The Cricket in Times Square — Chapter 5

Narration Prompt

Summarize Chapter 5's narrative arc, identify the central tension Selden has set up between recognition and possession (between seeing a gift clearly and trying to own it), and evaluate whether Selden handles the tension with sufficient honesty.

Discussion Questions

1. Mr. Smedley refuses to give Chester music lessons, attributing the cricket's gift to Nature herself. Construct the strongest case for this refusal as wisdom (recognition that some gifts are structural perfections that cannot be improved), and the strongest case for it as evasion (a music teacher who cannot or will not face the work of teaching a non-human pupil). What does Selden's chapter suggest about the difference between gifts that can be developed and gifts that can only be witnessed, and how does this distinction relate to the broader Romantic and modern traditions of thinking about artistic genius?
2. Selden inserts the full Orpheus myth into the middle of his realist children's book, allowing Mr. Smedley to tell the story to a boy who has never heard it. The insertion performs lineage assignment, cultural transmission, and re-animation of the myth all at once. Argue whether this density of literary work is the result of conscious craft or of structural inheritance from the deep grammar of Western literature, and consider whether the distinction matters. Does Selden know what he is doing, or has the literary tradition done it for him?

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