THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN



Name _______________________________

McMennamy

English III – period _____

Date ________________________________

Chapters I-IV

Vocabulary

1. sugar-hogshead – a large, watertight barrel that can hold 63 gallons. Huck sleeps in an empty one.

2. Bulrushers – Huck’s mispronunciation of “bulrushes,” tall, tufted plants growing in marshes or on riverbanks. In the Bible (Exodus 2.3), Pharoah’s daughter finds the infant Moses in a little basket of woven bulrushes.

3. snuff – powdered tobacco that is sniffed into the nostrils or taken into the mouth.

4. gap – to gape or yawn.

5. tanyard – part of a tannery containing the vats in which animal skins are treated with tannic acid to turn them into leather.

6. skiff – a small rowboat.

7. Providence – God as a supreme power guiding human beings and “providing” for their needs.

8. ornery – mean and ill-tempered.

9. hived – robbed.

10. powwow – a noisy meeting for discussion.

11. Don Quixote – a famous novel by the Spanish author Cervantes (1547-1616) in which knighthood and human folly are richly satirized.

12. shot-tower – a tall tower in which hot, molten lead was dropped through a sieve into cold water to form the small round pellets used as buckshot in a shotgun.

Questions

1. Tom Sawyer tells Huck that he may join his band of robbers if he becomes “respectable.” Why does Tom think Huck is not respectable?

2. Even though Tom feels that Huck is not “respectable,” Huck is likable, even admirable in many ways. What impression of Huck’s character do you get from the following opening comments?

a. “You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter.”

b. Huck says that when the widow read to him about Moses, “I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by and by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn’t care no more about him, because I don’t take no stock in dead people.”

c. Hearing from Miss Watson that she expected to go to heaven Huck says, “Well, I couldn’t see no advantage in going where she was going, so I made up my mind I wouldn’t try for it. But I never said so, because it would only make trouble, and wouldn’t do no good.”

3. Looking down upon the village at night, Huck sees, “three or four lights

twinkling, where there was sick folks, maybe. . .” What does Huck’s reference to “sick folks” suggest to you about the way his mind works?

4. Who is Jim? Reread Huck’s account of Jim and the witches. What are some of your first impressions of Jim?

5. Most of Tom Sawyer’s ideas come from pirate books, robber books, and other highly romantic literature. What does the conversation between Tom and Ben Rogers tell us about Tom’s attitude toward the authority of other people’s ideas?

6. From your reading of the following passages, what would you say is Huck’s attitude toward the authority of other people’s ideas?

a. Ch. III: Begins with “Then Mrs. Watson she took me in the closet and prayed...” and ends with “She never told me why, and I couldn’t make it out no way.”

b. Ch. IV: Begins with “I thought all this over for two or three days...” and ends with “It had all the marks of a Sunday school.”

7. Although we do not meet Huck’s father in Chapters I to IV, we learn about him through comments by Huck and others. What sort of person is pap?

8. Whose footprints does Huck see in the snow? How does he identify them? What does his discovery impel him to do?

9. Tom Sawyer is fond of playing boyish pranks on adults.

a. What trick does Tom want to play on Jim?

b. What trick does he actually play on Jim?

c. How does Huck seem to feel about Tom’s practical jokes?

10. Like most of the people in the novel, Huck and Jim believe in superstition,

or the practice of magic to ward off evil and bring good luck.

a. What two accidents does Huck interpret superstitiously?

b. What does Huck Believe will be the outcome of these accidents?

c. By foreshadowing, an author hints at what will happen. What event do these two accidents foreshadow in the story?

11. Huck habitually refers to an African-American by using what we would consider to be a racial slur.

a. What evidence do we have on the introductory page immediately following the Table of Contents that this is Huck’s term and not the author’s?

b. Why does the author have his narrator, Huck, use the racial slur?

12. Huck describes Miss Watson as “a tolerable slim old maid, with goggles on...” Why is the word goggles more comical than glasses or spectacles?

13. Despite Huck’s improper English, his language is capable of subtle and complex effects. Reread the sentence in Chapter I which begins “The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled...”

a. What three physical senses are evoked in the sentence?

b. What does the sentence show you about Huck?

14. Irony accounts for some of the humorous touches in these early chapters.

a. When Huck wants to smoke, the widow forbids him, saying that it is a mean and unclean practice. Huck says, “And she took snuff, too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself.” What does Huck mean by his comment?

b. In Chapter II, Tom Sawyer’s gang swears an elaborate oath that ends as follows: “And if anybody that belonged to the band told the secrets, he must have his throat cut, and then have his carcass burnt up and the ashes scattered all around, and his name blotted off the list with blood and never mentioned again by the gang, but have a curse put on it and be forgot forever.” Soon after, Huck tells us that when little Tommy Barnes angrily threatens to tell all the secrets of the robbers, Tom Sawyer gives him five cents to keep him quiet. How do you think Huck feels about this glaring inconsistency?

