Huck Finn- Reading the Novel Week Three

Chapters 19-31: Lessons in Assistance and Betrayal

Homework due Tues. Jan. 28: 
1. Read Chapters 19-24
2. Questions, quotes and activities for Chapters 19-31 due Feb. 4
3.  There will be a reading quiz next week, Jan. 28!

QUESTIONS

1.  What is a “confidence” man, a.k.a. con man? What scams have you heard about in your own neighborhood or state? Did these frauds prey on the confidence of the people they conned? How do the King and the Duke play on the confidences of people to get their money? What do they have to know about the towns, local people, and human nature in order to perfect their scams?
   
2. Though both men are criminal in their behavior, each is different in his understanding of and abuse of people. Make two columns and list the differences in the King and the Duke. How is one morally superior to the other? Which do you like least and why?
   
3. Since Huck quickly understands the King and Duke are con men, why doesn’t he confront them or tell Jim?
   
4. How and by whom is Jim betrayed? Have other slaves been similarly treated by this character? How does Huck respond to Jim’s capture?
   
5. Twain is a master of satire and of irony. List ironic episodes in this section and explain how Twain uses them to affect readers.
   
   
   Irony: the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.
   "“Don't go overboard with the gratitude,” he rejoined with heavy irony"

   synonyms:

   sarcasm, causticity, cynicism, mockery, satire, sardonicism

Satire: the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues. synonyms: mockery, ridicule, derision, scorn, caricature;

QUOTATIONS Write two- three sentences explaining why this quote is important, what it means to the story, and what it tells about the character.

1. “sometimes we’d have that whole river all to ourselves for the longest time...It’s lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss whether they was made or only just happened” (120).
   
2. “It didn’t take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn’t no kings nor dukes at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds. But I never said nothing, never let on....If I never learnt nothing else out of pap, I learnt that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them have their own way” (125-6).
   
3. “’The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that’s what an army is—a mob; they don’t fight with courage that’s born in them, but with courage that’s borrowed from their mass, and from their officers. But a mob without any man at the head of it is beneath pitifulness....If any real lynching’s going to be done it will be done in the dark, southern fashion’” (145-6).
   
4. “What was the use to tell Jim these warn’t real kings and dukes? It wouldn’t ‘a’ done no good; and besides, it was just as I said: you couldn’t tell them from the real kind” (153).
   
5. “I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks does for their’n. It don’t seem natural, but I reckon it’s so....He was a mighty good nigger, Jim was” (153).
   
6. “Well, if ever I struck anything like it, I’m a nigger. It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race” (160).
   
7. “And when it comes to beauty—and goodness, too—she lays over them all...but I reckon I’ve thought of her a many and a many a million times, and of her saying she would pray for me; and if ever I’d ‘a’ thought it would do any good for me to pray for her, blamed if I wouldn’t ‘a’ done it or bust” (186).
   
8. “...deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can’t pray a lie—I found that out....I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: ‘All right, then, I’ll go to hell’—and tore it up” (206-7).
   

ACTIVITIES

1. The plays and performances rehearsed and delivered by the King and Duke use Shakespearean works. Have students compare Hamlet’s soliloquy by Shakespeare to the one Huck quotes from the Duke’s memory. (Note that Twain’s characters mix several shakespearean plays together—Macbeth, Hamlet, and Romeo and Juliet).  What are the differences in the meanings of the two? 
   
2. Huck’s fear of being civilized leads him to shuck the most basic of social expectations.  List what you consider necessities for survival. Which things from the class list have been cut from Jim and Huck’s lives on the river? (What does Twain imply about freedom and the pursuit of happiness when Huck and Jim discard the behaviors of polite society on the river? 
   

Huck Finn - Reading the Novel Week Two

Chapters 12-18: Bonding over Inhumanity 

QUESTIONS

1. How does the episode with the murderers and the attempt to save them develop Huck’s sense of morality? What is his current code? From whom or what has he developed this code thus far?
   
2. What role does Huck play in discussions with Jim? What has Huck learned in school, from reading, or from Tom sawyer that he has retained and found useful? How and when does Huck compliment and denigrate Jim?
   
