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Copywork
About This Passage
A single, generous periodic sentence piles clause upon clause, suspends the main verdict behind a dash-bound aside, and only at the end asks the reader to feel 'sorrow rather than anger.' Copying it teaches accumulation, the dash, and how syntax itself can plead a case for mercy.
Add to these considerations that of the scene of bloodshed and terror so lately witnessed by my friend; his confinement, privations, and narrow escapes from death, together with the frail and equivoca...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Summarize how Augustus reaches the trapped narrator in this chapter, then identify the single moment you find most central to its meaning. Explain what your choice reveals about Poe's method and about the bond between the two friends.
Discussion Questions
- Recounting how Augustus nearly abandoned him, the narrator asks us to feel 'sorrow rather than anger.' When the narrator explains why Augustus nearly gave up, does the chapter ask us to excuse him, to judge him, or to hold both responses together, and why? What in the narrator's defense makes your reading most convincing? Use details from the chapter.
- Dirk Peters, a mutineer of grotesque aspect, restores Tiger to Augustus 'with a species of good feeling,' yet his manner is 'capricious, and even grotesque.' How does Poe sustain Peters as a figure we can neither trust nor dismiss, and why might he rest the fate of Augustus partly on so unreadable a man? Use details from the chapter.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Too extreme or unpleasant to be endured.
Item 2
At a fortunate, well-timed moment.
Item 3
Brought into being; caused to arise.
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Critical Thinking
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