Chapters V to VII

Vocabulary

1. hifalut’n (highfalutin) – vain, fancy, and high-flown

2. cowhide – a beating with a leather belt or strap

3. pungle – to pay up, to contribute

4. bullyragged – threatened and bothered

5. druther – rather

6. temperance – avoidance of alcoholic drinks

7. forty-rod – whiskey so powerful that it can throw anyone who drinks it a distance of forty rods

8. soundings – measurements of the depth of water, usually made with a marked rope having a lead weight at one end. When a Mississippi River steamboat passed through dangerously shallow waters, the leadsman would call out the soundings until he reached the two-fathom (twelve-foot) mark: “Mark Twain---safe water!”

9. raised Cain – to cause trouble. In the Bible (Genesis 4:8), Cain killed his brother Abel

10. using – staying, hanging around

11. chimbly – chimney

12. wadding – stuffing that held gunpowder and shot in place in a muzzle-loading gun

13. tow – ropelike fibers

14. toted – carried

15. delirium tremens – a state of mental confusion and physical trembling caused by excessive drinking

16. palavering – talking

17. “trot” line – a short fishline with hooks attached to it at intervals

18. bar – a sandbar; a ridge of sand built up by the current of a river

Questions

1. Why has Huck’s father returned to town?

2. What change in Huck most upsets and angers pap?

3. What facts do we learn about the rest of Huck’s family?

4. How does the new judge try to reform pap? What success does he have?

5. Why does pap take Huck away and lock him up in a cabin in the woods?

6. What time of year is it when pap hides Huck in the cabin? Why is the season important for the action of the story?

7. What news of the widow does pap tell Huck in the cabin? How does Huck feel about this news?

8. To escape from both pap and the widow, Huck makes up his mind to run away.

1. What is Huck’s first plan of escape?

2. What is Huck’s second escape plan? How does he contrive to prevent anybody from following him?

3. Where does Huck finally go in his canoe?

9. A father usually serves as a model for his son.

1. What sort of father is pap?

2. Does Huck seem to accept or reject his father as a model for himself?

10. Sentiments are true feelings or emotions. Sentimentalism, however, is always false; it consists of excessive or misguided feelings. In a sentimental person, extravagant emotions supplant common sense and reason. What evidence can you give from Chapter 5 to show that the new judge and his wife act with sentimentalism toward pap?

11. Pap’s drunken speech in Chapter VI combines outrageous lies with some revealing truths.

1. Mention several (more than 3) obvious lies in pap’s speech.

2. What signs of self-pity do you find in pap?

3. Which traits of the free Negro from Ohio does pap single out to attack?

4. Recall pap’s reaction to the change in Huck (see question 2 above); also list the contrasts between pap and the free Negro from Ohio. What truths about “white superiority” and racial hatred do you think Mark Twain is suggesting through pap?

12. While Huck is setting the stage for his own pretended murder, he wishes that Tom Sawyer could be there to “throw in the fancy touches.” This reference to Tom invites us to contrast what Huck is now doing with Tom’s robber games in Chapters II and III. How does Huck’s make-believe differ from that of Tom?

13. Huck has the sharply observant eye of a good reporter. Reread the paragraph containing his description of pap.

1. How does Huck’s description suggest that his father is like a wild animal?

2. What details of clothing add to pap’s disreputable, shabby appearance?

14. A simile is a comparison, often introduced by the word like or as, that describes something vividly. Observe the following three similes from Chapter VII:

1. “...a canoe...riding high like a duck”;

2. “I shot head-first off of the bank like a from...”;

3. “Jackson’s Island,...heavy-timbered and standing up out of the middle of the river, big and dark and solid, like a steamboat without any lights.”

a. How does each simile help you to visualize the thing being described?

b. Why is it natural for Huck to use the comparisons that occur in these similes?

15. What do the following comments suggest to you about Huck’s response to the Mississippi River?

1) “...Down by the village was the river, a whole mile broad, and awful still and grand.”

2) “The river looked miles and miles across.”

3) “The sky looks ever so deep when you lay on your back in the moonshine; I never knowed it before. And how far a body can hear on the water such nights!”

Chapter VIII to XI

Vocabulary

1. corn-pone – a plain corn bread common in the South

2. traps – personal belongings or baggage

3. haggled – hacked or cut crudely

4. fantods – shakes or nervous fidgets

5. rubbage – rubbish

6. Honest injun – “Honest Indian!”; an assertion that one is telling the truth

7. Abolitionist – one who advocated the abolition of slavery and, sometimes, helped to free slaves

8. keeping mum – keeping still; not telling

9. cooper shop – a place where wooden barrels were made

10. camp-meet’n – an outdoor religious gathering often held in a tent and led by an itinerant preacher

11. dog-leg – a crude, cheap tobacco

12. mud-turkles – mud turtles

13. taller – tallow; animal fat used to make candles and soap

14. wood-flat – a flat-bottomed boat used to carry wood

15. chuckleheads – blockheads; foolish, stupid persons

16. gashly – ghastly

17. calico – a printed cotton cloth

18. hair trunk – a trunk covered with animal hide with the hair still on it

19. Barlow knife – a large pocketknife with a single blade

20. reticule – a small purse or handbag used by women to carry needlework or other small atricles

