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The author’s name and birth and death dates. 3. The name of the central character, together with a description of the character’s main traits or features. 4. Identification of the other characters by role and/or description. 5. A description of the setting (time, place, significant details, social-economic conditions) 6. The narrator/point of view of the story including the role the narrator plays and the appropriateness/limitations of this point of view. 7. A terse summary of the major events of the story given in chronological order. 8. A description of the tone of the story. A statement of the story’s theme in one sentence. 10. Literary Devices such as symbolism and what effect those literary devices have.. 11 . An evaluation of the story which includes your opinion of it. You are to use no more than one side of a sheet of paper for this assignment. You can use size 1 1 font and adjust the margins for the document to 1″. This is a challenging assignment, but you may be surprised by how much more you understand about the story when you have finished it, On a separate page, list at least three key quotations that you think reveal meeting significant about the literature.
Make one observation about each quotation. Title: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1884 Author: Mark Twain (1835-1910) Central Character: Huckleberry Finn is approximately 12 years old, bright but lacking in confidence because of his limited education. Independent and critical of “civilized” living he prefers life on the river rather than in town. He knows the rules of his society but often breaks them. He has a good heart but sees himself as wicked for breaking rules. He learns to trust his heart in the novel.
Other Characters: Jim, a run away slave and Husk’s traveling companion; The Widow and Miss Watson, the women who take Husk in and try to civilize him; Pap, Husk’s father who only values Husk for the money he has; The Duke and King, two con men who invade Husk and Jims raft; the Exaggerators, a family who takes Husk in and teach Husk about feuding; Tom Sawyer, Husk’s friend and sometimes foolish mentor; the Wilkes’, a family Husk helps to save; Phelps, Tom’s aunt and uncle who mistake Husk for Tom. Setting: The story takes place mid-nineteenth century before the Civil War on the Mississippi River.
Husk and Jim journey down the river from SST Petersburg, Missouri to the Phelps place in Arkansas. Significant places along the shore are Jackson’s Island, Cairo, IL, and the Exaggerator Place. The events that happen on the river contrasts with the ones that happen on the shore. Point of View: Husk is the first person narrator and so the story is limited to the things Husk hear and sees as well as to his understanding of the world at the age of 12. His perspective allows Twain to juxtapose the innocence of Husk’s understanding against the terrible things he witnesses along the
Summary: Husk escapes his drunken father by faking his death. He meets up with Jim who has also run away to escape being sold down the river by Miss Watson. Knowing that helping a slave escape is wrong, Husk still sees no alternative but to travel with Jim. They travel down the Mississippi with the plan to go up the Ohio to the free states. But they pass Cairo, IL and the entrance to the Ohio in a fog and continue traveling further south on the Mississippi. They meet a variety of characters and have a variety of adventures on the journey. At each one Husk learns something more about is society and the people in it.
Tone: The tone is light and humorous throughout much of the novel because Of Husk’s point of view and his innocent view of many things, but the tone is serious, ironic, and critical whenever Husk encounters violence and death. Theme: One thing that makes an individual mature is to gain insight into the darker side of human beings. Style: Twain’s style is marked by the dialects of his characters, by the symbolism of the river and the shore and of Husk’s actions. The dialects help make the characters seem more like real people. The river and the shore tiff come to symbolize Twain’s view of society.
Evaluation: Although the dialect of some of the characters takes some getting use to, I enjoy this book. This is an American classic, filled with humor but critical of people who can be so civilized and so cruel at the same time. It is a boys adventurous coming of age that celebrates the individual spirit of America and the romantic vision of innocence and virtue in nature. Quotations: “You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft. ” p. 92 This is Husk’s observation about the difference between living on the shore and living on the river.