Summary

The start of Chapter 3 finds Geppetto musing about new objects that come to him as the sea beast swallows them. He collects bits of shell, glass, porcelain, and wood, all the while wondering what will happen when the last candle goes out and “the darkness is, I am afraid, total” (55).

Geppetto begins to reminisce about his family history. He recalls that his “family business was painting upon pottery…the paints were always the same, the pattern ever identical” (56). From a young age. Geppetto’s father trained him to reproduce this pattern, but Geppetto could never quite master it. He longed for different and forbidden colors and patterns and eventually turned to wood carving instead. Such tendencies angered his father and led to an estrangement between father and son.

In the present, Geppetto occupies himself by painting the sky on a large bone and studies...