21. currycomb – a large comb with metal teeth for cleaning a horse or other domestic animal

22. peart – pert; impudently clever

23. varmint – vermin; pest

24. britches-pocket – breeches pocket; pants pocket

25. nigh – near

26. lynched – hanged by a mob

27. power – great deal; large amount

28. hank – a skein or coil or yarn or thread

29. ‘prentice – apprentice; one who is contracted to work for another in order to learn a trade

30. hocus – to fool or deceive (from hocus-pocus)

31. blinders – leather flaps fastened alongside a horse’s eyes so that the horse can see only straight ahead

Questions

1. Huck learns that someone else is camping on Jackson’s Island. After skulking about fearfully for an entire night, he finally discovers that the other person on the island is Jim.

a. Why is Jim terrified at the sight of Huck?

b. Why is Huck glad to see Jim?

c. After some hesitation, Jim confesses to Huck that he has run away from Miss Watson. Like Huck, he has “lit out” and become a fugitive. Why did Jim run away?

d. From what you know of Jim’s character, does it seem likely to you that Jim would run away?

e. Huck promises not to tell on Jim. How does Huck think the people back home would feel about him if they found this out?

f. Huck and Jim’s home town, St. Petersburg, is in Missouri, which, at the time of the story, was a slave state. To the east, just across the Mississippi River, lies Illinois, at that time a free state. Why didn’t Jim simply cross the river and escape to Illinois?

2. The spring rise of the river continues to bring its unexpected gifts. What do Huck and Jim catch and keep one night?

3. Another night, the river brings a two-story frame house floating past Jackson’s Island. What is in the house that Jim keeps Huck from seeing? Why do you think Jim does this?

4. Among the odd assortment of things Huck and Jim take from the floating house, what two items do they use a week or two later?

5. To learn what was going on, Huck could hardly have found a better person than Mrs. Judith Loftus.

a. Why would Mrs. Loftus not recognize Huck Finn, even without his disguise?

b. Because Mrs. Loftus is an inveterate gossip, Huck gains much useful information regarding his “murder” simply by letting her “clatter right along.” What does he learn from her about pap? About Jim?

c. What evidence can you give to show that in some ways Mrs. Loftus is a kind, motherly sort of woman?

d. Why does Mrs. Loftus want her husband to catch Jim?

6. As soon as Huck can get away from Mrs. Loftus, he paddles to Jackson’s Island.

a. What is the first thing he does there upon landing? Why?

b. What do Huck and Jim do?

7. In hunting for Huck’s corpse, what superstitious practice involving bread do the townspeople in the ferryboat follow?

8. In an ironic and amusing sense, how does this superstitious practice seem to succeed?

9. Jim proves to be a living encyclopedia of superstitious lore. List two of his predictions that actually do come true.

10. Using a dead rattlesnake, Huck plays what the thinks is a harmless trick on Jim. What happens to Jim? How does Huck feel about the mishap?

11. Disguised as a girl, Huck visits Mrs. Judith Loftus as if he were a spy in enemy territory. What lie does he tell her about himself and his family?

12. For a while, it seems as if Huck may have met his match in this shrewd woman.

a. What first leads Mrs. Loftus to suspect that Huck is not a girl?

b. What does Huck say that makes her even more suspicious?

c. What secret test does Mrs. Loftus devise to confirm her suspicions?

d. What other test does she use on Huck?

13. Exposed as a boy, what sad story does Huck now tell Mrs. Loftus?

14. How does Mrs. Loftus assure herself that Huck is truly a country boy?

15. Huck’s visit with Mrs. Loftus provides him with important information about the townspeople, his father, and Jim. What does the visit also show you about Huck’s ability to take care of himself in a difficult situation?

16. You may already have begun to notice how responsive Huck is to the beauty of the natural world about him. Reread his description of the summer storm in Chapter IX.

a. What is unusual about Huck’s reaction to the storm?

b. Huck uses a variety of action words to add to the thrust and movement of his description. What are some of these words?

c. List a few specific details that Huck provides to help you see the scene graphically.

d. Huck makes you hear the storm too. What four words does he choose to suggest the actual sounds of the thunder?

e. What simile does Huck employ to convey even more vividly the sound of the thunder?

17. Reread what Jim says to Huck as they sit eating dinner in their cavern and watching the storm in Chapter IX.

a. What two names does Jim call Huck?

b. Compare Jim’s speech to Huck with the way pap normally speaks to Huck.

18. Huck’s visit to Mrs. Loftus confirms the fact that the townspeople think he is dead. Yet when Huck returns to Jackson’s Island to warn Jim, he says, “Git up and hump yourself, Jim! there ain’t a minute to lose. They’re after us!” How do you explain Huck’s use of the word us?

-----------------------

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Study Questions/ Reading Guide 1

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download