So What?

Chapter 1-16  Natalie Fung

“I knowed mighty well that a drowned man don't float on his back but on his face.” (Twain 20)

Impact of Past Experiences

The mention of Huckleberry Finn’s drunken father weaves throughout the beginning chapters of the novel, finally making an appearance in later chapters. Since Huck’s father is not a constant role in his life, he was orphaned at a young age thus moving from house to house. On page twenty Huck is thinking about whether his father would take possession of him from Miss Watson, the current care provider. Then having a flashback to an earlier time when the community found a body of a “drowned man” (20) floating along the river, individuals in the society reckoned that it must be Huck’s intoxicated father. Yet Huck realizes its not his father but a woman dressed up to have the appearance of a man. This is significant to the outline of the plot because Mark Twain has had many experiences with loved ones as well as himself drowning in a body of water. In Twain’s autobiography he noted that he had drowned seven times in Bear Creek and the Mississippi River. In Twain’s later years, his daughter Jean Clemens had died because drowning inside of a bathtub. With use of rhetorical analysis, one can conclude this quote evokes the use of the tool ethos because the reader can rely on Twain to understand how to tell if one has drown in water with his many experience throughout his life.

Chapter 17-21 Carolyn Lo Coco

“I hadn’t had a bite to eat since yesterday, so Jim he got out some corn-dodgers and buttermilk, and pork and cabbage and greens—there ain’t nothing in the world so good when it’s cooked right—and whilst I eat my supper we talked and had a good time. . . .We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.” (p. 119)

Jim and Huck are loving their own personal microcosm, free from all the injustices and issues that exist in their society. This is a short lived Utopian life for the two, however, it regardless depicts how being on the raft is romantic, yet reality comes into play.

Chapter 22-28 Kristen Allan

Chapter 29-35 Carmen Mascarenhas 

On Human Nature

H: ““What do we want of a saw?’

T: ‘What do we want of it? Hadn’t we got to saw the leg of Jim’s bed off, so as to get the chain loose?’

H: ‘Why, you just said a body could lift up the bedstead and slip the chain off’

T: ‘Well, if that ain’t just like you, Huck Finn (…) Hadn’t you ever read any books at all? (…) Who ever heard of getting a prisoner loose in such an old-maidy way as that?’” (266)

Why do we care about Huckleberry Finn? He’s a runaway, drama-queen, pathological liar who thrives off of making other people’s lives just a little bit harder than they have to be. And all for what? Well he wants to be his own man, have a better life, get away from all of the “sivilized” business but also his drunk dad. That’s hardly a relatable situation to any of us, so why on Earth would we care? Let me tell you something: there are two types of people. You’re either a Huck or a Tom. And if you’re a Tom, God bless anyone who has to deal with you. There’s a reason Twain includes these two character’s in each other’s books; the other’s traits magnify what is so special about the main one. We are all Huck, at heart. We dream of adventure and purpose and happiness but when it comes down to it, we’re pragmatists. Because we get how the real world works. Then you have a couple of nutjob Toms who think that the world is actually a story book and that rules don’t apply. That consciences are optional and that you, as an individual, go before all else. In this scene, Huck wants to save Jim because Jim is his friend and he is worried about him. Tom, on the other hand, wants to save Jim because he wants a high-stakes all or nothing adventure just like all of his heroes in the fiction that fills his minds. Tom doesn’t care about consequences; heck, in the first chapter of this book he forms a group of robbers because he’s bored. Twain is showing us human nature stripped down- you have the Toms who are in it for themselves and the thrill of the game of life, and you have the Hucks, who want so badly to be as free as the Toms but always have a little voice in their head telling them they know better. This entire time, Huck is trying to escape being ‘sivilized', but his civilization is what makes him fundamentally good, and the purpose he is searching for can never truly fulfill him.

Chapter 36-the last Carolyn Lo Coco

“I hadn’t had a bite to eat since yesterday, so Jim he got out some corn-dodgers and buttermilk, and pork and cabbage and greens—there ain’t nothing in the world so good when it’s cooked right—and whilst I eat my supper we talked and had a good time. . . .We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.” (p. 119)

Jim and Huck are loving their own personal microcosm, free from all the injustices and issues that exist in their society. This is a short lived Utopian life for the two, however, it regardless depicts how being on the raft is romantic, yet reality comes into play.