Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Huck Finn Discussion Questions Chap.V- Xl

1.) Pap does not want his son to be better than him, the fact that Huck is getting an education and becoming a better man than he is makes him crazy. Most dads would be please with their son’s education and wouldn’t focus so much on the fact that their son is going to be smarter than them and rather on the fact that their son is going to do well with the education they are getting. But Pap is too selfish and really hasn’t been much of a father to Huck.

2.) Well there is a different judge and he believes that Huck should be under the custody of his father because they are a family and society wants a family to stay together, and in order to do so Huck must stay with his dad. But Pap and Huck are not much of a “family” Pap is the worst possible person to take care of a young boy because the only person he cares about is himself.


3.) Huck has no rules while living with his father; he can pretty much do whatever he wants because his dad is to drunk all the time to come up with any house rules he can sleep in as late as he wants and even though he is beaten by pap all the time he prefers having no rules rather than doing what society wants him to do.

4.) Pap is extremely racist he does not believe at all the black men should be free so when he finds out about a free black man he freaks out and threatens to never vote again. But his outrage really has no affect on the government, the fact that one man won’t vote anymore because he has different views then everyone else will not affect them at all despite what pap thinks. He hates following the rules the government sets even though good people have no problem following them.


5.) Freedom; Huck is able to break free from his father and live his own life which is similar to what Jim does even though Huck is not a slave he was still treated badly. And now he is able to achieve freedom with someone else rather than do it all by himself.

6.) Tom Sawyer is all talk he reads so many adventure books that sometimes he lets his imagination get the best of him for example the group that he formed, they said they were going to steal things and they would even kill people but the most they did was barge in on a Sunday school. Tom Sawyer wouldn’t have helped much he would have just thought of good ideas and not acted on them. Plus he would probably have gotten Jim caught.


7.) The bread was supposed to find Hucks dead body which is a biblical reference, this brings up the idea of prayer and how the widow hoped that the bread would find Huck, which it did, and how prayer can work for some people but just not for huck. The bread finding a dead body is a biblical reference.

8.) He though Huck was a ghost; and once he learned that Huck was alive and real he was hesitant to tell Huck why he was there because he didn’t want Huck to run home and tell Ms.Watson because a slave running away was a really bad thing back then almost as bad as murder so Jim would have been severely punished and maybe even killed.


9.) They are now both free and both of them are reborn. And huck is worried because he is about to help a slave be free which was completely against what society had taught him and if anyone had found out what he did he would probably be killed.

10.) In today’s society an abolitionist wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing but back then to be called an abolitionist was a terrible thing. Huck help free a slave was one of the worst things you could do.


11.) Most of the things Jim are superstitious about roots back to personal experience. After he tells huck that something is bad luck he explains why by telling a story of his past. So he has kind of created his own superstitions that he is telling Huck about.

12.) He puts the snakeskin next to Jim while he is sleeping and Jim ends up getting bit by another snake. Huck does this because he is a trickster he enjoys playing tricks on people and another example of this is when him and tom moved Jims hat. When Jim got bit Huck felt bad because Jim was so superstitious about snakes so huck learned to look at things from other peoples perspectives. Maybe playing tricks on people isn’t the best idea.


13.) Even though Huck is not book smart he is street smart he is able to think up different personas extremely fast so he won’t give away who he truly is since everyone is looking for him. It also shows that he is willing to do whatever to achieve freedom even if that means dressing up like a girl to disguise his true identity.

14.) She over exaggerates the amount of money that is found in order to make it actually sound interesting.


15.) A run away slave is worse then a murder during these times because the reward for finding pa is $200 and the reward for finding Jim is $300

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