Huck FInn 17

I thought it was funny when the gossipers were saying that the writing in the diary with blood was "secret African writ'n". It was also rather humorous to me when they said "sperits couldn't a done better and been no smarter." when they were talking about how the "niggers" got away from the best dogs around. Because the couple of slaves we're seen in the book have believed whole-heatedly in witchcraft and spirits, but this time it was the whites saying it.

We even see proof that Huck is keeping his way of having feelings for other people now and having some sense when he "...wouldn't 'a'[left Aunt Sally] not for kingdoms."

Is there a simularity between the doctor that helped Tom and the one that knew the Wilk's family? I don't remember a whole lot said about him or if he looked like a real kind gentleman, i just remember him trying to rat-out teh duke, king, and huck.

Then when Huck described Uncle Silas, after hearing that Tom and Huck were the ones that set Jim free, as "...kinda of [making] him drunk." I thought back to when the Duke and King were descovered and chased after Huck when he got away on the raft and They took after drinking too.

And, finally, I loved the part where Jim tells Huck what happened to his dad. I remember having a discussion about the man in the wrecked house and why Jim would cover his face. I don't remember anyone ever saying it was to hide the identity of the man but it all makes sense now! Jim is probably the best friend anyone could hope for, even when he didn't know Huck too well, he protected him as if they'd been close their whole lives.

Huck Finn 16

The beginning of chapter 39 I noticed that Huck started saying "we..." in the stupid ideas Tom came up with. So Huck seems to have given up with questioning his ideas once again. "...we like to got a hornet's nest, but we didn't...We was feeling pretty good (about their creepy letters)" Also i noticed Huck was supposed to dress up like a girl...again! But this time he was supposed to be a servant girl, the other time he was a normal, lost child looking for her uncle. Is this just a coincedence? Or should it mean something? A hornet's nest was meantioned again in the next chapter describing the situation Huck got himself into when Aunt Sally found him in the cellar. Maybe him and Tom WANTING to put a hornet's nest in the cabin and never doing it, huck's sticky situation being described as a "...thundering hornet's nest...", was just the thing to kick off a crazy night for the three of them.

Now, on the water, Huck is back to his old..old self with being close to Jim and all. He describes him as "[being] white inside..." So he's gone from slave, having emotion, having trust, having friendship, being worth "going to hell" over, and now; he's got white inside him! I think we've got our Huck back. Hopefully.

Huck Finn 15

i noticed In chapter 37, Huck meantions "[going] for the woods till the weather moderated." He was talking about the aunt and how she was making a storm a-brew, but in the first chapter Huck called the woods his place of escape. A place where he felt closest to his old way of life. The quote that Tom got out of a book "the more haste the less speed." Should be that kid's motto: he creates diversions and greater challenges.

Then it really made me wonder what kind of books Tom was into when he tells Jim to "Tame [the rattlesnake]...Every animal is grateful for kindness and petting, and they wouldn't think of burting a person that pets them." Sounds to me like he's into snowwhite, poohbear, bambi, and the fox and the hound!

Huck Finn 14

In chapter 35 I just wanted to reach into the story and knock some sense into Tom!!! He was really getting on my nerves I started to think he had gone half crazy and wanted Huck to get caught letting Jim free! Why does that boy have to be so arrogant and naive all the time? It annoys me. It's rediculous how many times Huck would tell Tom "there aint no necessity for it" but Tom would get away with getting his way anyway.

Then we see Huck being influenced by Tom when he "stole a watermelon" but he was scolded and told to go pay the slaves for what he did, even though they didn't know. Huck has his own mind but he is trapped in the habit of letting Tom do the thinking for him when he's around, there's not as much arguing.

I found it really rediculous when Tom decided BEFORE they completely freed Jim and went running, they would "rush him away at the first there's an alarm." Excuse me, what?! He doesn't even care there's an actual, real life mission here. "I wish there was a moat to this cabin. If we get time, the night of the escape, we'll dig one." It's as if he's watching and creating a movie at the same time, or writing his own script for a book by stealing lines, characters, and events from multiple books and making it one big confusing mess.

Huck Finn 13

I thought it was pretty cool on Huck's part when Tom is asking him about everything that happened to him because " it was a grand adventure, and mysterious..." and normally it would be Huck bragging about Tom's adventures. But think ever sinse Huck has the title of Tom's name, he has basically as equal as the real Tom. Then what really surprised me was when Tom decided to help Huck steal Jim! Here is a boy that was "respectable and well brung up; and had a character to lose...he was bright and not leather-headed' and knowing and not ignorant; and not mean, but kind; and yet here he was, without any more pride, or rightness, or feeling, than to stoop to this businiss, and make himself a shame, and his family a shame, before everybody." He seemed almost like a whole new Tom away from home and all his friends. I wonder if he's let anyone else see this side of him.

