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?