3. What lessons from Pap does Huck remember and evaluate during his moral dilemmas with Jim?
   
4. How do both Grangerfords and shepherdsons exhibit religious hypocrisy? Explain Twain’s use of the families’ feuding as satire of Civil War mentality.
   
5. The families follow their own code of behavior, unable to remember the original court case and the reason for the feud. Discuss feuds and frontier justice as they impact Huck’s growing sense of right and wrong.
   
6. Discuss Jim’s interactions with the Grangerford slaves, including his assessment of their abilities. What do these slaves know about the underground railroad and ways for runaways to elude capture?
   

QUOTATIONS

1. “Pap always said it warn’t no harm to borrow things, if you was meaning to pay them back, sometime; but the widow said it warn’t anything but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it” (70).
   
2. “Now was the first time that I begun to worry about the men—I reckon I hadn’t had time to before. I begun to think how dreadful it was, even for murderers, to be in such a fix. I says to myself, there ain’t no telling but I might come to be a murderer myself yet, and then how would I like it?” (76).
   
3. “Well, he was right; he was most always right; he had an uncommon level head for a nigger” (81).
   “I see it warn’t no use wasting words—you can’t learn a nigger to argue. so I quit” (84).
   
4. “’En all you wuz thinkin’ ‘bout wuz how you could make a fool uv ole Jim wid a lie. Dat truck dah is trash; en trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de head er dey fren’s en makes ‘em ashamed” (89).
   
5. “It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger; but I done it, and I warn’t ever sorry for it afterward, neither” (89).
   
6. “...I begun to get it through my head that he was most free—and who was to blame for it? Why, me...Conscience says to me, ‘What had poor Miss Watson done to you that you could see her nigger go off right under your eyes and never say one single word?” (91).

7. “I got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low, because I knowed very well I had done wrong, and I see it warn’t no use for me to try to learn to do right; a body that don’t get started right when he’s little ain’t got no show” (94).
   
8. “Well then, says I, what’s the use you learning to do right when it’s troublesome to do right and ain’t no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?” (94).
   
9. “The men took their guns along, so did Buck, and kept them between their knees or stood them handy against the wall. The shepherdsons done the same. It was pretty ornery preaching—all about brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was a good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a powerful lot to say about faith and good works and free grace...” (111).
   
10. “I ain’t a-going to tell all that happened—it would make me sick again if I was to do that. I wished I hadn’t ever come ashore that night to see such things. I ain’t ever going to get shut of them—lots of times I dream about them” (116).
    

ACTIVITIES

1. A frequent habit of Huck’s is to blame his failures on his upbringing. This is still popular with those who don’t want to take responsibility for personal choices. Ask students to free write about a time when they blamed their parents for their mistakes. Huck and Jim consider what makes people behave as they do: nature (genetic or inborn traits) or nurture (environment or upbringing). Ask students: Which do you think has shaped you? How do you think Jim and Huck have been affected by both nature and nurture?
   
2. The elopement of Harney and sophia is reminiscent of the plot of Romeo and Juliet. Ask students: What other characters and elements of this episode resemble shakespeare’s play? The feud has been called a satire of the Civil War as well. In a short writing, have students argue for or against the effectiveness of this satire.
   
3. In Quotation #8 above, Huck exhibits symptoms of what is now called PTsD, or post traumatic stress disorder. Have students argue for or against this diagnosis, considering how many deaths Huck has encountered by Chapter 18. 
   

Huck Finn- The Novel Begins

Chapters 1-5: Status Quo and Conformity: Civilizing Huck

These five chapters introduce Huck Finn and those who impact his life and seek to shape him: Tom Sawyer, Jim, Pap, Judge Thatcher, the Widow Douglas, and Miss Watson. The main purpose of the first paragraph is to pick up where The Adventures of Tom Sawyer left off, introducing the details that will impact this new improved Huck Finn: the $6000 treasure, his adoption by the Widow, and his preference for freedom, even at the cost of respectability.

QUESTIONS
Answer using complete sentences.

1. How and why does Twain establish Huck’s voice as storyteller? What do we learn about Huck from what he reveals of other characters’ assessments of him? 
2. Make two columns, listing Huck’s clear likes and dislikes as he reveals them in these chapters. What things does he have trouble understanding? 
3. What are Huck’s feelings about his adoption by the Widow Douglas and her sister, Miss Watson? As a motherless boy, does he need their influence?

