Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Discussion Questions Notice - IV

1. Widow Douglas is an old, religious woman who wants to help Huck by giving him a good home and civilizing him. She tells Huck a story about Moses, to which Huck responds with distaste, as he doesn't care much for dead people, especially dead people that no one knows. Huck's response to the story tells us that he is realistic and doesn't care much for the past, but is rather focused on the present.


2. Superstition appears over and over again throughout Huck Finn, and represents a product of society, as well as providing for the theme of superstition vs. religion. An example would be when Huck is laying in bed and interprets the calls of owls, whippowills, and dogs as harbringers of death. Another instance of superstition occurs when Tom moves Jim's hat while he is sleeping, and Jim believes it to be the work of witches. Jim's fortune-telling hairball is a prime example of superstition.


3. To Huck, death is an unknown, which he tries to explain through superstition, and is also a little afraid of. He doesn't have much understanding of an afterlife, or an afterlife as is described to him by Miss Watson, and isn't really concerned with it. Huck says that he doesn't care much for the dead. Huck doesn't take death very seriously. Huck's perspective on death is significant because it shows more of his realistic nature, being more concerned with the things of the present, than what will happen when he is dead, and in his mind, unimportant.


4. I think that the trick Tom and Huck played on Jim, convincing Jim that he had been bewitched by witches that had hung his hat on a tree branch above him, was funny, but mean. It makes Jim look foolish.


5. "Jim was most ruined for a servant..." is significant because it shows how Jim's attitude changed after Tom and Huck's trick and delves more into the issue of slavery and racism. Jim became stuck up because he thought that he had been bewitched by witches and had seen the devil, and nothing is worse than a slave who thinks a little highly of himself.


6. Tom is a romantic, so he took the candles not out of necessity, but because he just wanted to play with them. He left the five cents, more than enough to pay for the candles, because he didn't care that much about the money, or the candles, and figured he should give the owner something in return instead of just stealing. Huck, on the other hand, is a realist. Huck wouldn't have taken the candles unless he needed them in the first place, and even then, he probably wouldn't have left any money. Huck would have considered it borrowing rather than stealing.


7. Tom is a romantic who lives for make-believe adventures and fantastic stories. Huck is a realist, who doesn't have much of a vision of grandeur about the world, and just deals with his personal real-life situations on a day-by-day basis. Tom is comfortable living a civilized life of school, church, and abstinence from smoking, while Huck would rather take care of himself and do whatever he pleases. Tom is an extravagant planner, while Huck is more of a do-er.


8. Tom thinks it important that he and his band be called highwaymen rather than burglars because burglars simply steal things, whereas highwaymen stop people on the road and kill and/or ransom them.


9. Miss Watson told Huck that he should pray every day and that he would get whatever he prayed for. Huck tried this for days when in need of fish hooks, but never received any hooks. He asked Miss Watson to try praying for him, but she just called him a fool. Huck sat and thought a while about it, and decided that praying didn't get you whatever you wanted. He went and told the widow and she told him that you could only get spiritual gifts from praying, and that he should do everything he can for other people and never think about himself. Huck thought about this and figured that he wouldn't pay any mind to praying any more as it had no benefits for him. 


10. Tom calls Huck a numskull because Huck never read Don Quixote and doesn't know about the enchantments of magicians and why all the Arabs, elephants, and diamonds appeared to look like a Sunday school class.


11. Huck doesn't believe all of Tom's lies, he can think for himself, and sticks to his realistic viewpoint. Huck doesn't believe Tom about the Arabs and the magic, but has his own opinion and believes that it really was just a Sunday school class. This shows the contrast between Tom and Huck.


12. Huck wants to give all of his money to Judge Thatcher because he knows that his dad is in town, and it wouldn't end well for Huck if his dad found out he was rich and decided to take all of his money to spend on booze.

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