with fuel low and scurvy spreading, Captain Guy wants to turn back while the narrator urges him to press on. Pause where the chapter most surprises you and explain why.
Discussion Questions
- As the schooner pushes past the Antarctic circle, the air and water grow milder and the ice gives way to open sea. Why might that surprising change make the crew bolder about sailing on, and what details show how they felt? Use details from the chapter.
- With fuel running low and scurvy spreading, Captain Guy judges it time to turn back, while the narrator urges him to press on toward the pole. Which reading of the danger seems wiser to you, and why? Use details from the chapter.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Quickness and skill in movement.
Item 2
Barren; unable to produce plants or life.
Item 3
Great force or roughness.
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Critical Thinking
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