Thursday, November 24, 2011

In The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss, what is Jack bitten by?

In Chapter Four, Jack is attacked by a lobster.  


Wading in a tide pool, he is pinched on the leg by the lobster's sharp claws.  Jack's father drives it off of him, then catches it live.  Jack then wants to hold it.  As soon as he begins holding it, it gives him "such a violent blow on the cheek with its tail, that he let it fall." Jack then takes a stone and kills the lobster.


Technically, he was not bitten but pinched. But both Jack and his father refer to the incident as "biting" in the lines that follow.  Jack says to his brother, "Take care it does not bite you, Francis!", and the father observes that



... he was unjust in being so revengeful, for if [that is, though] he had been bitten by the lobster, it was plain he would have eaten his foe, if he had conquered him.  


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