The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Grade Levels

Excerpt

PART I: Paragraph Answer (50 points)

Answer the following questions in well-developed paragraphs. Use lined paper to write your answers.

• How does Twain use satire to expose and criticize human failings?

• Compare and contrast the major events on the river with those on the shore. How do these contrasting settings reinforce the novel’s theme? Include details from the text.

• Huck faces a moral decision to help Jim escape in three different episodes of the novel. Explain each dilemma and describe how it affects Huck’s development as a character.

• At the end of the novel Huck wants to escape so Aunt Sally will not try to “sivilize” him. How has the meaning of the word “sivilize” changed for Huck?

• What is the most important sentence in the book? Argue how this one sentence captures the essence of the novel as a whole.

PART II: Essay (25 points Each)

• Irony abounds in Huck Finn. Indeed, English professor and Mark Twain scholar Shelly Fisher Fishkin argues that Twain's use of irony is the key to understanding the novel:

It is impossible to read Huck Finn intelligently without understanding that Mark Twain's consciousness and awareness is larger than that of any of the characters in the novel, including Huck. Indeed, part of what makes the book so effective is the fact that Huck is too innocent and ignorant to understand what's wrong with his society and what's right about his own transgressive behavior. Twain, on the other hand, knows the score. Discuss how Twain’s use of irony contributed to the novel’s main ideas. Include details from thetext.

• Although Mark Twain, in his introductory "notice”, denies that there is a moral or motive in the story, the work itself contradicts its author. How? Notice: Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. By order of the author Per G.G. Chief of Ordnance

About

Paragraph answers and one essay question.