The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
"So What?" Category
Conflict
One evident conflict in this novel is Huck's struggle against society and it's "sivilied" ways. Author Mark Twain uses Huck's childish voice to give the novel an open-minded tone and a playful spin on the book to make the reader feels as if they are learning something through the eyes of a child. This brings more importance to the morals of the novel because Huck, who is a child, fully understand thing that the adults around him do not. Huck befriends Jim despite what society makes him think about the black race but then struggles between the thoughts that society has buried in him and what he really thinks.
“So What?” Category
Setting
The novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn takes place along a part of the Mississippi River. The author Mark Twain used this area because it was an area he knew well. By doing this, the author created kind of a homey feeling for Huck as he moved along the river. Some of the cities that are in the novel are New Orleans and St. Louis. Also, the river areas that Twain describes give the novel an adventurous feel because of the grandness of the cities. More specifically, the houses that are mentioned in the novel seem to represent life in society because the mood during the passages in the households are strict and rigorous, contradicting the mood when Huck is traveling the river. Also, the social conditions in which Huck is forced to set the tone for the book and also the reasoning for Huck to set out on the adventure. It seems that Miss Watson is a controlling character, contradicting what Huck is looking for in his free spirit. In my opinion, Pap represents kind of an out-of-control, fearful character, surrounded by chaos.
“So What?” Category
Major Theme in the novel
One major theme in this novel is how society is wrong. It seem that the river is Huck’s sanctuary from society, and the strictness that surrounds it. When Huck is on the river, he is finding adventure and learning new things that he otherwise would not have learned through “normal” acts of society. By doing this, Twain wants us to see that some aspects of society are absurd… There are things in our world that we cannot learn from a textbook or a movie. Adventures, like mistakes, are meant to be made and learned from. Also, it seems that in the book, Huckleberry Finn learns that black people are as much a part of this world as others. By contradicting his use of the word “nigger” and the lesson that Huck eventually learns, Twains shows the change a character, or person can go through, and how society is not always necessarily right in the way they think.
“So What?” Category
Discuss an important character
In the novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, author Mark Twain introduces a number of characters. One of these characters is Jim. He is a runaway slave with an unbelievably big heart and sense of simplicity. As the novel progresses, Jim’s qualities become increasingly distinct. Twain uses Jim in the novel to express his feeling toward slavery, and blacks as people. It is noted that Jim become a father figure to Huck on their adventure down the river, and Huck learns what a caring and beautiful person Jim really is, despite what society wants him to believe. By having Huck learn this lesson in the novel, Twain expresses that what society thinks of blacks and how they are treated is utterly ridiculous. Because Jim has a very big heart, Twain also makes him out to be gullible, or completely trusting in his friends.
"So What?"
Why are you moved by the story?
This novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain is moving because Huck's childish ways prove how ridiculous it is that blacks were viewed the way they were during Huck's time. Obviously Twain uses the Huck's childish ways to tie the novel together. The excitement Huck brings to the novel as the narrator gives the reader a sense of childishness, although Twain is still able to portray the moral of the novel with lasting intensity. Also, Huck's ability to befriend Jim in the time of slavery, when society bares down strongly on the black race, shows that Huck is still naive enough not to be affected by everything society claims to be right. Finally, Huck's meakness and eagerness to explore outside of the realms of society draw connections between him and Jim that the reader can use to learn that Twain thinks racism in white society is ridiculous.
“How?” Category
Figurative language
Because the story is told from the point of view of a young boy, it is hard for Twain to realistically use things like personification and metaphor because the character of Huckleberry Finn is more or less an uncivilized character. Yet, there are cases in which he uses similes, like when he’s talking about the duke and king, how they’re sleeping like the dead.
One important aspect of figurative language that Twain uses in this novel is irony. Because he is writing the novel from the point of view of a young boy, the words and expressions he uses are contradictory to himself. A use of ironic humor in dialogue is in the beginning of the book when Huck is explaining about Tom and “his new gang”…
“But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable.”
This irony is taken to be humorous because it is obvious that a band of robbers are not going to be taken as respectable, although Tom makes it clear that that is what Huck needs to do to become a part of the new gang.
“How?” Category
Diction: What do you notice about how the author chooses words and how does word choice contribute to his, or her, message?
Author, Mark Twain, tells the story through the voice and point of view of Huck Finn, therefore the speech and dialogue in the book are that of a south boy in the time of slavery, and very casual. By doing this, Twain makes the diction “easy to understand” and contradictory to how a notable author would normally write. The author also pays close attention to the diction of the different areas as Huckleberry Finn travels down the river.
“Jim had plenty of corncob pipes and tobacco; so we had a right down good sociable time, there we crawled out through the hole, and so home to bed, with hands that looked like the’d been cawed. Tom was in high spirits. He said it was the best fun he ever had in his life.”
This is an example of the casual and easy-to-understand diction Twain uses via Huck throughout the novel.
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