1. Huck Finn is a thirteen-year-old boy. Why does Twain u a child as the center of consciousness in this book?
Answer for Study Question 1 >>
In using a child protagonist, Twain is able to imply a comparison between the powerlessness and vulnerability of a child and the powerlessness and vulnerability of a black man in pre–Civil War America. Huck and Jim frequently find themlves in the same predicaments: each is abud, each faces the threat of losing his freedom, and each is constantly at the mercy of adult white men. As we e in Huck’s moral dilemmas, however, Jim is also vulnerable to Huck, who, although he occupies the lowest rung of the white social ladder, is white nonetheless. Twain also us his child protagonist to dramatize the conflict between societal or received morality on the one hand and a different kind of morality bad on intuition and experience on the other. As a boy, Huck is a character who can develop morally, who mind is still open and being formed, who does not take his principles and values for granted. By tracing the education and experiences of a boy, Twain
shows that conclusions about right and wrong that are bad on logic and experience often stand at odds with the society’s rules and morals, which are often hypocritical rather than logical.
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2. Discuss Twain’s u of dialects in the novel. What effect does this usage have on the reader? Does it make the novel less of an artistic achievement?
Answer for Study Question 2 >>
Twain’s u of dialect, which has proved controversial over the years, lends to the overall realism and vividness of Huckleberry Finn. Becau it is sometimes difficult to decipher the character’s speech while reading, we are almost forced to read aloud: at the very least, to read this novel, one has to be able to “hear” the voices in one’s own head. Performance is important in this novel, as Tom Sawyer’s follies and the duke and the dau
phin’s cons demonstrate. Furthermore, in the world of the novel, the way in which a character speaks is cloly tied to that character’s status in society. Huck, who was born in poverty and has lived on the margins of society ever since, speaks in a much rougher, more uneducated-sounding dialect than the speech Tom us. Jim’s speech, meanwhile, which ems rough and uneducated, is frequently not all that different from Huck’s speech or the speech of other white characters. In this way, Twain implies that it is society, wealth, and upbringing, rather than any sort of innate ignorance or roughness, that determines an individual’s educational opportunities and manner of lf-expression.
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3. Discuss the u of the river as a symbol in the novel.
Answer for Study Question 3 >>
At the beginning of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the river is a symbol of freedom
and change. Huck and Jim flow with the water and never remain in one place long enough to be pinned down by a particular t of rules. Compared to the “uedit32civilized管线饮水机” towns along the banks of the Mississippi, the raft on the river reprents an peaceful, alternative space where Huck and Jim, free of hassles and disapproving stares, can enjoy one another’s company and revel in the small pleasures of life, like smoking a pipe and watching the stars.
As the novel continues, however, the real world beyond the Mississippi’s banks quickly intrudes on the calm, protected space of the river. Huck and Jim come across wrecks and threatening snags, and bounty hunters, thieves, and con artists accost them. Although the river still provides refuge when things go wrong ashore, Huck and Jim’s relation to the river ems to change and become less friendly. After they miss the mouth of the Ohio River, the Mississippi ceas to carry them toward freedom. Instead, the current sweeps them toward the Deep South, which reprents the ultimate threat to Jim and a dead end for Huck. Just as the Mississippi would inevitably carry Huck and Jim to New Orleans (where Miss Watson had wanted to nd Jim anyway), escape from the evils inherent in
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humanity is never truly possible.
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Suggested Essay Topics
1. Lying occurs frequently in this novel. Curiously, some lies, like tho Huck tells to save Jim, em to be “good” lies, while others, like the cons of the duke and the dauphin, em to be “bad.” What is the difference? Are both “wrong”纸杯手工制作? Why does so much lying go on in Huckleberry Finn?
2. Describe some of the models for families that appear in the novel. What is the importance of family structures? What is their place in society? Do Huck and Jim constitute a family? What about Huck and Tom? When does society intervene in the family?
3. The revelation at the novel’s end that Tom has known all along that Jim is a free man is startling. Is Tom inexcusably cruel? Or is he just being a normal thirteen-year-old boy? Does Tom’s behavior comment on society in some larger way?
4. What techniques does Twain u to create sympathy for his characters, in particular, Jim? Are the techniques effective?
高一数学期中考试试卷
5. Discuss the place of morality in Huckleberry Finn. In the world of the novel, where do moral values come from? The community? The family? The church? One’s experiences? Which of the potential sources does Twain privilege over the others? Which does he mock, or describe disapprovingly?
反证法经典例题6. Why might Twain have decided to t the novel in a time before the abolition of slavery, despite the fact that he published it in 1885, two
decades after the end of the Civil War?
概括化理论Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
Racism and Slavery
Although Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn two decades after the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the Civil War, America—and especially the South—was still struggling with racism and the aftereffects of slavery. By the early 1880s, Reconstruction, the plan to put the United States back together after the war and integrate freed slaves into society, had hit shaky ground, although it had not yet failed outright. As Twain worked on his novel, race relations, which emed to be on a positive path in the years following the Civil War, once again became strained. The imposition of Jim Crow laws, designed to limit the power of blacks in the South in a variety of indirect ways, brought the beginning of a new, insidious effort to oppress. The new racism of the South, less institutionalized and monolithic, was also more difficult to combat. Slavery could be outlawed, but when white Southerners enacted racist laws or policies under a profesd motive of lf-defen against newly freed blacks, far fewer people, Northern or Southern, saw the act as immoral and rushed to combat it.
