The Cricket in Times Square — Chapter 2

About This Passage

Selden's description of the cricket's chirp is made of three linked comparisons, arranged in order of increasing strangeness. The first comparison — a violin stroke — is ordinary and urban (a violin is a common thing in a city). The second — a plucked harp — is more classical and slightly stranger in the context of a subway station. The third — a leaf falling at midnight in a distant forest into a thicket — is the most imaginative leap, because it compares a cricket's chirp to a sound nobody has ever actually heard (who has been in the forest at midnight, exactly in the right place, to hear exactly one leaf?). The sequence teaches a writer how to escalate metaphor: begin with something recognizable, then move by degrees into imagination, so that by the end the reader has been carried from New York into a memory of distance and silence. This is how a skilled writer describes a small sound without saying it was small.

Narration Prompt

Summarize this chapter, then explain what you think the author most wanted the reader to notice or feel. What techniques did the author use?

Discussion Questions

1. Selden describes the sound of the cricket through three comparisons: a violin stroke, a plucked harp, and a leaf falling at midnight in a distant forest. Why does he arrange them in this specific order — moving from urban to classical to imaginary? What would change if he had reversed the order, or used only one comparison? What is the effect of the escalation?
2. In Chapter 1, Tucker Mouse heard the cricket's chirp but did not act; in Chapter 2, Mario hears the same chirp and goes to find it. These two reactions to the same sound structure the chapter. Is Selden making a philosophical claim about what separates hearing from seeking — a claim about the gap between noticing and responding? If so, what is the claim, and is it defensible?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide