Chapter 13 — Teaching Companion

What it asks It asks the student to account for a welcome given without words. Safie and the cottagers cannot understand each other. She can say only “Felix”, and they answer her in signs. Yet within hours “her presence diffused gladness through the cottage”. The student decides what did the winning. The chapter does not say where she has come from or why Felix was sad before she came, and the card should not guess.

One reading

Her face. The creature, who tells the scene, gives it his longest description: the lifted veil, the “angelic beauty”, the hair, the eyes, the colour of her cheeks. Her face changes Felix’s at once. In his telling, the welcome begins with a face.

• threw up her veil, and I beheld a countenance of angelic beauty and expression
• every trait of sorrow vanished from his face

Another reading

What she does. She weeps, holds out her hand, and kneels at the old man’s feet before a word can pass between them. Her welcome is won by gestures of feeling that need no language, and the old man answers in kind.

• wiping a few tears from her lovely eyes, she held out her hand to Felix
• the young stranger knelt at the old man’s feet and would have kissed his hand, but he raised her and embraced her affectionately

Listen for

• Notices that the gladness comes before any shared word: “she was neither understood by nor herself understood the cottagers.”
• Notices how long the teller lingers on her face, and that in the same moment he calls Felix’s changed face beautiful too.
• Notices Agatha’s signs: the family credits Safie with ending Felix’s sorrow, and the chapter does not say what that sorrow was.
• May notice that the one watching all this also came to the cottage without its language.

If stuck

• What is the one word Safie can say when she arrives?
• What happens to Felix’s face when she lifts her veil?
• Which comes first in the cottage, understanding or gladness?

A strong answer A strong response names what wins the welcome and points to the page. One reader says it is her face: the veil comes up, Felix’s sorrow vanishes, and the teller lingers on her beauty longer than on anything else in the scene. Another says it is what she does: tears, an offered hand, a kneeling stranger, all before a word is shared. The best answers notice that either way the welcome comes before language, which matters to a listener who is learning that language in secret.

What it asks It asks what the boast is for. He takes Safie’s lessons from his hiding place, and he is ahead from the first day: most of her first twenty words “were those which I had before understood”. Soon he can follow and imitate “almost every word”, while she still speaks “in broken accents”. He says “I may boast”, and he says it to his listener long afterwards. The student names what it gives him to be the quicker pupil when no one knows he is in the room.

One reading

A field where he comes first. Everywhere else the chapter gives Safie the better part: the welcome, the kisses, the music. Here alone he outdoes her. Learning is the one ground where he can measure himself against someone and win, and it opens “a wide field for wonder and delight.”

• I may boast that I improved more rapidly than the Arabian
• this opened before me a wide field for wonder and delight

Another reading

A kind of proof. Safie came as a stranger without their language, and she is taken in while she learns it. He set out to use “the same instructions to the same end”, and he is learning faster. If learning is what a newcomer owes, he has paid more of it than the newcomer has.

• the idea instantly occurred to me that I should make use of the same instructions to the same end
• she and I improved rapidly in the knowledge of language

Listen for

• Notices that he was ahead from the first lesson: most of Safie’s twenty words he “had before understood”.
• Notices “she and I”: he sets himself beside her as a fellow pupil.
• Notices that the boast is made to a listener, after the fact; no one in the cottage ever hears it.
• Keeps clear of saying how the cottagers would receive him; he stays hidden and no meeting happens.

If stuck

• How many words did Safie learn at her first lesson, and how many did he already know?
• Who in the cottage knows that he is learning too?
• What has Safie got in the cottage that he has not?

A strong answer A strong response names a gain and grounds it. One reader says the race gives him the one field where he comes first, and he calls that field “wonder and delight.” Another says it is a kind of proof: Safie is being taken in as she learns, and he is learning faster. The best answers notice that he is racing someone who does not know he exists, and ask what a win is worth when no one sees it.

What it asks It asks the student to read his answer to his own question closely. He has just heard that people prize “high and unsullied descent united with riches”. He takes stock: no money, no friends, no property, and a figure he calls “hideously deformed and loathsome”. Then come four advantages. He is more agile, lives on coarser food, bears heat and cold better, and is far taller. A list of strengths should help his case. Instead it leads to “Was I, then, a monster”. The student finds what turns it. He knows nothing of how he was made, and the card should not supply it.

One reading

Likeness. Each strength is one more way of being unlike people, and the sentence just before them says so. Right after them he finds that he has never seen or heard of anyone like him. Strength without a kind of his own only proves he is alone.

• I was not even of the same nature as man.
• When I looked around I saw and heard of none like me.

Another reading

The scale he has just learned. The world Felix describes does not pay for strength. A man without descent or riches is “a vagabond and a slave”, and his powers are spent for others. Hardiness and size are a labourer’s gifts. On that scale they put him at the bottom, not the top.

• without either he was considered, except in very rare instances, as a vagabond and a slave, doomed to waste his powers for the profits of the chosen few!
• my stature far exceeded theirs

Listen for

• Notices that the strengths sit between “not even of the same nature as man” and “none like me”.
• Notices “doomed to waste his powers”: on the scale he has learned, powers are what the poor are used for.
• Notices that he answers his own question with another question, not a statement.
• Leaves aside who made him: “Of my creation and creator I was absolutely ignorant”.

If stuck

• What four things can he do better than people?
• What does he say just before the list of strengths?
• On the scale he has just heard, what are a man’s powers worth without money or descent?

A strong answer A strong response says what turns the list and shows the turn on the page. One reader says the measure is likeness: each advantage is one more way he is “not even of the same nature as man”, and the next sentence finds no one like him. Another says the scale he has just been taught does not pay for strength, since a man without descent or riches wastes “his powers for the profits of the chosen few”. The best answers notice that the paragraph ends in a question, not a verdict.

What it asks It asks about four words he did not need. He has just heard how a father dotes on “the smiles of the infant” and how a mother’s life is “wrapped up in the precious charge”. He says no one did this for him. Then he qualifies it: perhaps someone did, and he cannot remember. The student decides why he will not shut the door. He knows nothing of his making, and the card should not fill that in.

One reading

Honesty. He cannot remember a beginning, so he cannot swear to one. He has already said he is “absolutely ignorant” of his creation. A careful witness says only what he knows, and all he knows of his past is a blank.

• Of my creation and creator I was absolutely ignorant
• all my past life was now a blot, a blind vacancy in which I distinguished nothing

Another reading

Hope he cannot give up. The “if” keeps a father possible, even a lost one. But his own next sentences push against it: he has never been small, and he has never seen anyone like him. The door stays open because he wants it open, not because the facts hold it.

• From my earliest remembrance I had been as I then was in height and proportion.
• I had never yet seen a being resembling me

Listen for

• Notices the semicolon: the denial is complete, and then he reopens it.
• Notices that “a blot” has come before, in “a blot upon the earth”; here the blot is his own past.
• Notices that he cannot remember ever being small: from the first he was his present height.
• Notices that “What was I?” comes back right after, “to be answered only with groans.”

If stuck

• What does the lesson say fathers and mothers do for a baby?
• What can he remember of his own beginning?
• Would he rather have had a father he cannot remember, or none at all?

A strong answer A strong response gives the four words a reason and tests it on the sentences that follow. One reader hears honesty: he is “absolutely ignorant” of his making, so he says only what he knows. Another hears a hope he will not let go, though his own memory says he was never small. The best answers notice that either way the lesson about families leaves him with a question he can answer only “with groans.”

What it asks It asks the student to place him on the first scale the chapter gives him. Volney’s history ranks beings by what they do: virtue is “the highest honour”, and vice sinks below the mole and the worm. He judges mankind by it at once, and turns from its crimes in disgust. He never says where he stands on it himself. The next lesson, on property and descent, is the one that makes him “turn towards myself”. The student builds a thesis about where he belongs, meets the strongest objection, and revises. He has harmed no one in this chapter, and later events may not be read back into it.

One reading

Near the top. The scale measures deeds, and its highest honour is open to any “sensitive being”, not only to men. On it he has nothing to answer for. He has harmed no one. He turns from vice, weeps for the wronged, and admires virtue in the cottagers. By the only scale of deeds he has been taught, he stands well.

• To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honour that can befall a sensitive being
• my wonder ceased and I turned away with disgust and loathing
• I admired virtue and good feelings and loved the gentle manners and amiable qualities of my cottagers

Another reading

Nowhere on it. The scale ranks men by what they do among others, and he has done nothing among anyone: he listens “unseen and unknown”. A scale of deeds has no place for a being who has had no chance to act. So he does not try to place himself on it. He takes up the next scale instead, where he can be placed, at the bottom.

• a condition more abject than that of the blind mole or harmless worm
• when I was unseen and unknown
• The words induced me to turn towards myself.

Listen for

• Notices “a sensitive being”: the scale’s top is worded more widely than “man”.
• Notices “harmless”: the creatures at the floor hurt no one, and the vicious man sinks below them.
• Notices that he judges others by this scale but never says where he stands on it; the lesson that turns him “towards myself” is the next one.
• Keeps to this chapter: he has harmed no one, and later events cannot be read back.

If stuck

• What does the history teach him is the highest honour?
• Who ranks lower than the blind mole and the harmless worm?
• What has he done, good or bad, so far in the chapter?

A strong answer A strong thesis places him on the scale and argues from the page. A student might argue that he belongs near the top: the scale measures deeds, its highest honour can befall any “sensitive being”, and he has harmed no one while he weeps for the wronged and admires virtue. The strongest objection is that the scale ranks men by what they do among others, and he has done nothing among anyone; he listens “unseen and unknown”. A good revision might say that this is the one scale on which he could stand well, and that is why it matters that the very next lesson hands him a scale of birth and riches instead, on which he can stand only at the bottom.

What it asks It asks the student to judge the chapter’s last move. After the groans of “What was I?”, he turns back to the cottagers. Their story stirred in him “indignation, delight, and wonder”, and every feeling ended in “additional love and reverence” for them. Then, in parentheses, he takes his own word apart: he “loved” to call them protectors, in “an innocent, half-painful self-deceit”. They do not know he exists. The student builds a thesis on what the chapter gains by closing there, tests it, and revises. The cottagers’ history is told afterwards, and the card does not tell it.

One reading

A softer close. After the groans, the chapter comes to rest on love and reverence. The name gives him, for a moment, what the lesson on families told him he lacks: someone who watches over him. Shelley lets him keep it, and even calls the deceit “innocent”.

• which all terminated in additional love and reverence for my protectors
• But where were my friends and relations?

Another reading

A sharper one. The last thing he learns in the chapter is about himself: even his love leans on a name he knows is false. “Half-painful” carries the sorrow of the lessons into the very word that comforts him. And the teller, who knows what these feelings led to, will not let his listener take the comfort for the truth.

• for so I loved, in an innocent, half-painful self-deceit, to call them
• I will soon explain to what these feelings tended

Listen for

• Notices that the admission sits in parentheses, an aside from the teller rather than a thought the young creature had.
• Weighs each word of “innocent, half-painful self-deceit”: what “innocent” defends, and what “half” holds back.
• Notices that he has called them “my protectors” once before, during the language lessons, with no aside; the aside comes only after the lesson on fathers and mothers.
• Leaves the cottagers’ history, and what his feelings “tended” to, for later chapters.

If stuck

• What does he call the cottagers in the last sentence?
• Do the cottagers protect him, or even know he is there?
• Why might he love to call them by a name he knows is not true?

A strong answer A strong thesis says what the ending does to the chapter and tests it. A student might argue that it softens the close: after the groans, Shelley lets him rest on “love and reverence” and calls even his self-deceit “innocent”. The strongest objection is that the parentheses take back the comfort as soon as it is given, so the chapter ends on one more painful piece of self-knowledge. A good revision might hold both: the name comforts him because he loves it, and it hurts because he knows better, and the chapter stops on a creature who can no longer have the one without the other.

What it asks It asks the chapter’s whole question. He says that “sorrow only increased with knowledge”, and he wishes he had stayed in his “native wood”. Yet the next lessons, he says, were “impressed upon me even more deeply”, and he goes on listening through the talk of fathers, mothers and infants. Earlier the same study “opened before me a wide field for wonder and delight.” The student builds a thesis on why he keeps learning, tests it against the strongest other reading, and revises. The chapter does not settle whether knowledge is a curse, and the card does not either.

One reading

Because he cannot stop. Knowledge, he says, clings to the mind like lichen to rock. He tried to drive his thoughts away and could not, and the only end to pain he has heard of is death, which he fears. He keeps listening because there is no unlearning, and no way back to the wood.

• It clings to the mind when it has once seized on it like a lichen on the rock.
• I tried to dispel them, but sorrow only increased with knowledge.
• I learned that there was but one means to overcome the sensation of pain, and that was death

Another reading

Because the lessons are his only way in. The cottagers’ words and smiles are “not for me”, but their lessons reach him all the same. Through them he weeps with Safie, admires virtue, and comes to love his “protectors”. What hurts him is also the one bond he has with them.

• except through means which I obtained by stealth, when I was unseen and unknown
• wept with Safie over the hapless fate of its original inhabitants
• The gentle words of Agatha and the animated smiles of the charming Arabian were not for me.

Listen for

• Notices that his wish for the “native wood” and his “wide field for wonder and delight” are both his own words.
• Notices that the pain comes from particular lessons (wealth, descent, families) that he turns on himself, not from learning as such.
• Weighs Safie: she takes the same lessons in the open and is welcomed, while he takes them hidden and comes away with names for what he lacks.
• Notices “Other lessons were impressed upon me even more deeply”: the lessons act on him, and still he listens.

If stuck

• What does he say happened to his sorrow as he learned more?
• What does he say knowledge is like?
• What would he lose if he stopped listening to Felix’s lessons?

A strong answer A strong thesis gives a reason and holds it against the other. A student might argue that he cannot stop: knowledge clings like lichen, and there is no way back to the wood. The strongest objection is that he does not only endure the lessons but seeks them, because listening is the one bond he has with the cottage, and the same study once gave him “wonder and delight”. A good revision might say he keeps learning for the same reason it hurts: each lesson brings him nearer the cottagers in mind and shows him how far from them he stands, and he would rather have the nearness with the pain than neither.