The Cricket in Times Square — Chapter 5

About This Passage

This passage performs a remarkable double movement. First, Mr. Smedley refuses the role of teacher, reassigning the credit for Chester's gift to Nature herself. The refusal is precise rather than humble: he is identifying the gift as structural (wings designed to rub together) rather than acquired (a skill that could be refined), and he is recognizing that no human training could improve a natural perfection. Second, he names Chester as 'this little black Orpheus,' invoking the foundational figure of Western musical mythology. Mario's quick admission that he does not know who Orpheus is gives Mr. Smedley the opening to tell the full story — a story in which music is so beautiful that animals, rivers, and even stones stop to listen. The Orpheus story is not decoration; it is doing structural work. By placing Chester in the lineage of Orpheus, Mr. Smedley is making a precise musical judgment about what kind of gift the cricket has. By telling the story to Mario, he is also handing down a piece of cultural inheritance that the boy did not previously possess. Copying this passage trains a writer to notice how a single conversation can perform multiple acts at once — recognition, refusal of credit, lineage assignment, cultural transmission — and how the layering of these acts can do more work than any single one could.

Narration Prompt

Give a concise summary of the chapter, then identify the single most important sentence or moment and explain why it matters to the book as a whole.

Discussion Questions

1. Mr. Smedley refuses to give Chester music lessons, attributing the cricket's gift to Nature rather than to any acquired skill. Argue whether this constitutes a Romantic view of artistic genius (gift as inborn, not made by training) or a more specifically modern view (gift as evolutionary structure, given by species design). Does the difference matter, and which framework better captures Selden's actual position?
2. Selden inserts the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus into the middle of his subway-station chapter, allowing Mr. Smedley to tell the story in full. The myth performs at least three simultaneous functions: it authorizes Chester (placing him in a great lineage), it transmits cultural inheritance to Mario (who admits he does not know who Orpheus is), and it re-animates the myth itself (making the ancient story feel possible again through a specific small instance). Analyze how Selden manages these three functions simultaneously, and consider whether the doubling and tripling of meaning is craft or accident.

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide