Presentation Transcript

1. Chapters XVII & XVIII

2. Two sections which Twain added when he resumed the novel:Chapters XVII & XVIII: the feudbetween the Grangerfords and Shepherdsons- and -Chapters XIX – XXI: the king and the duke
3. The Grangerford’s House in Kentucky

4. Key Literary Concepts:

   Satire: Twain criticizes the extreme family honor code of the “genteel,” “Christian” (deep ) South. These two chapters contain humor, but are also serious and sad. Twain parodies the tacky interior decorating of the Grangerfords. Twain parodies the poetry of the melancholy, morbid Emmeline, the sentimental romantic poetess who was obsessed with death. Twain satirizes religious hypocrisy (which Huck does not seem to notice, e.g., feuding families taking guns into the same church on Sundays and listening to a sermon together— the sermon which Huck hears he says is “pretty ornery preaching—all about brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness.” Then there’s the Romeo and Juliet type story of Sophia and Harney. Young Buck Grangerford is killed. Humor mixed with tragedy. Foil Character: a foil character “stands alongside” the protagonist to whom he/she is similar in some particulars and to some degree. For example, foil characters are usually the same gender, the same age, and have similar circumstances of family, life problems, or experience. The point of creating foil characters is to accentuate their differences in character against a background of similarities. Who is Huck’s foil character– i.e., the foil to Huck— in Chapters 17 & 18? His first name rhymes with Huck. How are they obviously alike. What differences in character/morals stand out against the background similarities?

5. The Grangerford-Shepherdson feudon the Kentucky-Tennessee border was modeled on the historical Darnell-Watson feud

   The Grangerfords live in Kentucky. (The Shepherdsons may live either in Kentucky or Tennessee, but certainly live west across the river, a natural boundary between feuding families.) The Grangerfords and the Shepherdsonsare Calvinist Christians with rifles, dogs, horses, slaves and farms. Huck greatly admires almost everything about the Grangerfords and their home, but Twain is satirizing them. What specific things about culture in the antebellum (pre-Civil War) South is Twain satirizing? Does he use: irony? parody? Huck’s dead-pan literal delivery? Does even Huck himself seem to express criticism about— or a violent gut reaction against— anything in particular about any particular Grangerford’s actions, activities or fate?

6. The feud or vendetta

   A vendetta, once characteristic of Scottish clans and Corsican families and associated with the part of the country including Kentucky. The names of the rival families in Huck Finn —the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons— Suggest the long competition on the American frontier between farmers and herders; there is also the biblical prototype in the conflict between Cain the granger and Abel the first shepherd, which resulted in the first murder in Western history.
7. What details of Huck’s description of the Grangerford home does Huck admire?What is Twain really making fun of in the mode called satire?

8. Parents:Col. Saul Grangerford & Rachel:

   Children: Bob Tom Three more sons, all killed Charlotte Sophia Emmeline (in the graveyard)* Buck (13 or 14 years old; foil character to Huck) each family member with his/her own n****r * [What activity did Emmeline do which Twain parodies?]
9. Stephen Dowling Bots, Dec’d

10. What kind of poetry does EmmelineGrangerford write and what kind of pictures did she draw? What was her favorite subject matter?

    What did the neighbors mean by: “the doctor first, then Emmeline, then the undertaker”? What does Huck think of Emmeline’s poetry and drawings? Here is a case where, at times, Huck’s judgment agrees with Twain’s or unintentionally gives a reason– in his literal and dead-pan manner-- to criticize Emmeline’s art, even though Huck persists in praising it, at least faintly. Examples of Huck praising the art which Twain is mocking with great pleasure as a humorist: “They was all nice pictures, I reckon, but I didn’t somehow seem to take to them,… they always give me the fan-tods.” (1314-15)—damning with faint praise and “Buck said she could rattle off poetry like nothing. She didn’t ever have to stop to think.” (1316) But there are also instances of pure IRONY: Huck says of the poetry written in Emmeline’s scrap-book: “It was very good poetry.” Then Twain gives his parody of morbid graveyard and obituary poetry popularized by Julia A. Moore (1847-1920) in Twain’s time. The parody is titled “Ode to Stephen Dowling Bots, Dec’d”
11. Twain thought that the Southern gentlemanderived from Sir Walter Scott’s “maudlin Middle-Age romanticism”.Col. Saul Grangerford is a clear example of this manly, morbid, military mentality. Others attribute the manners and codes of the Southern gentleman more to a general “military fever” in the South.
12. Huck will run an errand for Miss Sophia. He will wonder later if he caused the deaths of Buck, his father and brothers, and some Shepherdsons. Huck seems to leave dead bodies in his path. Is he the Angel of Death?
13. Quiet, nature, birds a “going it!” and lonesomeness

14. The entrance of the “king” and the “duke”

15. Twain satirizing a “created” title:Duke or Earl of Bridgewater

    And a specific man: Francis Henry Egerton, 8th Earl of Bridgewater. And the notion that some people are superior by “birth” or “blood” or “race,” and should be served by the rest
16. Earl of Bridgewater is a title that has been created twice in the Peerage of England. The holders of the second creation also held the title of Duke of Bridgewater from 1720 to 1803. Francis Egerton, the final Duke of Bridgewater, is famously known as the Canal Duke, for his creation of a series of canals in North West England.
17. Francis Henry Egerton, 8th Earl of Bridgewater (11 November 1756 – 11 February 1829), known as Francis Egerton until 1823, was a noted Britisheccentric, and supporter of natural theology.He was a son of John Egerton, Bishop of Durham and Anne Sophia Grey. His maternal grandparents were Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Kent and his second wife Sophia Bentinck. Sophia was a daughter of William Bentinck, 1st Earl of Portland and Anne Villiers. Anne was a daughter of Sir Edward Villiers and his first wife Frances Howard. She was also a sister of Edward Villiers, 1st Earl of Jersey.Egerton was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, and became fellow of All Souls in 1780, and Fellow of the Royal Society in 1781. He inherited his title and a large fortune in 1823.Egerton was known for giving dinner parties for dogs, where the dogs were dressed in the finest fashions of the day, down to fancy miniature shoes. Each day Egerton wore a new pair of shoes and he arranged the worn shoes into rows, so that he could measure the passing time. An animal lover, Egerton kept partridges and pigeons with clipped wings in his garden, allowing him to shoot them despite failing eyesight. Egerton never married, and upon his death, his title became extinct. He was buried at Little Gaddesden.He bequeathed to the British Museum the valuable Egerton Manuscripts, consisting of 67 manuscripts dealing with the literature of France and Italy

18. The “king” almost immediately calls the “duke” “Bilgewater”.

    Bilgewater is the disgustingly foul and noxious water which collects in the bottom of a ship’s “bilge” or hull. This is a good example of the king acting from an instinct for competition and an impulse to belittle and insult anyone acting superior. He likes to be in the spotlight as the admired man who has what others don’t—who has something that they are willing to bow down to, serve, or, even better, pay money to see, touch, be near, or own. Should we hate or despise this old vagrant who does what he does in order to survive in the context of this world, or should we pity him?
19. Mark Twain uses the “king” and the “duke” as representatives of the plague of pseudoscientists, sham-healers, medical “quacks”, charlatans, foney preachers, and scam artists who plagued Europe and America in his time: Mesmerists Phrenologists Spiritualists Healers Peddlars of Patent Medicines

20. MESMERISM / Animal Magnetism

21. Phrenology

22. Patent Medicines

23. What scams do the king and the duke tell each other that they engage in to make a living?

    The KING (70 + years old): [vagabond] Temperance revivals laying on of hands Doctoring (for cancer and paralysis) Preaching (missionarying, camp-meetings) The DUKE (30 years old): [jour printer] slinging lectures mesmerism theatre-acting (histrionics) phrenology singing-geography school patent medicines dissipating witch-spells finding water and gold with “divining rod”

24. Do Huck and Jim really believe these guys?

    Why do they agree to be their handservants! their valets! How gullible are they, really? Who gave Huck advice on how to deal with characters like this, and what is the advice?

25. Camp Meetings

26. What plan did the “duke” “cipher” out to fix it so the foursome can run days on the raft?

    What is so funny about the destination that they will claim to be heading to? St. Jacques’ plantation “forty mile below New Orleans”!

27. Histrionics is the duke’s darling

    Histrionics = the art of dramatic acting for the duke that means really bad, melodramatic overacting
28. This comical garbling of Shakespeare was a stock-in-trade of the southwestern humorists in whose tradition Mark Twain follows. At this time in the American South, almost every home had a copy of the Bible, and even more had copies of the complete Shakespeare! The “duke” reciting a mixed-up version of Hamlet’s soliloquy called back from “recollection’s vaults.” It is actually a collection of lines from Hamlet, Macbeth, and several other Shakespearean plays.
29. Our foursome is in “Bricksville, Arkansaw” now. It’s a rundown town with garbage and hogs in the gardens instead of flowers or vegetables. The banks of the river are caving in, and the town has to keep moving back. There has been a circus in town, scheduled to leave by nightfall. People are already gathering in town for the circus. A perfect time to post bills for the “Shakespearean Revival! ! !” the duke has printed. Admission 25 cents; children and servants, 10 cents Do people in this lazy town of leaners and loafers and tobacco chewers like their Shakespeare?
30. The streets of Bricksville are mostly all mud.Men stand around spitting tobacco juice from borrowed tobacco.Things are slow here in “Arkansaw”:The best entertainment most days is watching dogs chasing a muddy sow and hearing them bark, watching a dog fight, or, best of all, pouring turpentine on a stray dog and setting it on fire or tying a tin pan to his tail and seeing him run itself to death! Past-times of the loafing Southern Bully.

31. A premeditated murder in public!

    Mark Twain based the following Boggs-Colonel Sherburn episode on a real event in Hannibal, Missouri, his boyhood home when he was young Samuel Clemens. There was a storekeeper/merchant named William Perry Owsley who was being badmouthed by a beef farmer named Sam Smarr who shouted at him outside of Owsley’s store. Smarr denounced and threatened Owsley publicly on several occasions. On one of these occasions, a friend of Smarr’s fired a gun in the air to scare Owsley. Smarr threatened to kill Owsley if he ever stepped into his path. One day, Owsley said he couldn’t take it anymore, and shot Smarr twice with a pistol (Jan. 24th, 1845) at the corner of Hill and Main Streets, a few yards from Clemens house. Young Sam Clemens saw Smarr die about ½-hour later. Owsley was acquitted a year later.

32. Boggs and Colonel Sherburn

    What happens between them, and why?
33. “Here comes old Boggs!—in from the country for his little old monthly drunk—here he comes, boys!”

34. A Manvs.a half-man & a lynch mob

35. What does Col. Sherburnsay from the rooftop toBuck Harkness and the lynch mob?

    What label would you put on Col. Sherburn’s stance or point of view? Is there an “–ism” word which fits his attitude toward the mob? Do we condone, accept or want Col. Sherburn type characters today?

36. THE KING’S CAMELOPARD,OR THE ROYAL NONESUCH! ! !Admission 50 cents.LADIES AND CHILDREN NOT ADMITTED

    FARCE: an exaggerated comedy based on broadly humorous, highly unlikely situations with bizarre, incongruous elements

