Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Summative Discussion

English 11H

Engage in a collaborative conversation with your peers.

Ideally, you’ll be able to have an organic conversation based on your own thinking about Huck Finn, particularly the essay question:

Are the closing Tom Sawyer chapters in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn consistent with novel’s goal to satirize racism, or are they flawed chapters that undermine that message?

Do remember to anchor your statements with specific textual details. The format is analytical, not editorial. This is also a collaborative exercise. Your role is as much to elicit ideas from your peers as it is to share your own.

Consider, too, these topics as you discuss the essay question:

I. The Symbolic Death(s) and Rebirth(s) Huck Experiences Throughout the Novel

II. Huck’s Moral Development

III. Jim’s Character Development

1. Miss Watson's nigger, Jim, had a hair-ball as big as your fist, which had been took out of the fourth stomach of an ox, and he used to do magic with it. He said there was a spirit inside of it, and it knowed everything. So I went to him that night and told him pap was here again, for I found his tracks in the snow. What I wanted to know was, what he was going to do, and was he going to stay? Jim got out his hair-ball and said something over it, and then he held it up and dropped it on the floor. It fell pretty solid, and only rolled about an inch. Jim tried it again, and then another time, and it acted just the same. Jim got down on his knees, and put his ear against it and listened. But it warn't no use; he said it wouldn't talk. He said sometimes it wouldn't talk without money (13).

2. "Jim, this is nice," I says. "I wouldn't want to be nowhere else but here. Pass me along another hunk of fish and some hot corn-bread."

"Well, you wouldn't a ben here 'f it hadn't a ben for Jim. You'd a ben down dah in de woods widout any dinner, en gittn' mos' drownded, too; dat you would, honey. Chickens knows when it's gwyne to rain, en so do de birds, chile" (37)

3. He went, and bent down and looked, and says:

"It's a dead man. Yes, indeedy; naked, too. He's ben shot in de back. I reck'n he's ben dead two er three days. Come in, Huck, but doan' look at his face -- it's too gashly."

I didn't look at him at all. Jim throwed some old rags over him, but he needn't done it; I didn't want to see him.

4. "Is a cat a man, Huck?"

"No."

"Well, den, dey ain't no sense in a cat talkin' like a man. Is a cow a man? -- er is a cow a cat?"

"No, she ain't either of them."

"Well, den, she ain't got no business to talk like either one er the yuther of 'em. Is a Frenchman a man?"

"Yes."

"WELL, den! Dad blame it, why doan' he talk like a man? You answer me dat!" (60).

5. Jim looked at the trash, and then looked at me, and back at the trash again. He had got the dream fixed so strong in his head that he couldn't seem to shake it loose and get the facts back into its place again right away. But when he did get the thing straightened around he looked at me steady without ever smiling, and says:

"What do dey stan' for? I'se gwyne to tell you. When I got all wore out wid work, en wid de callin' for you, en went to sleep, my heart wuz mos' broke bekase you wuz los', en I didn' k'yer no' mo' what become er me en de raf'. En when I wake up en fine you back agin, all safe en soun', de tears come, en I could a got down on my knees en kiss yo' foot, I's so thankful. 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" (65).

6. He was thinking about his wife and his children, away up yonder, and he was low and homesick; because he hadn't ever been away from home before in his life; and 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 often moaning and mourning that way nights, when he judged I was asleep, and saying, "Po' little 'Lizabeth! po' little Johnny! it's mighty hard; I spec' I ain't ever gwyne to see you no mo', no mo'!" (117)

III. The Climax: Pinpoint this passage and analyze its significance.

IV. The Fate of the King and the Duke (tarred, feathered, ridden on a rail, lynched):

“Well, it made me sick to see it; and I was sorry for them poor pitiful rascals, it seemed like I couldn’t ever feel any hardness against them any more in the world. It was a dreadful thing to see. Human beings can be awful cruel to one another. […] So we poked along back home, and I warn’t feeling so brash as I was before, but kind of ornery, and humble, and to blame, somehow—though I hadn’t done nothing. But that’s always the way; it don’t make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person’s conscience ain’t got no sense, and just goes for him anyway. If I had a yaller dog that didn’t know no more than a person’s conscience does, I would pison him. It takes up more room than all the rest of a person’s insides, and yet ain’t no good, nohow. Tom Sawyer he says the same” (end of Chapter 33).

Jim’s Response to Tom Getting Shot, and Huck’s Response to Jim:

After a narrow but apparently successful escape from the mob Tom Sawyer has ironically summoned for the night the boys are to free Jim, Huck and Jim “consult” about Tom, who has been shot in the leg.

Jim’s words: “Well, den, dis is the way it look to me, Huck. Ef it wuz him dat ‘uz bein’ sot free, en one er de boys wuz to git shot, would he say, ‘Go on en save me, nemmine ‘bout a doctor f’r to save dis one? Is dat like Mars Tom Sawyer? Would he say dat? You bet he wouldn’t! Well, den, is Jim gwyne to say it? No, sah—I doan’ budge a step out’n dis place, ‘dout a doctor; not if it’s forty year!”

Huck’s thoughts in response: “I knowed he was white inside, and I reckoned he’s day what he did say—so it was all right, now, and I told Tom I was agoing for a doctor. He raised considerable row about it, but me and Jim stuck to it and wouldn’t budge […]” (from Chapter 40).

The Final Paragraph of “Chapter the Last”:

“Tom’s most well, now, and got his bullet around his neck on a watch-guard for a watch, and is always seeing hat time it is, and so there ain’t nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I’d a knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn’t a tackled it and ain’t agoing to no more. But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’t stand it. I been there before.”

What implicit point about language might Twain be making here, and how could this passage serve to defend against claims that Huck’s moral growth has undone itself by the novel’s conclusion?