Chapter 11 — Teaching Companion

What it asks It asks what the creature does with his first burn. Cold, he finds the beggars’ fire, and “In my joy” thrusts his hand into the embers. Between the cry of pain and the return of his joy stands one sentence: “How strange, I thought, that the same cause should produce such opposite effects!” Then he examines the fire, and when wet branches will not burn he is “pained” again and sits still watching. The student explains what becomes of the pain. The chapter’s lesson of one cause with “opposite effects” starts here.

One reading

It becomes a question. He does not draw a rule from the burn (keep away). He wonders at it, and the wondering sends him straight back to the fire to see what it is made of. The same thing happens when the wet wood will not burn: he is pained, sits still and watches, and finds the cause. For him, pain is where learning starts.

• How strange, I thought, that the same cause should produce such opposite effects!
• I was pained at this and sat still watching the operation of the fire.
• I reflected on this, and by touching the various branches, I discovered the cause

Another reading

It is outweighed. He came to the fire “oppressed by cold”, and the warmth he wanted is still there; the burn ends as soon as he “quickly drew it out”. Need wins. By night his one fear is of losing the fire, not of the fire.

• One day, when I was oppressed by cold, I found a fire
• When night came on and brought sleep with it, I was in the greatest fear lest my fire should be extinguished.

Listen for

• Finds the sentence in between, “How strange”, and hears that it is a thought, not a cry.
• Notices that joy comes before the burn and after it: “In my joy”, then “to my joy”.
• Notices the second pain, at the wet wood, and what he does with it: “sat still watching”.
• May carry it forward: after the stones he again settles beside what hurt him and watches, but now he keeps his hand back.

If stuck

• What sends his hand into the fire?
• What does he think right after the burn?
• What does he do when the wet wood will not burn?

A strong answer A strong response finds the sentence in between and says what it does. One reader says the pain becomes a question: “How strange” turns a hurt into a puzzle, and working it out brings back his joy, as it does again when the wet wood pains him and he sits still watching. Another says the pain is simply outweighed: he came “oppressed by cold”, and the warmth outlasts the burn. The best answers notice that the burn does not end his learning; it starts it.

What it asks It asks why the first person to flee him barely registers. The shepherd shrieks “loudly” and runs across the fields, and the creature notes it in one sentence, then gives the rest of the paragraph to the hut, the dry floor and the food. The student explains the calm. The chapter never says why the shepherd runs, and the card should not say it either.

One reading

He has nothing to read the shriek with. He has never met a person, and a shriek and a flight mean nothing to him yet. The old man’s looks surprise him as much as the old man’s flight, so he notes both and moves on.

• His appearance, different from any I had ever before seen, and his flight somewhat surprised me.

Another reading

His needs come first. He has walked three days and his feet are chilled in the snow. A dry hut and the old man’s breakfast matter more than a stranger. People are still one more thing in the world, not yet the thing that matters most.

• I found my feet chilled by the cold damp substance that covered the ground.
• But I was enchanted by the appearance of the hut; here the snow and rain could not penetrate; the ground was dry;
• I greedily devoured the remnants of the shepherd’s breakfast

Listen for

• Notices that the shepherd’s looks surprise him as much as the running does.
• Sees how quickly the paragraph turns from the shriek to the hut with “But I was enchanted”.
• Compares this calm with what he does after the village: he hides, and “dared not enter”.
• May ask whether the teller, who now knows more, keeps the shriek small on purpose.

If stuck

• What does the shepherd do when he sees him?
• What surprises the creature, and how much?
• What does he want most when he walks into the hut?

A strong answer A strong response explains the calm from the page. One reader says he has nothing to read the shriek with: he knows nothing of people, and the shepherd’s looks surprise him as much as his flight. Another says his needs outrank everything, so the dry floor and the food fill the paragraph. The best answers set this calm beside the village, where the next meeting teaches him to hide.

What it asks It asks the student to take a claim seriously when the chapter seems to contradict it. In the wood the moon gave him “a sensation of pleasure”, and the village seemed “miraculous”. Yet at the chink he calls the old man and the girl a lovely sight, “even to me, poor wretch who had never beheld aught beautiful before.” The student decides what this sight has that the moon did not. The question stops before the girl’s tears; it does not ask about the pain.

One reading

What he sees. This is the first beauty that comes from people: music sweeter than the birds he tried to copy, and two beings gentle with each other. The moon gave him pleasure; these two win “reverence” and “love”, words the moon never drew from him.

• began to play and to produce sounds sweeter than the voice of the thrush or the nightingale.
• The silver hair and benevolent countenance of the aged cottager won my reverence, while the gentle manners of the girl enticed my love.

Another reading

Who is seeing. In the wood his mind could tell almost nothing apart, and the moon was simply the one thing it could fix on. Since then his senses have sorted themselves out, and he has learned to judge: the sparrow harsh, the blackbird sweet. Beauty needs a mind that can compare, and now he has one.

• No distinct ideas occupied my mind; all was confused.
• the only object that I could distinguish was the bright moon
• I found that the sparrow uttered none but harsh notes, whilst those of the blackbird and thrush were sweet and enticing.

Listen for

• Notices the contradiction and does not explain it away: the moon, the “miraculous” village.
• Hears that the old man’s music is measured against the birds he “tried to imitate” and could not.
• Notices “poor wretch”: that is the teller’s word for himself, spoken to Victor.
• May weigh whether “beautiful” means something more than “pleasant” for him.

If stuck

• What did the moon give him in the wood?
• What does he see and hear through the chink?
• What words does he use for the old man and the girl?

A strong answer A strong response explains why this sight counts as the first. One reader looks at what he sees: people, music and gentleness, which win “reverence” and “love” and not just pleasure. Another looks at who is seeing: in the wood “all was confused”, and only now can his mind tell things apart well enough to judge. The best answers notice “poor wretch”, the teller’s name for himself in the middle of his praise.

What it asks It asks the student to read a comparison as a choice made by a speaker with a listener. The newborn creature in the snow knew nothing of Pandæmonium, the palace the fallen angels build in hell in Milton’s Paradise Lost. The comparison belongs to the one telling the story, and he tells it to the man who made him. The student builds a thesis about what the picture is for, then tests it.

One reading

It measures what he suffered. The forest, the cold, the burn, three days of wandering and a morning in the snow were his lake of fire, and only a picture that large shows how good a dry floor felt. Told to Victor, it asks him to see the suffering first.

• I found my feet chilled by the cold damp substance that covered the ground.
• it presented to me then as exquisite and divine a retreat as Pandæmonium appeared to the dæmons of hell after their sufferings in the lake of fire.

Another reading

It places him among the damned. Out of every shelter he could name, he picks the one built by devils, and he calls it “divine”. Spoken to his maker, the picture says where he now stands: cast out, and grateful for a hall in hell. Its comfort is real and bitter at once.

• I was a poor, helpless, miserable wretch
• as exquisite and divine a retreat as Pandæmonium appeared to the dæmons of hell

Listen for

• Notices “presented to me then”: the word “then” marks the distance between the teller and the creature in the snow.
• Weighs “exquisite and divine” against “dæmons of hell” in one sentence.
• Notices what comes just before the picture: the shepherd’s shriek and flight.
• Answers the strongest objection from the other reading, not a weak one.

If stuck

• What had his days been like before he found the hut?
• Who lives in Pandæmonium, and what had they just come through?
• Who knows this comparison: the creature in the snow, or the one telling Victor?

A strong answer A strong thesis names what the picture does and holds it against the other reading. A student might argue that it measures suffering: after the snow, a dry hut is as welcome as a palace after “the lake of fire”. The strongest objection is the company he chooses, “the dæmons of hell”, which says something about where he places himself. A good revision might hold both: the comfort is real, and the teller knows now that it was a devil’s comfort.