I was curious about "Jim's nigger" as Huck called him. Is there significance in the way a calls him that? Or just a way to say he's been the one bringing him food and caring for him...But also the one that locks him up.

Huck Finn 12

I felt just as surprised as Huck when Jim bailed on him! Did the men find him on the raft and take him downstream or did he run off?Is Jim still as commited to him and Huck's friendship as Huck is? I found it kind of funny when Huck "was trying to make [his] mouth say [he] would do the right thing and teh clean thing..."(telling on Jim or saving him) when really, instead of choosing to "go to hell" and do whatever it takes to save Jim, He was doing both good things, but again society had put the blanket over his eyes about what was right and wrong.

Then once again Huck is in a house hold where a slave is just a working machine and when the Aunt Sally says "well, it's luck(just a black person was killed); because soemtiems people do get hurt." In the beginning of the book i probably would have just continued reading on and excepted he saying that but sinse i've read and studied Huck's change of view and, in a way, rooting him on when he becomes closer to Jim, Aunt Sally saying that seemed very rude for the occasion and I half-expected her to apologize or realise what she said wasnt respectful...she never did :/

When Aunt Sally introduced Huck as Tom Sawyer I'm sure i smiled just for Huck because that would be such a relief from the stress of finding out who he was and any information he could gather up, and plus Tom was his roll model pretty much, so it was his dream-come-true!

Huck Finn 11

In chapter 29 Twain uses the weather once again to create the mood when the crowd is digging up the corpse. "...the wind swished and swushed along, and the lightning come brisker and brisker, and the thunder boomed..." The thing that struck my attention was when he told the reader that "...them people never took no notice of it, they was so full of [business]" I believe there is some meaing here about society maybe, but i don't understand what it may be trying to say. The closer the diggers got to the corpse and the bag of money, they "brisker" the weather became but it wasn't noticed? Does anyone have an imput on that?

Next i found when Huck was running away from everyone he "had the road all to [himself], and [he] fairly flew- leastways, i had it all to myself except the solid dark..." It doesn't say it's black out but it is assumed when he describes the darkness as solid. Blackness normally represents sin or evil and Huck ran through it all the way to the river and where Jim was. Maybe this is what was going on inside Huck about what happends on land, (but now seen visually) and how he is fighting to keep his his opinion of Jim the same as when they are on the river.

Huck Finn 10

Once again Huck is changing according to society. When the king and duke finally catch on and see that the money is gone, Huck says he never saw anyone else go into their room but by-and-by he puts the blame on the slaves that were just sold and he was " glad [he'd] worked it all off on the niggers, and yet hadn't done [them] no harm by it." So there is still a little bit of concern showing through his actions so maybe his realization of colored people that takes place on the water is slowly seeping into the life he has on land. This proves correct when he steals the money from the two frauds and talks to Mary Jane about leaving and helping him out with a plan to get them arrested. "The truth is better, and actually SAFER then a lie" he stated while debating if it was worth lying to Mary Jane again. Also another reason this theory is proved right is when Huck corrects his first thought of a good plan because it may harm Jim, so he would need to rescue him first.

I noticed though that at the end of chapter 29 Huck brings Tom Sawyer back into that story by meantioning that he could have done a better job putting together a more flowing and "[stylish]" plan or way of dealing with the situation. Does this have any signficance to the way he's changing?

Huck Finn 9

It frustrates me what the duke and king are doing to that family! I thought maybe sinse they had gotten on teh raft with Jim and Huck that they would eventually have a change of heart also, but that possibility seems to shrink every reading we have. One thing that caught my attention was how Huck ended up being "[the king's] valley (or slave)". Huck is seen becoming more mature as we read on and he is also, finally, understanding that colored people are just as much people as the whites, and i find it ironic that he's now treated like a slave. At teh big celebration feast Huck "waited on [the king and duke], and the niggers waited on the rest.." Then he had to eat in the kitchen with the other workers.

I think an easy way to show that Huck is becoming more mature is the stories and lies he's making up. In all the previous chapters he would make up a new story for every place he stopped, whether Jim was taken into consideration or not, and he always used his imagination to make his stories untracable so the people would have to trust his word. But we see in the part where he is eating with the girl in the kitchen and she continues asking questions that make his lie bigger and bigger, he is finding it more diffficult to come up with an explanation and eventually makes it all sound fake.

