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.