4. Huck’s upbringing is at issue in the book. What has he been taught that forms his core self? What do other characters want to teach him and how do they wish to change him? 
5. These chapters establish components of Huck’s self that others hope to influence: his emotions, his intelligence, his fiscal responsibility, his spirituality, his social self, and his physical health and habits. To what and whom does Huck conform and when/how does he reject conformity in these chapters? 
6. The titles of the chapters are in third person, while the text itself is in the first person voice of Huck Finn. What does this literary device suggest about the argument that Huck and Twain are one and the same? 

QUOTATIONS
Write two- three sentences explaining why this quote is important, what it means to the story, and what it tells about the character.

1. “Then she told me about the bad place, and I said I wished I was there...I couldn’t see no advantage in going where she was going, so I made up my mind I wouldn’t try for it” (12-13). 
2. “Why, blame it all, we’ve got to do it. Don’t I tell you it’s in the books? Do you want to go to doing different from what’s in the books, and get things all muddled up?” (18). 
3. “I went and told the widow about it, and she said the thing a body could get by praying for it was ‘spiritual gifts.’ This was too many for me, but she told me...I must help other people, and do everything for other people, and look out for them all the time, and never think about myself...I went out in the woods and turned it over in my mind a long time...” (20). 
4. “Pap he hadn’t been seen for more than a year, and that was comfortable for me; I didn’t want to see him no more. He used to always whale me when he was sober and could get his hands on me; though I used to take to the woods most of the time when he was around” (21). 
5. “I liked the old ways best, but I was getting so I liked the new ones, too, a little bit” (24). 
6. “The judge...said he reckoned a body could reform the old man with a shotgun, maybe, but he didn’t know no other way” (31). 

ACTIVITIES
Complete each activity by answering the questions in complete sentences.

1. Setting is important in establishing a novel and a narrator’s voice. Consider how elements of place are revealed in the opening chapters. How do these elements help develop the voice and characters of Huck, Tom, Jim, and others?
2. Read the scene introducing Jim. Discuss: Is Jim stereotyped? What is Huck and Tom’s assumption about Jim before they get to know him? 

Chapters 6-11: Escape and the Wealth of Self 

QUESTIONS

1. What sort of person does Huck reveal his father to be? What is Huck’s relationship with his father?
   
2. Why does Huck stage his own murder rather than simply running away? What repercussions could this choice have on those who care about him?
   
3. What are Huck’s feelings about the river and living closely with nature?
   
4. Why does Huck tell Jim he won’t turn him in, when he is so frankly opposed to abolition? What does this reveal about Huck’s character?
   
5. Huck and Jim are runaways seeking freedom. In two columns, list the reasons and differences in their motivation to escape.
   

QUOTATIONS

1. “I didn’t want to go to school much before, but I reckoned I’d go now to spite pap” (31).
   
2. “Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It was ‘lection day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn’t too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a state in this country where they’d let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I’ll never vote ag’in” (35).
   

3. “I did wish Tom sawyer was there; I knowed he would take an interest in this kind of business, and throw in the fancy touches” (41).
   
4. “[s]omebody prayed that this bread would find me, and here it has gone and done it...there’s something in it when a body like the widow or the parson prays, but it don’t work for me and I reckon it don’t work for only just the right kind” (45).
   
5. “People would call me a low-down Abolitionist and despise me for keeping mum— but that don’t make no difference. I ain’t a-going to tell” (50).
   
6. “I’s rich now, come to look at it. I owns myself, en I’s wuth eight hund’d dollars” (54).
   

ACTIVITIES

1. Define irony and satire. Ask students to work in pairs or small groups to list as many ironies and objects of satire as they can in the chapters thus far. With each point on your list, state in one sentence its main message. show an episode of The Simpsons, Family Guy, or another example of pop cultural satire that students might relate to. Discuss: How do comedians and TV programs today use irony and satire to deliver serious messages with humor?
   
2. Although Huck paints himself as a blockhead—unsure of himself and easily led by others, he has a great deal of ingenuity. Ask students to list ways in which he proves his ingenuity.