Student Question
What is the "magic charm" that Hannah uses on Kit in "The Witch of Blackbird Pond"?
Quick answer:
The "magic charm" Hannah uses on Kit is her kindness and sympathetic listening, which helps Kit find peace and resolve her inner turmoil. After Kit is dismissed from her teaching position, she meets Hannah, who comforts her and encourages her to listen to her heart. Inspired by Hannah's kindness and the metaphor of a flourishing African plant, Kit gains the strength to confront the schoolmaster and seek another chance.
The "magic charm" that Hannah works on Kit is nothing more than that she accepts her with kindness and listens with sympathy. By doing so, Hannah enables Kit to find peace and recognize that the answer to what she must do to fix the trouble she has caused lies in her own heart.
Because of her free spirit and willingness to use innovation in teaching the children, Kit has unintentionally gotten herself and Mercy fired from working at the dame school by Mr. Eleazer Kimberley, the schoolmaster. Immediately after this incident, Hannah finds Kit crying in the meadow, and invites her home to give her a chance to calm down and have a bite to eat. Hannah listens to Kit with a non-judgemental ear, and Kit pours out to her all the frustration she feels at not being able to fit into the life of Connecticut Colony, and her longing for her grandfather and her home in Barbados. Kit gains strength from Hannah's kindness and sympathy, and when it is time to go understands that Hannah, by showing her a single plant from Africa which has flourished in the new land despite its strangeness, has given her hope and confidence to carry on. Hannah tells Kit "the answer is in thy heart...thee can always hear it if thee listens for it", and Kit, taking courage, leaves to make things right with the schoolmaster (Chapter 9).
In The Witch of Blackbird Pond, what magic charm does Hannah work on Kit?
In Chapter Nine of The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Kit and Mercy are co-teaching eleven small children from the town. Kit decides to have the kids act out the story of The Good Samaritan, but the play erupts into chaos as the boys start to misbehave. Mr. Eleazer Kimberley, the schoolmaster, discovers this ruckus and dismisses Kit from her teaching position. Devastated, Kit runs to the Meadow, where she is fed and comforted by Hannah Tupper, the titular "witch" of Blackbird Pond.
Thus, the "magic charm" that Hannah work on Kit is ridding her of "the rebellion that had been seething in the girl's mind for weeks"; she manages to calm down the girl's raging anxiety and soothe her belief that she does not (and cannot) fit into the Puritan community. Determined to make things right and find true peace, Kit uses the strength she has gathered from her conversation with Hannah to march up to Mr. Eleazer Kimberley's door and ask for one more chance.
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