Summary
Narrated by an unnamed third-person narrator, The Adventures of Pinocchio opens with an old carpenter named Master Antonio—known to locals as Master Cherry because of his shiny, cherry-red nose—finding a piece of wood in his workshop. He intends to turn the wood into a table leg. Wielding an axe to strip the bark, Master Cherry hears the wood ask in a small voice not to hit him so hard. Baffled, Master Cherry assumes the voice is in his imagination. He strikes the wood again, eliciting another cry of protest. When the carpenter runs his plane up and down the wood, the little voice laughs and tells him he is tickling him all over. Master Cherry falls to the floor, and his nose turns blue in fright.
Master Cherry’s neighbor, Geppetto, knocks on the door and enters. Geppetto has a fiery temper and is often called Pudding (Polendina in some translations) by local boys because his yellow wig looks like a pudding made of “Indian corn” (polenta-like cornmeal mush). Geppetto asks to borrow a piece of wood to make himself a marionette puppet with which he could travel the world, earning bread and wine in exchange for the puppet’s performances. The piece of wood shouts, “Bravo, Pudding!” Geppetto assumes Master Cherry called him the nickname, and the two get into a physical fight when Master Cherry insists on his innocence.
The neighbors make up quickly. Master Cherry is delighted to offer Geppetto the talking piece of wood that has given him so much fear. However, when passing it over, the wood wriggles out of Master Cherry’s hands and strikes Geppetto’s shins. Geppetto assumes Master Cherry intentionally struck him, and the two brawl again. They make up quickly, however, swearing to remain friends for life. Geppetto limps back to his home with the fine piece of wood.
Geppetto lives in a small ground-floor room with rickety furniture. Instead of a working fireplace, there is a convincing-looking painting of a fire, complete with a boiling saucepan and cloud of smoke. Geppetto carves the face of his puppet, deciding he will name it Pinocchio, after a family he knew. As he carves, the face becomes animated, with moving eyes, a laughing mouth, and a nose that grows and grows even as Geppetto tries to cut it down.
When Geppetto gives Pinocchio arms, the puppet snatches his yellow wig and puts it on his own much smaller head. Geppetto reprimands the rascally puppet for being a bad boy who is already not showing respect for his father. As soon as he can walk, Pinocchio dashes off, clattering down the stone street. A soldier grabs Pinocchio by the nose and Geppetto catches up, vowing to punish Pinocchio when they get home. Pinocchio throws himself to the ground and a crowd forms. People talk maliciously about how Geppetto, who hates young boys, will tear the puppet apart. The soldier then frees Pinocchio and leads Geppetto to prison.
Meanwhile, Pinocchio runs home quickly. At home, he encounters a giant cricket. He identifies himself as the Talking Cricket and says he has lived in the room for more than one hundred years. Pinocchio tells him to leave, saying it’s his room now. The cricket asks to share one truth first, warning Pinocchio against rebelling against his parents. The cricket says he will regret it one day. Pinocchio says he will leave the next day to escape the fate of having to go to school like other boys. The cricket asks why he doesn’t at least learn a trade. Pinocchio says his only interest is in living a vagabond life, eating, drinking, sleeping, and amusing himself from morning to night. The cricket says people who follow that trade always end up in hospital or prison. He says he pities Pinocchio for having a wooden head. Having heard enough, Pinocchio throws a mallet at the wall, flattening the cricket.
Pinocchio soon realizes he has a ravenous hunger, not having eaten all day. He discovers that the saucepan of boiling food is just painted on the wall, and his nose grows three inches. He searches the room but finds not even a crust to eat. He cries out in regret, realizing that if his “papa” was there instead of in prison, he would not be starving. He then finds an egg in a pile of dust in the corner of the room. He excitedly entertains all the different ways he could prepare the egg, but when he cracks the egg a chicken pops out. The chicken thanks Pinocchio for “saving [him] the trouble of breaking the shell” and flies out the window. Pinocchio cries, and stamps his feet, thinking he’ll have to find a charitable person to give him a piece of bread.
In the stormy night, Pinocchio heads to town in search of food. He rings the bell of a house, waking an old man who assumes Pinocchio is one of the boys who like to prank respectable people by waking them at all hours of the night. Pinocchio asks for bread. The man tells him to wait, returning a moment later and asking Pinocchio to hold out his cap. Just then, a bucket of water is dumped on Pinocchio’s head. He returns home without food and soaking wet. He puts his feet up on a brazier (portable wood-burning heater) and falls asleep, his feet burning little by little until they are ash. He sleeps until Geppetto knocks on the door.
Pinocchio jumps up to answer the door, but not having realized yet his feet have burned off, falls immediately to the floor, making a sound like a sack of wooden ladles thrown from a high window. Geppetto gets angry when Pinocchio says he can’t answer the door. Pinocchio assumes the cat must have eaten his legs. Geppetto climbs a window and his anger melts into sympathy when he sees his puppet on the floor. Geppetto kisses him as Pinocchio explains the terrible night he has endured.
Geppetto offers Pinocchio the three pears in his pockets that he had intended to eat as his own breakfast. Pinocchio asks Geppetto to peel the skins, and Geppetto insists he mustn’t be so “dainty” about what he eats. But Geppetto peels the fruit. Pinocchio eats the pears, leaving the cores, and then asks for more food. Geppetto says there isn’t anything else, so Pinocchio makes do with eating the pear skins and cores left over. He is then satisfied. Geppetto tells Pinocchio that this has been a lesson reminding them to not be too picky about what they eat.
Analysis
The first chapter of Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio sets the novel’s whimsical, fairy-tale tone. Believing he has found the perfect log to craft a table leg out of, Master Cherry gets to work chopping and planing the material that will become Pinocchio. In an instance of situational irony, what should be a benign log responds to Master Cherry’s tools with cries of pain and laughter. With this opening, Collodi primes the reader for a story full of magic and mischief.
Luckily for Master Cherry, his neighbor happens to be looking for a piece of wood that he can turn into a marionette puppet. In an instance of dramatic irony, the log calls Geppetto by his nickname, prompting a humorous scenario in which Geppetto assumes Master Cherry must have been the one to insult him. Unbeknownst to Geppetto, Master Cherry is glad to be rid of the unnerving, enchanted log. But unlike Cherry, Geppetto isn’t shocked when the puppet he carves becomes animate. From the outset, Geppetto reacts to Pinocchio’s impish behavior like a father scolding his poorly behaved son. The carving scene also introduces Pinocchio’s iconic growing nose.
While Geppetto spends the night in prison, accused of being an abusive parent by the people who watch him chasing down Pinocchio, Pinocchio returns to his home and meets the Talking Cricket. With the cricket’s scolding of Pinocchio for running away from Geppetto, Collodi introduces the major theme of living with consequences. The theme of laziness also arises when Pinocchio insists that he is destined to live the life of a vagabond rather than pursue an education and get a job that would help him support his papa. Unlike the Disney version of the story, where the cricket serves as Pinocchio’s conscience, Collodi’s original involves Pinocchio shouting at the condescending cricket and smashing it with a mallet.
However, the cricket’s function is similar to that of the Disney version, as Pinocchio quickly realizes the cricket was right when he said Pinocchio would regret being disobedient to his parent. Without Geppetto, Pinocchio has no access to food. Pinocchio continues to suffer the consequences of his disobedience, getting water dumped on him when he goes out begging and burning off his feet when he falls asleep with them up on a portable fireplace. These are the first of what will be many instances of Pinocchio suffering harsh punishments for his misbehavior.
The themes of sacrifice and appreciation enter the story when Geppetto returns from prison and gives Pinocchio the three pears he planned to eat himself for breakfast. In the scene, Pinocchio learns a valuable lesson about appreciating everything available to him, including the fruit skins and cores at which he initially turns his nose up but later eats with satisfaction. In moments such as this, Collodi’s intention to impart moral messages to the child readers of the story is on full display.
