Mark twain “the adventures of huckleberry finn” Chapters 31-the last

The aim of the lesson is to teach you to penetrate into the author's conception trying to sum up everything you know from the book & about it.

1. “What is it that we want in a novel? We want a vivid and original picture of life; we want characters naturally displayed in action, and if we get the excitement of adventure into the bargain, and that adventure possible and plausible, I so far differ from the newest school of criticism as to think that we have additional cause for gratitude. If, moreover, there is an unstrained sense of humour in the narrator, we have a masterpiece, and Huckleberry Finn is nothing less.” (Andrew Lang. The Art of Mark Twain.)

How does the novel under discussion differ from the other 19-century novels we have analysed?

2. “The odyssey of Huck’s voyage through the South reveals aspects of life darker than the occasional melodrama of Tom Sawyer. We are shown the sloth and sadism of poor whites … We remark the cowardice of lynching parties; the chicanery of patient medicine fakers, revivalists, and exploiters of rustic ribaldry; the senseless feudlings of the gentry. In the background broods fear: not only a boy’s apprehension of ghosts, African superstitions, and the terrors of the night, not the adult’s dread of black insurrection, but the endless implicated strands of robbery, floggings, drowning, and murder. Death by violence lurks at every bend of road or river.” (Dixon Wecter. Mark Twain.)

Dwell upon one of the themes mentioned in detail. (You may concentrate on some other themes as well.)

3. “The book commends itself by the humorous treatment of perfectly serious situations. It is unconsciously humorous, it is humorous because the narrator sees no humour in anything. In some places, when an English boy would have rolled on the floor with laughing, the American boy relates the scene without a smile. Indeed, from beginning to end, there is hardly a smile. Yet, while all the situations lie open for sentiment, for moralizing, or for laughing, the actors are perfectly serious – and perfectly comic. (Walter Besant. My Favourite Novelist and His Best Book.)

Comment upon the piece of criticism, provide examples.

4. The opposition between Nature - the river and civilisation - and towns on the banks - is more simple than the facts of the novel warrant. The raft is the third estate. It is not, after all, a floating Eden; if anything, it is rather Noah's ark. The two people on it are locked in an anomalous situation nor can they escape the guilt of a land which stays always within sight.

Speak about the usage of the following devices in the novel: FORESHADOWING, SYMBOLISM, ALLEGORY.

5. Some critics have expressed disappointment at the way the book reaches its concluding episodes, after Huck arrives at the Phelpses place. They have gone as far as to say that the book goes downhill there, that Mark Twain deserted his artistic purpose to introduce conventional or melodramatic elements that distract from the quality of the central development.

What are your feelings about the concluding chapters? To what extent did you experience a let-down, if any?

6. "To be or not to be; that is the bare bodkin" - this is the fighting philosophy of the book.

Try to show that though Huck tries to avoid trouble, he is the one who has to decide not only for himself but for those who depend on him.

7. What could have been the reasons for Twain’s prefacing the book with the Notice (see p.25)?

8. What do YOU appreciate in the novel?

Make use of the following critical reviews + those mentioned in the previous plans:

1. William Dean Howells. Mark Twain: An Inquiry. (pp.246-250)

2. H.L.Mencken. The Burden of Humor. (pp.255-256)

3. Waldo Frank. Our America. (pp.256-258)

4. W.H.Auden. Huck and Oliver. (pp.293-297)

5. Maxwell Geismar. The River and the Raft. (pp.308-309)

‘THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN’

SET-PHRASES AND EXPRESSIONS

(26) victuals

(26) to stretch things

(27) to take no stock in smth

(27) to get down on a thing = to find fault with

(28) to be with the quality

(30) to get stuck up

(31) to rule smb out

(30) to ransom

(33) to make a mouth water

(34) before you could say Jack Robinson

(35) to play hookey = to play truant from school

(38) to put on frills = to put on airs over smb

(38) to take smb down a peg

(39) to give smb a cowhide

(40) to raise money

(40) to turn (over) a new leaf

(40) to sign the pledge

(41) to raise Cain

(44) delirium tremens

(46) to draw a bead on = to take aim

(51) quicksilver

(52) there wasn’t much sand in my craw

(53) to give smb the fantods

(55) to keep mum

(72) to back out

(72) to stand on one’s right

(73) to be in a bad fix

(75) to fix up some kind of a yarn = to spin a yarn

(75) to trade places with

(76) to get into a scrape # to get smb out of scrape

(98) to wilt in one’s tracks

(99) kinfolks

(100) on account of smth

(101) to be in a sweat about smth/ to do smth

(102) to be up to smth

(104) to lie in ambush for smb

(105) to make for smth

(115) to court on the sly

(173) to play double

(175) to blow on smb

(179) to be a sight to look at

(179) to be up a stump

(214) It never rains but it pours.