Summary

In Chapter 1, The Swallowed Man opens with Geppetto explaining that he has been swallowed by a great sea beast and finds himself aboard an abandoned ship in its belly. He has found supplies, paints, candles, and a captain’s log that allows him to survive and vows to write an account of his life while he still can. By Geppetto’s reckoning, he “can boast you no battlefields; this is no murderer’s story; there is no great romance. But before all this, back on land, I did an extraordinary thing. An impossible thing” (1).

In Chapter 2, Geppetto flashes back to his life on land and relates how he once lived in a small town called Collodi in the province of Lucca. Geppetto grew up in this town and before his adventures at sea, he “long desired to make a puppet…so that I might...