Essay Chat
We may not be able to write essays for each other
but Mr. Wargo never said that we cant post on the blog to share our insights and analysis of the questions
Essay Question 1 - satire
The book can be said to be a satire on the issue of slavery.
Mark Twain uses Jim, a main character and a slave, to demonstrate the humanity of slaves. Jim expresses the complicated human emotions and struggles with the path of his life. To prevent being sold and forced to separate from his family, Jim runs away from his previous life, as a slave for Miss Watson, and joins Huck Finn. He decides that once he gets to the north, he will works towards obtaining freedom and buy back his own family. All along their journey downriver, Jim cares for and protects Huck, not as a servant, but as a friend. Thus, Twain's encourages the reader to feel sympathy and empathy for Jim and outrage at the society that has enslaved him and threatened his life.
Although Twain attacks slavery through Jim, he never directly addresses the issue. Huck and Jim never debate slavery, and all the other slaves in the novel are very minor characters. Only in the final section of the novel does Twain develop the central conflict concerning slavery of whether Huck should free Jim and be condemned to hell or not? This decision is life-altering for Huck, as it forces him to reject everything "civilization" has taught him. Huck chooses to free Jim, based on his personal experiences rather than social norms, thus choosing the morality of the “natural life” over that of civilization.
posted by koager @ 4:12 PM
15 comments
15 Comments:
yeah...I totally agree with you Andy. At first I thought that the satiric elements of this novel was the violence portrayed...esp. by the young boys (Tom, Huck, and the rest of the gang)....because it seemed somewhat exaggerated and that is an approach to satire. But now that we've read a whole lot farther into the novel, I can see how Mark Twain's depiction of slavery is satiric. (<-- is that a word?)
well...about the first essay, here's my brief bit:
as a bildungsroman novel--
during Huck and Jim's adventure our protagonist, Huck, shows us that he is logical and clever. However, he uses these qualities in somewhat of a childish manner. As the novel progresses, we can see that Huck is maturing, from very minimal events like Huck's show of caring about Jim when they get seperated by the fog in chapter 15. Also in chapter 16 when he "steals" the money (techinically is getting it back) for Mary Jane. And then towards the end of the novel, I am aware that he is forced to show his serious and mature side when faced with the choices of betraying or staying loyal to Jim. Of course, I haven't gotten there yet and can't really build onto this certain example, but I'm sure that if he makes the latter choice it'll be an obvious example of his maturity.
I hope that was helpful...I haven't gotten very far otherwise. I'll come back to add more later. =]
actually that might be another satiric (hey it is a word, FF's spelling correction isn't underlining it) view. I went with the slavery one mostly because of when Nick asked the essay question to the 2 college people, the guy answered that it was a satire from the view of how Huck treats Jim.
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I guess it could be...I just can't really find more support throughout the book. Unless Huck's incredible lying/bsing skills count.
picaresque novels- stories in which we follow a central character through a series of adventures that may or may not cause him to change.
Picaresque 1: Huck comes from an illegitimate family, which is characteristic of the Picaro.
Picaresque 2: This is the first instance where a pig is mentioned. There is a constant mention of animals throughout the book, mostly of pigs and dogs. This combination of animals and humans is an example of wildness and civility being intertwined.
Picaresque 3: Dogs are mentioned here, just another example of animals and humans existing in the book together.
Picaresque 4: Huck is so confused by the way the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons interact with each other. They seem to be civilized, and yet they go around shooting each other.
Picaresque 5: After Huck finally makes it back to the raft and is going down the river, he feels so good. It is comfortable for him to be on the river; it is where he feels most like himself. He interacts with nature on a very intimate level.
Picaresque 6: This is another example of Huck and nature existing together. When he watches the storm, he is mesmerized by it. It is almost as if he is a part of the storm. Huck feels perfectly comfortable just sitting in the rain.
Picaresque 7: This is another mention of dogs and pigs. They are everywhere around the town, running wild in the streets; the townspeople don't think anything of it. They just live around them, peacefully coexisting.
Picaresque 8: Colonel Sherburn, another person similar to the Grangerfords and Shepherdsons, appears very civil and distinguished. However, he shoots a man dead, and this makes Huck sick. It is the irony between what is civil and what is wild that confuses Huck.
