Reading and Discussion Questions for Week Seven: Huckleberry Finn

Note: some of these questions do not have a clear answer given in the text. Those questions are marked “For discussion.” You will need to use the text to answer these discussion questions, but your answer will require you to consider your reading of the novel as well as what is written on the page.

1. What is Huck’s problem in joining Tom Sawyer’s gang of robbers? (10)

2. In what ways is Tom Sawyer more civilized than Huck? Does Tom resist “civilization” at all? How? For discussion: Why does Huck like Tom so much?

3. How might someone today describe Huck’s relation to his father? When Twain describes Pap locking up Huck at home, what genre of narrative was he relying on? (23-39) For discussion: How would it affect your reading of this section of the novel if Huck just ran away from Pap immediately as soon as Huck sees Pap is not dead? How does your reading in Week Five change your understanding of this episode?

4. Who is the dead man in the old house floating down the river? Who knows who the dead man is? What other key piece of information is hidden from Huck and from us later in the novel? (61, 361-2; 284, 356) For discussion: Why doesn’t that person tell Huck his father is dead, or at least let Huck see for himself? Why doesn’t Twain tell us, the readers, who it is? How would our response to the novel be different if in fact Twain did tell us these missing pieces of information as soon as one of the characters learns about them?

5. What are the various forms of “civilization” that Huck rebels against? For example, he resists Miss Watson’s attempts to make him wear nice clothes. What else does he resist? For discussion: How do those forms of civilization resisted by Huck reflect larger value systems that might be associated with society or “the State”?

6. When the steamboat hits the raft, where do Huck and Jim think they are on the river? Where are they? Why does the geography matter? (129-30; see explanatory note, too.)

7. For discussion: Kemble’s illustrations represent key moments in the narrative, but they also refer to iconic images of American society outside the novel. Compare the illustration of Jim on p. 51 with the famous abolitionist image on p. 396. (One page later, Twain has Huck worry about being called an “ablitionist.”) How does this visual allusion to the abolitionist movement affect your reading of this passage in the book? (51-53, 395-97).

8. In what ways do the Grangerfords and Shepherdsons reflect traits of an ideal family? What is not ideal about them? What is the source of those imperfections? (pp. 132-55)

9. What does the Wilks family teach us about relations within families? (203-59)

10. Huck and other characters in the novel often create imaginary families for themselves. Find some examples and explain why. (e.g., 125)

11. What do we know about Jim’s family? How do we find out about it? What do we learn about other slave families? (201, 234)

12. Twain’s use of the word “nigger” remains one of the most controversial aspects of Huckleberry Finn because the word is associated with the racist dehumanization of African-American people that was common before and after the Civil War, and that continues to affect society in some ways today. Yet Twain also puts the word in the mouth of Huck at many points where Huck is trying to express his recognition of Jim’s fundamental humanity and his goodness. Find (1) an example of a character using the word “nigger” in a way that clearly indicates his racist prejudices, and then (2) find an example of Huck using the word at a moment when he is trying to see or feel something that contradicts the racist attitudes of the society. (E.g., 123-28)

13. Why does Huck decide that he’ll go to hell? How is that decision related to his sense of family? His sense of society? (268-69)