Preview
Copywork
About This Passage
Burnett stages the confrontation in the rhythm of an old play — recognition, accusation, denial, witness, repeated interrogation. Ben's gnarled hand and shaky voice are the gestures of an old servant suddenly face-to-face with the mistress's dead eyes staring out of a living boy. His 'tactless' words are the only tool he has to verify what he sees against what he has been told.
Ben Weatherstaff put his gnarled hand up and passed it over his eyes and over his forehead and then he did answer in a queer shaky voice. 'Who tha' art?' he said. 'Aye, that I do — wi' tha' mother's e...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell Chapter 21 with close attention to the three-act shape: first the paradisal afternoon in the garden with Dickon and Mary (plum-tree canopy, the dead tree almost discovered, robin intervention, tea on the grass); second the revelation of Ben Weatherstaff's indignant face at the top of the wall and his harangue of Mary; and third the confrontation in which Colin — insulted by Ben's 'poor cripple' — stands upright for the first time in his life and claims mastership of the garden.
Discussion Questions
- Burnett opens Chapter 21 with the claim that one is 'only now and then quite sure one is going to live forever and ever,' and lists the kinds of moments when one is — the tender solemn dawn, the mysterious deep gold stillness of a wood at sunset, the immense quiet of dark blue night with millions of stars. Why does she open a chapter about Colin standing up for the first time with a meditation on moments of cosmic certainty? What is she telling the reader about what has just happened to Colin?
- The dead tree with the broken branch is the tree where Mrs. Craven fell ten years ago, the year Colin was born. Mary and Dickon know; Colin does not. Burnett lets the reader in on the secret. Argue for Burnett's narrative choice: why does she give the reader this knowledge BEFORE Colin has it, and what is the specific effect of watching Mary and Dickon try not to look cheerful while Colin inspects his mother's death-tree?
+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide
Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Lectured in a long, angry tirade; Ben Weatherstaff harangued Mary from the top of the ladder as a 'scrawny buttermilk-faced young besom'
Item 2
In a firm and determined manner; Dickon speaks stoutly when he assures Colin that his legs are the same as any other boy's
Item 3
Rough, twisted, and knotted — most often said of old hands or old trees; Ben Weatherstaff raises his gnarled hand to his forehead before he can answer Colin
+ 5 more vocabulary words in the complete study guide
Critical Thinking
+ 6 more questions in the complete study guide
Get the complete study guide — free
Sign up and get your first book with every chapter included. Copywork, discussion questions, vocabulary, and critical thinking.
Sign up free