37. Jim moaning and mourning to himself… missing his wife and children, away up yonder. Homesick.

    Jim tells a moving story of abuse, guilt, and regret.
38. I went to sleep, and Jim didn't call me when it was my turn. He often done that. When I waked up just at daybreak he was sitting there with his head down betwixt his knees, moaning and mourning to himself. I didn't take notice nor let on. I knowed what it was about. 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'!" He was a mighty good nigger, Jim was.
39. But this time I somehow got to talking to him about his wife and young ones; and by and by he says:    "What makes me feel so bad dis time 'uzbekase I hear sumpn over yonder on de bank like a whack, er a slam, while ago, en it mine me er de time I treat my little 'Lizabeth so ornery. She warn'ton'y 'bout fo' year ole, en she tuck de sk'yarlet fever, en had a powful rough spell; but she got well, en one day she was a-stannin' aroun', en I says to her, I says:    "'Shet de do'.'    "She never done it; jis' stood dah, kinersmilin' up at me. It make me mad; en I says agin, mighty loud, I says:    "'Doan' you hear me? Shet de do'!'    "She jis stood de same way, kinersmilin' up. I was a-bilin'! I says:    "'I lay I make you mine!'
40. "En widdat I fetch' her a slap side de head datsont her a-sprawlin'. Den I went into de yuther room, en 'uz gone 'bout ten minutes; en when I come back dah was dat do' a-stannin' open yit, en datchilestannin' mos' right in it, a-lookin' down and mournin', en de tears runnin' down. My, but I wuz mad! I was a-gwyne for de chile, but jis' den -- it was a do' dat open innerds -- jis' den, 'long come de wind en slam it to, behine de chile, ker-blam! -- en my lan', de chile never move'! My breffmos' hop outer me; en I feel so -- so -- I doan' know how I feel. I crope out, all a-tremblin', en cropearoun' en open de do' easy en slow, en poke my head in behine de chile, sof' en still, en all uv a sudden I says pow!jis' as loud as I could yell. She never budge! Oh, Huck, I bust out a-cryin' en grab her up in my arms, en say, 'Oh, de po' little thing! De Lord God Amightyfogivepo' ole Jim, kaze he never gwyne to fogivehisself as long's he live!' Oh, she was plumb deef en dumb, Huck, plumb deef en dumb -- en I'd ben a-treat'n her so!"
41. The duke ciphers a plan so Jim does not have to lay tied up with rope every time they leave him alone on the raft to convince people that he is not an escaped slave:He dresses Jim in a King Lear costume and paints his exposed skin solid blue.Why does Jim suffer this indignity? “Sick Arab—but harmless when not out of his head.”

42. What costume is Jim dressed in, and why?

    Whose idea was it? Is there more than one motive for dressing Jim up this way? Why does Jim go along with this plan?

43. Huck as the servant boy Adolphus.

44. The “king” pumps a young man for information about the life, relations, friends and fortune of the deceased Peter Wilks.

45. The king and duke—shameless opportunists—

    descend upon the Wilks family like vultures! To cry and cry and be a villain. “To smile and smile and be a villain.”
46. The king and duke are frauds and impostors pretending to be Harvey and William Wilks, brothers of the late Peter Wilks—and greedy for his estate. “It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race.”
47. Huck trusts Mary Jane so much, and wants to help her so badly, he will do something very uncharacteristic of him… something he very rarely feels safe doing in the world he lives in, where lying is the “regular” way of interacting with others: “So I went to studying it out. I says to myself, I reckon a body that ups and tells the truth when he is in a tight place is taking considerable many resks, though I ain't had no experience, and can't say for certain; but it looks so to me, anyway; and yet here's a case where I'm blest if it don't look to me like the truth is better and actulysafer than a lie. I must lay it by in my mind, and think it over some time or other, it's so kind of strange and unregular. I never see nothing like it. Well, I says to myself at last, I'm a-going to chance it; I'll up and tell the truth this time, though it does seem most like setting down on a kag of powder and touching it off just to see where you'll go to.” (Chapter XXVIII) BUT only because he has a vague sense that actually telling the truth in this situation might actually be safer for him.

48. Huck’s praise of the beautiful, brave, red-headed Mary Jane!

    “I don’t want nothing more out of you than just your word—I druther have it than another man’s kiss-the-Bible.” (Chapter XXVIII) “Pray for me! I reckoned if she knowed me she'd take a job that was more nearer her size. But I bet she done it, just the same -- she was just that kind. She had the grit to pray for Judus if she took the notion -- there warn't no back-down to her, I judge. You may say what you want to, but in my opinion she had more sand in her than any girl I ever see; in my opinion she was just full of sand. It sounds like flattery, but it ain't no flattery. And when it comes to beauty -- and goodness, too -- she lays over them all. I hain't ever seen her since that time that I see her go out of that door; no, I hain't ever seen her since, but I reckon I've thought of her a many and a many a million times, and of her saying she would pray for me; and if ever I'd a thought it would do any good for me to pray for her, blamed if I wouldn't a done it or bust.” (Chapter XXVIII) Again, sadly, Huck thinks he is too low-down for his prayers to be any good.
49. Tom Sawyer (as Sid Sawyer) advises Nat: “Well, I tell you what I think. What makes [the witches] come here just at this runaway n****r’s breakfast time? It’s because they’re hungry; that’s the reason. You make them a witch pie; that’s the thing for you to do.” A witchpie? Recipes for this dish (sometimes containing murdered babies or disinterred corpses) were so ancient and obscure that neither Nat nor Tom would know how to make one.