Adventures of Huckleberry Finn : Chapter notes: 17-20

1. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Chapter notes: 17-20 • Notes adapted from Joseph Claro in “Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn,” Barron’s Educational Series; and Ronald Goodrich in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Living Literature Series.

2. Annotations: Reminders How to annotate: Have a conversation with the text. Talk to it. Ask questions; offer potential answers. Comment on something that intrigues, impresses, amuses, shocks, puzzles, disturbs, repulses, aggravates, etc. Comment on lines or quotations you think are especially significant, powerful or meaningful: Don’t merely underline or highlight without comment. Express agreement or disagreement. Make predictions. Connect ideas to each other or to other texts. Note anything you would like to discuss or do not understand.

3. Key Quiz Question: Huck Finn • Notice Huck’s reaction to Jim’s news that Jim is running away: Remember that Huck grew up with people who believed that stealing a slave was as serious as committing murder. He is shocked. He has never heard anyone question slavery and has every reason to believe that Jim has done something terrible. • Yet, Huck promises Jim that Huck won’t say a word: “I ain’t a-going back there, anyways,” he explains. • Not turning Jim in is a monumental decision for Huck to make: He has decided to turn his back on everything “home” stands for, even one of its most cherished beliefs. • Notes adapted from Joseph Claro in “Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn,” Barron’s Educational Series; and Ronald Goodrich in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Living Literature Series.

4. Key Quiz Question: Huck Finn • Abolitionist: one who advocated the legal extinction of slavery as an institution. • Before the Civil War, abolitionists often helped slaves escape to free states. • Nearly all pre-Civil War Southerners hated abolitionists as enemies who struck at the very heart of Southern society and economy.

5. Key Quiz Question: Huck Finn • Huck, as a member of a society that considers slavery morally justified and economically necessary realizes that people will condemn him as an abolitionist – the lowest kind of criminal.

6. Key Quiz Question: Huck Finn • Huck has a sense of right and wrong that would shame some of the people he calls his “betters.” His conscience now causes him great pain because he can’t find an easy solution to his dilemma in helping Jim escape. Does he live up to the rules of the society he has been brought up in? Or does he do what seems to be the right thing for a friend? • On the way to shore to turn Jim in, Huck decides to do “wrong” – he doesn’t turn Jim in, and it never occurs to him that what he’s done might be considered the right thing. He has too low of an opinion of himself to think that. • Huck reasons, why do right (turn Jim in) if he wouldn’t feel any better?

7. Key Quiz Question:Huck Finn • We all face Huck’s dilemma at some time: Do you always live by the rules, or do you follow your conscience? Twain stacks slavery against friendship, and that stacks the deck in favor of individual conscience over rules of society. • This leads to some of the disapproval over this book: Critics say it glorifies a lawbreaker by making him likable and by manipulating the audience into approving what he does. The larger moral question of conscience versus societal rules is one that has to be determined individually, but there is little question that Huck has done the right thing.

8. Adventures of Huck Finn Please answer the following questions in your notebook. Be detailed and specific. What does it mean to be civilized? What does it mean to be moral?

9. Chapter 17: Huck Finn • The following is satire on the society in which Twain grew up. • Twain grew up in a society that had high regard for families like the Grangerfords: As an adult, Twain felt contempt for people who used a family tree to hide inner decay. • Huck describes the decorations in loving detail; yet, they are in pretty poor taste. • Emmeline’s drawings are dark and gloomy – they are also maudlin and overly sentimental. • “Ode to Stephen Dowling Bots,” the annual ritual on the dead girl’s birthday – it’s all very comical.

10. Chapter 18:Huck Finn • “Everybody was sorry [EmmelineGrangerford] died…but I reckon, that with her disposition, she was having a better time in the graveyard.” • Huck is naïve and means this statement literally: Emmeline doted on death and therefore would presumbably be happiest among the dead. • Twain, in contrast, is clearly laughing at the poetic justice of Emmeline’searly death.

11. Chapter 18:Huck Finn • “Buck said [Emmeline] could rattle off poetry like nothing. She didn’t ever have to stop to think.” • Huck’s tone is one of admiration for Emmeline’s ability. Twain knows that one cannot “rattle off” good poetry and that “stopping to think” is necessary; he is laughing at Emmeline’s verse-writing abilities.

12. Chapter 18: Huck Finn • Huck’s description of the Grangerfords show how upright, admirable, and aristocratic they are: Twain uses this as bitter sarcasm. • The Grangerfords start to appear silly – the feud, etc. How intelligent can they be? How admirable is pride when it leads to senseless death? What kind of people teach their children to accept murder as normal? And how can Buck so revere the Shepherdsons? Is this a game?

13. Chapter 18: Huck Finn • “Next Sunday we all went to church…The men took their guns along…It was pretty ornery preaching – all about brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was a good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a powerful lot to say about faith, and good works…”

14. Chapter 18: Huck Finn • Huck is simply telling what happened, his reaction to it, and the reactions of the Grangerfords. • Twain is conscious of many ironies: • The men took their guns to church to hear a sermon about brotherly love. • Although Huck found the sermon tiresome and ornery, he was the most civilized and religious person in the audience. • The butt of the criticism here is not only the Grangerfords but also the church, for it is implied that the church is lacking in true vitality.

15. Chapter 18: Huck Finn • “…There weren’t anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two…If you notice, most folks don’t go to church only when they’ve got to; but a hog is different.” • Again, Huck mainly reports the facts as he observes them. • Twain, however, is clearly implying that so far as going to church is concerned, hogs are more faithful than these human beings.

16. Chapter 18: Huck Finn • By the end of the chapter, even Huck is disgusted, and he’s too sickened by the details to share them. • Huck is slow to learn this lesson – many of the people he looks up to are not as admirable as he thinks. And he is very happy to get back to the world of the raft with Jim.

17. Chapters 19-20: Huck Finn • There isn’t any explanation for why Twain seems to have forgotten about Jim during this extended portion of the novel. • Ch. 19 begins with one of the longest descriptions in the book of the beauty of being on the river.

18. Chapters 19-20: Huck Finn • Huck and Jim meet the Duke and Dauphin (doe-fan)/King • Temperance revival: religious meeting at which drinking alcohol is condemned. • Jour printer: a printer who travels around looking for a day’s work (“jour” is the French word for “day”) • Patent medicine: usually a concoction of any ingredients available, accompanied by wild claims for what it will cure. • Mesmerism: hypnotism • Phrenology: the study of personality as it is revealed by bumps on the skull. • Laying on of hands: curing people by touching them and praying aloud. • The king comes up with a plan that will allow them to travel the river during the day that involves some unpleasant news for Jim.