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Copywork
About This Passage
Trapped and exploring the chasms, Pym pauses to explain why he can describe them so exactly: he kept a pocket-book through everything that followed. Copying this long, clause-stacked sentence lets a writer feel how Poe makes the narrator a careful recorder, and quietly hints that these precisely noted shapes will matter beyond the moment of discovery.
I had luckily with me a pocket-book and pencil, which I preserved with great care through a long series of subsequent adventure, and to which I am indebted for memoranda of many subjects which would o...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Summarize the chapter's movement from the men's dwindling food to their failed descents and their exploration of the chasms. Then identify the moment you think most defines the chapter, and explain why it carries that weight.
Discussion Questions
- Pym and Peters abandon a safe hiding place to hunt for food, knowing descent could expose them to the natives. Does the chapter present this as a reasonable gamble or a reckless one, and why? Use the details of their failing food supply to defend your judgment.
- Pym maps these chasms with exact figures, drawn while he and Peters explore, continuing his habit earlier in the voyage of describing strange things as precisely as possible. Does that precision make him more trustworthy here, or does it deepen the mystery, and why? Use specific details from the descriptions to explain.
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Vocabulary
Item 1
A way out of a place; an exit.
Item 2
Stopped or checked suddenly in its course.
Item 3
Harmful to health; not good to eat.
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Critical Thinking
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