My+Comprehension+and+Discussion+Questions

//for// The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
 * Comprehension & Discussion Questions**

1.Why did Twain include the "Notice" on the opening page? He seems to mimic Swift in “A Modest Proposal.” He must be poking fun at something in the American government that seems absurd and here we see that he either exaggerates it or he mirrors it.

2.Can the book's 43 chapters be grouped according to distinct action sequences? Are there correspondences among chapters or groups of chapters? No, the 43 chapters cannot come together in an according way, but each particular group of chapters may be taken and put together. 3.Each stage of Huck's moral growth culminates in a crisis of conscience and a decision to assist Jim (as when Huck tells the two slave hunters that there is "only one" man on the raft and that "He's white"); and each decision is more consequential than the previous. What are these stages and decisions; when do they occur; and what are their consequences? Huck debates with himself, deciding whether he should do what he thinks is right by turning Jim in or by keeping it quiet. White society teaches him that Jim is a slave and should be with his owner, yet morally, Huck feels bad because Jim has given him his trust. 4.What are the consequences of Huck's and Jim's going past the mouth of the Ohio River in the fog? (Chapter XV) After being separated and later uniting, Jim becomes mad at Huck for pretending that Jim was delusional.

5. Among the novel's great ironies is that Huck's and Jim's quest for freedom takes them farther and farther into the deep South, the heart of slavery. How and why does this happen? What are the implications? Huck is an uneducated young boy and Jim is a African American slave. Being this way, they may not have known which exact way was freedom, however a specific place that they know does not restrict their freedom would be better than their previous situations. An example paralleled with this could be a youth running away from home. He or she has no particular place in mind to go to most of the time, however they feel that anywhere is better than their previous living. 6.The primary movement of Huck's and Jim's journey and of the novel is linear, from north to south. A back-and-forth pattern of movement between river and shore also occurs. How is this pattern important in terms of plot? How is it related to the north-to-south movement? Does it reflect any other kind of movement experienced by Huck or Jim? Like the movement of Jim and Huck, the storyline has a beginning and an ending. We see that the there is a destination point in their voyage. 7.How do the king and the duke impact Huck's and Jim's life on the raft, their quest for freedom, and the novel's movement? They provoke Huck to partake in their elaborate scheme, risking both his and Jims freedoms. 8.What are the parallels between the king's and duke's treatment of Jim in Chapter XXIV and Tom Sawyer's treatment of him in the final chapters? Both Tom and the Kind and Duke seem to portray the same dishonest traits. The duke and king treats Jim not as a friend but as an undeserving being. Tom treats Huck the same way by not being friendly. 9.The cemetery passage in Chapter XXIX is one of the few times when Huck is in immediate danger of actual harm or death. What are some similar incidents? What threatens his safety and well-being in each instance--other people or forces of nature? How does he escape in each instance? In the novel, we see that Huck comes into contact with a couple of white slave holders looking for runaways. Unluckily, Huck nearly gets himself into trouble and also Jim into trouble. He escabes by tellling a fib about who is really on the raft and he gets away with it. Also, in the beginning, Huck comes into many situations with his father that hurt him. He not only harms himself physically, but also morally when he begins to give up his school boy ways during his stay with Pap. He escapes his father’s clutches by a smart plan to runaway.

10.Do the final chapters, beginning with Huck's arrival at the Phelps farm, rely too much on coincidence? They do seem coincidental because Huck ends his story by returning to an old friend he hasn’t seen since the beginning of the book. Also, his appearance there seemed planned. 11.Do Tom Sawyer's elaborate escape stratagems indicate that Jim's and Huck's goals are unobtainable? As seen in the beginning of the book, Tom loves to do things the popular way. In the group of robbers he wants to establish based on stories, Tom knows what real robbers would do, but he does not know how to them. So, yes, Tom’s schemes seem to only lead to nowhere. 12.Is there any justice in the fact that only Tom is wounded in the final chase through the swamp? Yes, there is because Tom represents the evil side of the boys in the book, provoking them to do wrong, and he is wounded justifiably. 13.The story is told by a fourteen-year-old Huck, who admits to elaborate lies and fabrications. Can we trust him? Can we accept his version of things, or must we read between his lines? Yes and no. Yes, because we have nothing else to go off of and this is a story we have chosen to read. Also, no, because Huck is very much a con the way the duke was and the way Tom was

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