Huck Finn 8

I questioned why Huck didn't tell Jim that the two men weren't really kings at all when Jim said, " ...dey's reglar rapscallions." That would have been the perfect time to do so because he was starting to think they weren't! But now he just streached the lie more so Jim'll be even more hurt if he finds out the truth.
There is satire when Huck is saying " It wouldn't a done no good (to tell Jim teh men were fakes); and, besides, it was just as i said: you couldn't tell them from the real kind." Twain is talking about the leaders we have and saying that they are all fakes and take advantage of other people and use them to their own advantage.

There was a piece in chapter 24 that brought it the Bible. Huck was describing the king in his new clothes and how "...he looked teh grand and good...that you'd say he had walked right out of the ark, and maybe was old Leviticus himself." Is there an important meaning behind this? What's the importance of bring the ark of Noah and Old Leviticus together to describe a fake, yet apparently good looking, king(once he cleans up)?

I was in shock when i see Huck saying "if ever I struck anything like it, I'm a nigger." He sarcastically called himself a colored person?! WOH! This was his reaction and attempt to describe his feelings from teh sight the king and duke were playing; pretending to be a dead man's brothers. Is this a way of saying Huck has decided to help Jim with his plan of freedom and getting his family no matter what the concequences? Or maybe now he knows for sure Jim is just like him; a person with feelings, not a working machine with no emotion or mind of his own. I'm kind of excited to see what test Huck will have to take on to see how connected he is with Jim!

Huck Finn 7

Right away in chapter 21 it  says that the "...king and the duke turned out by-and-by looking pretty rusty; but after they jumped overboard and took a swim it chippered them up a good deal." By jumping overboard into the river the two had to have gone under water, and from Lit like a Professor, that symbolizes baptism. I don't really understand what they could be getting cleansed from because the book hasn't said a whole lot about their past, besides the lies of who they are maybe?

Then the two start talking about " ...all kinds of adventures they'd had in other times along the river." Maybe they used to be a whole new type of person a long time back and being back on the water, a place of refuge of society, they brought up the memories to share together.

I also thought it was odd/funny how Huck was describing the duke while he was tring to remember the speech for their play (Or come up with it is more like it). "...he went marchign up and down, thinking, and frowning...then he would hoist up his eyebrows; next he would squeeze his had on his forehead and stagger back...moan...sigh, and next he'd let on to drop a tear." The guy must have been quite emotional in trying to remember something he half put together himself. Then the best part was how he concluded all of the dukes emotions, and huck's reaction, into one sentance: "it was beautiful to see him." For soem odd reason that made me laugh because it seems to me that the duke was a complete disaster!

Huck Finn 6

Like we discussed for our last reading, the raft is the place where Jim and Huck become closer friends. This is proven once again when "[they] 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." They are also quite comfortable out there on the water because "[they were] always naked, day and night..." That's awkward. Unless, they were comfortable with eachother and their surroundings. i love hannah

Also, i found a little bit of sybolism of Jesus in both of the men that got on the raft with them. The first one said, " the world may go on jsut as it's always done, and take everythign from me- loved ones, property, everything' but it can't take [his grave]. Some day i'll lie down in it and forget it all, and my poor broken heart will be at rest...by rights i am a duke!...and here am i, forlorn, torn from my high estate, hunted of men, despised by the cold world, ragged, worn, heartbroken, and degraded to teh companionship of felons on a raft."
Christ was whipped, cursed at, spit on, mocked, and killed to take the sins from the ones that broke his heart. He lied in his grave for three days. He was rightfully the "king" but worked as a carpenter with his dad and grew up as a regular boy. He was "hunted" by the priests in a way because they always tried to catch him in an act of doing wrong. Then the second man said he was " ...the rightful kind of France."

Huck Finn 5

Fog is mentioned a lot in chapter  15 while they are on the river. The river is a place where Huck and Jim bond and the fog can symbolize the separation between them, both physically and mentally. I also noticed that it is Huck chasing Jim. This can show the bond between the two is becoming stronger and it may be foreshadowing a coming event. There may be some ways that show Huck might be maturing a little bit but when he plays a trick on Jim saying the whole thing that happened on the river was a dream, it proves he is still a boy.  

Then when Jim excepts that it may have all been a dream he starts telling Huck all the things it means. I wonder if all those things actually do have symbolism. He’s looking at what had happened as if reading a book and picking out the symbolism.

I made a relation between the lights of Cairo that Jim was franticly searching for and Christianity. Jim says when he finds Cairo he finds freedom. Freedom from slavery, from being judged, from being sold and bought, and the chance of getting his family back. The river is the road they follow, fast or slow, rapid or smooth, foggy or clear: the road of life. Cairo could be heaven because they’re searching for the light, freedom, a new home. The little blotches of lights along the way could symbolize worldly things to us that distract us along the way and things we hope will bring us joy but have us walk away disappointed.