What it asks It asks the student to judge a charge the creature makes and the chapter does not test. He comes to the village at sunset, enters one of its best cottages, and is driven out with stones. That night he is glad of shelter from the weather “and still more from the barbarity of man.” The student decides how well the word fits what happened. The chapter gives no view from inside the village and never says what the villagers saw.

One reading

Fair. He came hungry and did nothing but step through a door. A whole village rose against one being, and he left “grievously bruised”. Cruelty to someone who has done no harm is barbarity, whatever its cause.

• I had hardly placed my foot within the door before the children shrieked
• grievously bruised by stones and many other kinds of missile weapons

Another reading

One-sided. He walked uninvited into a stranger’s house; the young ones shrieked, a woman fainted, and some villagers fled. That looks like terror, not cruelty. His own story also has him eating a shepherd’s breakfast and taking a loaf that he admits he “purloined”. Barbarity is a word for cruelty, and the page shows fear.

• One of the best of these I entered
• The whole village was roused; some fled, some attacked me
• a loaf of coarse bread, which I purloined

Listen for

• Notices “some fled, some attacked”: the village does not act as one.
• Notices that he enters without being asked, and that he calls it one “of the best”.
• Hears that he names it later, in shelter, and sets it beside the winter’s “inclemency”.
• Holds back from saying why the villagers attacked; the chapter does not say.

If stuck

• What does he do when he reaches the village?
• What do the people inside do, and what do the others do?
• What does “barbarity” mean, and is it the same as fear?

A strong answer A strong thesis takes a side and keeps to what the page shows. A student who calls the name fair might stress that he had only “placed my foot within the door” and was stoned until he fled. The strongest objection is that he entered a home uninvited, that “some fled” in terror, and that he himself admits to taking what was not his. A good revision might say the word is true to what he suffered and blind to what the villagers felt, and ask why the chapter never lets us hear them.

What it asks It asks the chapter’s whole question. Through a chink in a boarded window, the creature watches a girl weep at the old man’s music, kneel, and be raised with a smile of “such kindness and affection”. He feels “a mixture of pain and pleasure”, a feeling no hunger, cold, warmth or food had ever given him, and he cannot bear to keep watching. The chapter names the pain and does not say where it comes from. The student builds a thesis, tests it against the strongest other reading, and revises.

One reading

From being outside. He sees a kindness he has no share in. No one raised him when he sat down and wept in the dark wood. He has just been stoned, and now he watches through a chink, from a hovel where he has covered every gap by which he might be seen. The smile shows him what people can be to each other, from a place where he cannot be part of it.

• feeling pain invade me on all sides, I sat down and wept.
• I covered every crevice by which I might be perceived
• looking through a small chink

Another reading

From the feeling itself. It is new and too large for him: “peculiar and overpowering”. Until now his pains and pleasures have come from hunger and cold, warmth and food. Now he feels the girl’s tears and the old man’s tenderness at once, and the fire’s lesson comes back in a new form: one cause, opposite effects. The pain is part of being moved at all.

• drew tears from the eyes of his amiable companion
• they were a mixture of pain and pleasure, such as I had never before experienced, either from hunger or cold, warmth or food;
• How strange, I thought, that the same cause should produce such opposite effects!

Listen for

• Commits to a source for the pain and holds it against another one from the page.
• Notices where he is when he feels it: hidden, at a chink, after the stones.
• Notices what the feeling is set against: “hunger or cold, warmth or food”, everything the forest taught him.
• May argue that the pain and the pleasure come from the same smile, as the warmth and the burn came from one fire.

If stuck

• What does the girl do, and what does the old man do?
• Where is the creature while he watches, and why is he there?
• Has anything in the chapter given him pain and pleasure at once before?

A strong answer A strong thesis names a source and tests it. A student might argue that the pain comes from being outside: he has just been stoned, he watches through a hidden chink, and no one raised him when he wept alone. The strongest objection is that the feeling is pain because it is new and “overpowering”, a sympathy with the girl’s tears that a mind built on hunger and cold cannot yet hold. A good revision might set both against the fire, where one cause gave warmth and pain at once, and admit that the chapter leaves the source open.