Picaresque 9: Huck is a realist, a defining characteristic of the Picaro. He wants to rescue Jim in the easiest, most realistic way, something that Tom, a romantic, cannot accept. For him, Jim's escape has to be a big show, riddled with nonsensical tactics that just make the situation more complicated than it has to be.
its spelled wrong on the packet
not buildungsroman
its bildungsroman
no u
bildungsroman-a type of novel concerned with the education, development, and maturing of a young protagonist.
At the beginning of the novel, Huck shows his skepticism of the values that society imposes when Widow Douglas attempts to civilize him. Huck describes his life with the Widow as "regular and decent". She dresses him in starchy clothes while sending him to school to learn math and literature. When Huck did not like to be civilized anymore, he returned back to his old ways. Huck says, " ...when I couldn't stand it no longer, I lit out. I got into my old rags...and was free and satisfied". When he is unable to take the restrictions of life any longer, he simply releases himself and goes back to what he feels is right and what makes him happy. Huck returns back to the Widow after Tom convinces him to come back. When Miss. Watson, the Widow's sister, tells Huck about the "bad place", hell, he says, "I wished I was there". He said this because he wanted a change from the civilized world. Huck distrusts the morals and precepts of the society that labels him an outcast.
Huck's life with his Pap was far from civilized. Pap is the town drunk who comes back into town after hearing his son has acquired money. Being illiterate, he disapproves of Huck's education and his civilized ways. Pap tells Huck, "you're educated...You think your're better'n your father, now, don't you, because he can't?". Pap is very mad that Huck became the first in the family to learn to read. Huck lets Pap abuse him because he does not want any more problems. Huck explains, "If I never learnt nothing else out of pap, I learnt that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them have their own way". When Pap beats and neglects Huck, he teaches Huck to be self-sufficient and not to depend on others for help. Pap leaves him in a cabin locked in a room for hours and even days. When Huck is left in the cabin, he is given plenty of time to consider his options. If he remains in the cabin, he will continue to be powerless in the will of his father. He realizes that escape is his only solution. By staging his own murder, Huck kills himself to society's influences and enables his own uninhibited personal growth.
Free of society's rules and standards, he is fortunate enough to have Jim along for companionship, removing the loneliness that prevented his earlier flight from society. This friendship is at first corrupted by society's influence on Huck. Fortunately, free of society's rules and standards, Huck begins to undo his misperceptions of slaves and begins to realize that Jim is a human just like he is. When Huck realizes Jim has feelings and is not a piece of property after he plays a trick on him, he cries out, "I made me feel so mean I could almost kissed his foot to get him to take it back ". Jim becomes a surrogate father, as well as a friend to Huck. Jim is the only real adult in the book and the only one who provides a positive, respectable example for Huck to follow.
Andy this is great. I was really wondering about the satire. I am really beginning to understand the bildungsroman portion of the novel but the other two were just not really coming to me. Hopefully what i said about the river today in class will be helpful to someone. Thanks again.
whoa. That's great Andy! Thanks for all the help...I haven't quite gotten to read over your post, because I have so much to do right now...but I'll definitely do so later. and possibly comment on it as well.
I didn't want to make a whole new post, so i'm asking it in here. Could anyone remind me what chapters we're having for our interrogation tomorrow? I heard it as 26-30...but I think tonight's reading is 31-35.
wow...
this essay is gonna be long...
4 or 5 pages if not 6
x.x
Nice job Andy. I encourage you to help one another on the blog with the questions.
rw
i concur with you julie b. huck is definately maturing throughout the novel. one example of this is when the two cons are getting tarred and feathered when huck is at toms house pretending to be tom. even though the two cons that traveled with huck and jim were mean to them and turned jim in, huck still felt sympathy for them once they were getting tarred and feathered. he thought that no human should ever have to endure that, no matter what they have done.
that is the example i am going to use in my essay. however, i am a little confused at what a "buildingsroman novel" is. ive read through your examples and im still a little confused. can anyone help me out???
A buildingsroman novel is a book that has the main character progress and develope through the story. Huck progresses to where he has his own philosophies(he disagrees with the Jim's enslavement) and he also begins to question superstitious beliefs(like with Tom's beliefs of how the books say things must be done).
When are the essays due, Sunday at midnight or Monday at midnight?
im pretty sure sunday at midnight. and did we ever find out if we have to do essay three? wasnt that based on the quiz we never got the scores back on?
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