The Third
Wish
WB p.
#1
• Detail about a character:
• 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.
• Inference
• The swan has become a man.
• The swan and the man are different versions
of the same magical being.
WB p. # 2
• 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.”
• Inference
• Leita’s beauty is extraordinary, and she
appears out of nowhere, so she must be
magical, too. Perhaps, like the man in green,
She has been transformed from a creature in
nature.
WB p.
#3
• 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.
• Inference: Leita is wandering around because she
misses the forest or her life before she was
transformed into a woman.
WB p.
#4
• 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 this
hand.”
• Inference: The two swans are Leita and her sister.
Although she is now a swan, Leita still cares
for Mr. Peters.
WB p.
• [Leita] was weeping, and as he came nearer he saw
that tears were rolling, too, form 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.”
Internal Conflict
Leita is a human, and her sister is a swan. Leita
struggles to overcome the loneliness she feels
because she is separated from her sister.
• “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.?
• External: Mr. Peters and Leita struggle to find
happiness together.
• 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.”
• Internal Conflict: Leita is torn between her
life as a swan and her current life as a human
being.
Vocabulary
• 1. Most humans put little or no thought into their
choices.
• 2. Yes, it is clear that the old King is overconfident
because the sentence states that he is
presumptuous an presumptuous means
overconfident.
• 3. He acts in a spiteful, hateful way.
• 4. Mr. Peters’s home is not close to town. It is
remote, which means that it is far from everything.
• B. 1. D 2. B 3. A
4. B
Support for Writing
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Wish One
To Fly
Problem One
Hard to Land
Resolution One
Find a safe, soft
area to land