Summary
Just before the fisherman can throw Pinocchio into the hot oil, a dog enters the cave begging for a mouthful of fish. The fisherman tries to kick the dog, who shows his fangs. Pinocchio cries out for help from Alidoro, who only then realizes Pinocchio—the puppet who saved him—is there. The dog runs off with Pinocchio in his teeth, releasing him a good distance away. The friends part ways and Pinocchio sets off home. He sees a man in a cottage and asks about Eugene, learning that he is alive and well. The man disparages “a certain Pinocchio,” blaming him for the attack. Pinocchio feigns ignorance, and attempts to correct his reputation. However, his nose grows as he lies about himself.
The man gives him a bean sack to wear as clothing and Pinocchio continues on. At the Fairy’s home, a giant snail makes Pinocchio wait for hours outside while the Fairy sleeps. He kicks the door in anger, lodging his foot in the wood. He is made to wait all night, and then served food that turns out to be fake, made of plaster. The Fairy, having punished the puppet, finally frees him and makes him promise to be good. For the rest of the year Pinocchio stands by his promise. Eventually, the Fairy says she will reward him by granting him the wish of becoming a real boy. She prepares for a big ceremony to occur the next day.
Pinocchio is given permission to hand out invitations; he promises he will return in an hour. He invites all his friends but cannot find his favorite chum, a mischievous boy nicknamed Candlewick on account of his thinness. Pinocchio eventually finds Candlewick on the porch of a peasant’s cottage. Candlewick explains that he is going to leave for a better country called the Land of Boobies, where nobody ever has to study. Every day is a holiday and there are no masters to answer to. Candlewick invites Pinocchio to join, but Pinocchio knows he must return to his mamma Fairy.
When a coach pulled by twenty-four boot-wearing donkeys arrives to take Candlewick away, Pinocchio cannot resist joining the trip to the delightful country. Since the coach is packed full of young boys, Pinocchio rides on the back of a donkey. He realizes eventually that the donkey is crying like a child. By morning, they reach the Land of Boobies, a country composed of only boys between ages eight and fourteen. For five months Pinocchio and Candlewick live in bliss, playing all day and never worrying about studying.
One morning, Pinocchio wakes up to a disagreeable surprise: he has a fever that is turning him into a donkey with giant ears. A marmot diagnoses Pinocchio and informs him that it is “written in the decrees of wisdom” that lazy boys must sooner or later be transformed into donkeys. Lamenting his fate, Pinocchio goes to the house of Candlewick, who opens the door wearing the same cotton cap Pinocchio is using to hide his giant ears. The boys both feign that nothing is wrong at first, but soon agree to pull down their caps simultaneously. The ridiculous ears make the boys laugh and laugh. Soon they can’t stand upright because their ears are so big and their tails sprout, embarrassing them both. They lose the ability to speak, letting out only a donkey’s braying. Just then, the little man who took them to the town knocks on the door, warning them it will be worse for them if they do not open up.
The little man kicks the door open and laughs at the boys. He grooms them with a comb and takes them to be sold. A peasant buys Candlewick, and Pinocchio is sold to a circus director. The narrator comments that the wicked little man’s business was to collect lazy boys, bring them to the Land of Boobies, let them become donkeys, and then sell those donkeys. With this scheme, he had become a millionaire. Pinocchio is forced to eat hay and live in a stable; his new master whips him often and brutally until he is trained to perform and dance. During a jump through a hoop, Pinocchio the donkey trips and injures his leg. Deemed injured for life, Pinocchio is sold to a man for two dollars. The man wants his skin to make a drum. He brings the donkey Pinocchio to the shore and sinks him with a rope and stone, intending to drown and skin him.
After nearly an hour, the man pulls up his donkey, assuming he will have drowned by now. However, Pinocchio has turned back into a puppet and is alive and wriggling like an eel. Pinocchio explains that fish nibbled at his donkey exterior until his hard wood body emerged. Pinocchio gets away from the man, swimming out until he sees a blue-hair goat standing on a rock. Delighted, he goes toward what he assumes is the Fairy. However, the giant dogfish swallows him. In the dark stomach, Pinocchio meets a large tuna who says they must wait until they are digested.
Pinocchio doesn’t accept this fate: he gropes through the dark body of the dogfish toward the light he sees. Eventually he comes across his papa, Geppetto, seated at a table with a lit candle: he is eating live fish. Pinocchio is delirious with joy. At length, Pinocchio fills his father in on everything that has happened to him while they have been apart. Geppetto says he saw Pinocchio on the shore that day, but then was swallowed by the dogfish. He has been surviving on supplies found on a merchant ship swallowed by the dogfish. Geppetto has just run out of supplies, so Pinocchio leads him to the open mouth of the sleeping dogfish. Because Geppetto can’t swim, Pinocchio carries him on his shoulders.
Pinocchio feigns good spirits, but in truth, his breath is failing and the shore is far off. Just as Pinocchio declares he is dying, Tunny the tuna hears him, recognizes his voice, and explains that he escaped by following their lead. On Tunny’s back, Pinocchio and Geppetto ride to shore. They move inland and spot the Fox and the Cat, who are missing body parts and begging on the road. Pinocchio scolds them for their thievery. He and Geppetto take refuge in the straw hut of the Talking Cricket, who remembers Pinocchio’s attack on him but decides to be compassionate. The cricket says a blue goat gave him the hut. To earn milk needed to bring Geppetto back to health, Pinocchio works at a neighboring farm, turning a wooden pumping machine that brings up water for planted vegetables. The peasant used to have his donkey perform the work, but he is dying. Pinocchio goes to the stable and realizes it is Candlewick just before the donkey breathes its last breath.
Pinocchio keeps working the pump, bringing the milk back to Geppetto to nurse him to health. With the rest of his time, Pinocchio weaves baskets out of reeds and sells them, earning enough to cover daily expenses. He also constructs a wheelchair for Geppetto, so he can wheel him out into the fresh air. He also puts aside five dollars to buy himself a new coat. One day he runs out to buy it. He encounters the snail, who informs him that the Fairy is ill in hospital, having suffered a thousand misfortunes. Pinocchio gives the snail his five dollars and asks her to take it to the Fairy. He asks the snail to return once he has earned more money.
That night, he weaves twice as many baskets. He sleeps, dreaming of the Fairy, who forgives him for his past behavior because he is taking care of his parents. When he awakes, Pinocchio is no longer a puppet but a real boy. The straw walls of the hut have been replaced by a pretty room furnished simply but elegantly. There are new clothes laid out for him. He picks up an ivory purse in which the Fairy has put fifty shining gold pieces. Pinocchio finds Geppetto, restored to health, in the next room. He is back to his old carving practice. Pinocchio asks how the sudden change could have happened. Geppetto answers that boys who formerly behaved badly can turn over a new leaf and become good; in doing so, they have the power to bring contentment and happiness to their families. The novel ends with the real-boy Pinocchio asking where the puppet Pinocchio is. Geppetto points to a big puppet leaning against a chair. Pinocchio comments in astonishment that he was ridiculous as a puppet. He is glad to have become a well-behaved little boy.
Analysis
Just before Pinocchio is fried in oil, the mastiff Alidoro arrives to save him from the green fisherman. In this way, Pinocchio’s good deed of rescuing the dog from drowning is almost immediately paid back—a positive consequence of his selfless behavior. Further inland, however, Pinocchio learns that people have spread negative information about him. In this way, he is still suffering the consequences of having skipped school to see the dogfish.
Briefly punished by the Fairy, who leaves Pinocchio stuck in the door he kicks through, Pinocchio starts trying to redeem himself again by attending school for the rest of the year. Things go sideways again, however, when Pinocchio’s inherent laziness makes him susceptible to believing Candlewick is telling the truth about a magical country where they never have to work or go to school, and there are no consequences.
While it seems at first like the Land of Boobies is everything Candlewick said it would be, Pinocchio misses a crucial detail that foreshadows his eventual fate: the donkeys pulling the carriage that brings the boys to the country are wearing human shoes. Pinocchio himself becomes one of those donkeys after several months of bliss. As it turns out, lazy little boys become donkeys after enough time not working or studying. Once again, Pinocchio is living out a nightmarish consequence of his faulted behavior.
Fortunately, however, Pinocchio transforms back into a puppet when a man tries to drown him, hoping to use Pinocchio’s donkey skin to make a drum. Free only briefly, Pinocchio soon finds himself swallowed by the giant dogfish that has been lurking in the background for several chapters. But in an instance of situational irony, Pinocchio meets Geppetto in the dogfish’s stomach. It turns out that Geppetto has been surviving on rations the creature swallowed.
As Geppetto only ended up in the dogfish’s stomach because he was looking for Pinocchio, Pinocchio begins his redemption in earnest when he swims Geppetto to safety out of the sleeping dogfish’s mouth. On land, Pinocchio encounters the Fox and Cat again, seeing that they are actually penniless and disabled now, having suffered negative consequences for their greed and dishonesty. Having turned a new leaf, Pinocchio labors for a peasant to earn milk that Geppetto can drink. He also earns extra money weaving baskets.
Finally the obedient and hardworking child every authority figure has encouraged him to become, Pinocchio learns the value of sacrifice for the benefit of others. Instead of spending his money on a coat for himself, Pinocchio doesn’t hesitate to send the money to the Fairy, who is ill. As a reward for his selflessness, the Fairy turns Pinocchio into a real boy and gives him and Geppetto a cozy house to live in. A happy ending to an otherwise dark and moralistic tale, Pinocchio gets to live with the positive consequences of his virtuous behavior.
