The Cricket in Times Square — Chapter 2

About This Passage

Selden opens this paragraph with recognition — Mario placing the cricket's chirp somewhere he has heard it before. The writing does two things at once: it plants a small flashback that establishes Mario as a boy who notices meadow sounds and remembers them a year later, and it contrasts a summer chorus with a single faint note in a subway station. The passage models how an author uses a concrete, sensory memory ('long yellow fingers through the tall grass') to deepen a quiet moment in the narrative present, and how the shift from 'chorus' to 'only one' carries an emotional charge without explicit commentary.

Narration Prompt

Narrate the chapter's arc in your own words. Track three threads: the discovery of the cricket, the family negotiation that follows, and the small details that tell us how Mario is changing. What moment do you think is the most important — and why?

Discussion Questions

1. Selden uses a chain of three similes to describe the cricket's chirp — 'a quick stroke across the strings of a violin,' 'a harp that has been plucked suddenly,' and a leaf falling 'at midnight through the darkness into a thicket.' What does the progression of these images do that a single direct description could not?
2. The chapter's careful physical description of Mario cleaning the cricket — one Kleenex to lay him on, another to dust him off, soft taps on shell, antennae, legs, and wings — is longer and more specific than the plot strictly requires. What argument is Selden making about attention itself by lingering on this sequence?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide