The Third Wish

The Third Wish

Reading: Make Inferences by Recognizing Details

Short story writers do not directly tell you everything there is to know about the characters, setting, and events. Instead, they leave it to you to make inferences, or logical guesses, about unstated information.

To form inferences, you must recognize details in the story and consider their importance. For example, in “The Third Wish,” Mr. Peters finds a swan tangled up in thorns. When he moves closer and tries to free the swan, the swan hisses at him, pecks at him, and flaps its wings in a threatening way. You can use those clues to infer that the swan does not like or trust Mr. Peters.

Open Ended

Presently, the swan, when it was satisfied with its appearance, floated in to the bank once more, and in a moment, instead of the great white bird, there was a little man all in green.

Open Ended

Mr. Peters wishes for a wife “as beautiful as the forest.” A woman appears who is “the most beautiful creature he had ever seen, with eyes as blue-green as the canal, hair as dusky as the bushes, and skin as white as the feathers of swans.”

Open Ended

But as time went by Mr. Peters began to feel that [Leita] was not happy. She seemed restless, wandered much in the garden, and sometimes when he came back from the fields he would find the house empty. She would return after half an hour with no explanation of where she had been.

Open Ended

After Leita was returned to the form of a swan, she “rested her head lightly against [Mr. Peters’s] hand. . . . Next day he saw two swans swimming at the bottom of the garden, and one of them wore the gold chain he had given Leita after their marriage; she came up and rubbed her head against his hand.”

Literary Analysis: Conflict

Most fictional stories center on a conflict—a struggle between opposing forces.

There are two kinds of conflict:

• When there is an external conflict, a character struggles with an outside force, such as another character or nature.

• When there is an internal conflict, a character struggles with himself or herself to overcome opposing feelings, beliefs, needs, or desires. An internal conflict takes place in a character’s mind.

Literary Analysis: Conflict

The resolution, or outcome of the conflict, often comes toward the end of the story, when the problem is settled in some way.

Literary Analysis: Conflict

A story can have additional, smaller conflicts that develop the main conflict. For example, in “The Third Wish,” a small external conflict occurs between Mr. Peters and the swan that is tangled up in the thorns. As Mr. Peters tries to free the bird, the swan looks at him “with hate in its yellow eyes” and struggles with him. In addition, a minor internal conflict that helps develop the main conflict is Mr. Peters’s difficulty in deciding what to do with his three wishes.

Open Ended

What type of conflict?

[Leita] was weeping, and as he came nearer he saw that tears were rolling, too, from the swan’s eyes.

“Leita, what is it?” he asked, very troubled.

“This is my sister,” she answered. “I can’t bear being separated from her.”

Open Ended

“Don’t you love me at all, Leita?”

“Yes, I do, I do love you,” she said, and there were tears in her eyes again. “But I miss the old life in the forest.”

Open Ended

She shook her head. “No, I could not be as unkind to you as that. I am partly a swan, but I am also partly a human being now.”

Multiple Choice

What information in this passage from "The Third Wish" reveals that there is a conflict between Mr. Peters and the King of the Forest?

He [the King] had fierce glittering eyes and looked by no means friendly.

"Well, Sir," he said threateningly.

• . The King speaks in a threatening way

• The King's eyes are glittering.

• The King is usually friendly.

• The King calls Mr. Peters "Sir."

Multiple Choice

. At the beginning of "The Third Wish," what is the only thing that troubles Mr. Peters?

• He is poor

• He has no free time

• He is lonely

• He lives far away

Multiple Choice

Why does Mr. Peters use only one wish and save the other two in "The Third Wish"?

• The King tells him to use only one

• He wants to save two for an emergency

• He is allowed to use only one.

• He wants to see if the first one works.

Multiple Choice

In "The Third Wish," when Mr. Peters takes Leita home and shows her all his treasures, what pleases her the most?

• the river

• the beehives

• the flowers

• the candlesticks

Multiple Choice

In "The Third Wish," why is Leita unhappy living with Mr. Peters?

• She misses her mother

• She does not like to be inside

• Shes wishes she were in the city.

• She misses her life as a swan.

Multiple Choice

In "The Third Wish," why does Mr. Peters offer to use a wish to change Leita's sister into a human?

• He is angry with Leita.

• He wants to make Leita happy.

• Leita's sister is sick and needs her help.

• Leita wants her sister to be human.

Multiple Choice

In "The Third Wish," why does Mr. Peters change Leita back into a swan?

• She is not nice to him.

• She asks him to change her.

• She is unhappy as a human.

• She no longer pleases him.

Multiple Choice

Mr. Peters uses his second wish to turn Leita back into a swan. How does this action resolve the conflict in "The Third Wish"?

• Mr.Peters is happy because he can be alone again.

• Leita is with her sister and no longer unhappy.

• Mr. Peters had wanted a wife who was not a swan.

• Leita had not been nice to him, so he has punished her

Multiple Choice

Based on the way malicious is used in this passage from “The Third Wish,” what would you say is a characteristic of a malicious person?

He heard a harsh laugh behind him, and turning round saw the old King looking at

him with a malicious expression.

• He or she is mean.

• He or she is talkative.

• He or she is curious.

• He or she is happy.

Multiple Choice

What does the following sentence tell you about the word remote?

Mr. Peters’s house is so remote that the nearest neighbor lives miles away, there are no malls nearby, and only sounds of nature can be heard.

• It means “unrealistic.”

• t means “agricultural.”

• It means “dangerous and untamed.”

• It means “far from everything else.”