Discussion Questions Notice – IV
1. The Widow Douglas is an old woman that took Huck with her like her son. She is “dismal regular and decent […] in all her ways”. She wanted Huck to be a polite person and to receive a good education. That’s why she care a lot about his behaves. She pretends Huck to be perfectly on time to dinner and accustom him to say some prays before eating. Plus she uses to teach the boy about Moses and the Bulrushers and she doesn’t want at all that Huck smokes.
In the beginning Huck is really interested in Moses stories but since he discovers that Moses is dead he loses all this curiosity about him: Huck doesn’t care about dead people, in his opinion this has no sense. This defines Huck like a person based on the practicality, a material practicality. Not being interesting about the past and the people that lived before is a bad deficit because it is possible to learn a lot from the past.
2. The superstition is a characteristic of Huck. While he doesn’t have a good relation with God, he is very superstitious. First of all he believes in ghosts and thinks that they are souls of dead people that didn’t find the peace, so they go whispering in the night. But most of all he shows his superstition when once he was terribly mad of have killed a spider. Thinking that it was a sign of bad luck he tried different “rituals” to remove the negative influence: he stood up, turned around and crossed himself three times, then he used a piece of thread to tied a tuft of hair in a knot, believing that that kept witches away. So he believes in witches too. But in his opinion this wouldn’t help his condition because this last operation works only for people who lose horseshoe. Well summarizing Huck believes in ghosts and witches and thinks that killing a spider or losing a horseshoe is a signal of bad luck which needs a ritual to remove bad luck.
Another example of superstition is in chapter 2. Tom and Huck plays trick to Jim and he believes that the witches did it.
In other superstition can be found in the beginning of chapter 4 when Huck wants at all costs some salt to throw it backward and in then when Huck goes to Jim to listens the black man predicting his future in the bowl.
3. After Huck knows about Heaven and Hell from Miss Watson, he whishes he will go to Hell because he wants a radical change and he doesn’t think that the Heaven is the right place were he can stay. Then he is happy knowing that probably Tom Sawyer will go to the Hell too because he want them together.
4. Tom wants to play a trick Jim while Huck says that it is too risky because Jim can wake up. In the end Tom plays a trick to Jim by himself. The trick is pretty simple, he just gets Jim hat and hangs it on a branch over his head, while the man is sleeping in the ground. When Jim wake up and find his hat on the tree he think that the witches have done that. So telling that to the other people, he tells how the witches kidnapped him and carried him in the hell and how he survived. He described him like a sort of hero. This shows another time how the ignorance makes people believing in witches and supernatural phenomena. It is another element of superstition.
5. With the expression “Jim was most ruined for a servant…” is expressed how Jim is silly. He thinks to be cool because the witches have kidnapped him and he has seen the witches, all superstitions and elements of ignorance.
6. Tom leaves 5 cents on the table to pay the candles they took. Tom does this because doesn’t want to be a brute robber but a gentleman robber who respects and honor’s code and he rubbery only when he can get big treasures, not just candles like in this situation.
7. Tom and Huck are two fluffy kids who love the adventure. They pretend to be robbers and create a secret society for robbing. They share the same boyishness. The main difference between the two guys is that Tom is very creative and full of fantasy. He set their believes on what he read in the books and imagines the reality like a fantastic story. Huck, on the opposite side is characterized by a material practicality. He doesn’t believe much in Tom stories and doesn’t believe in religion. He doesn’t think is important knowing about people form the past because they are “past”. Contrasting with this his tract is his superstition: he believes in ghost, witches and bud luck, but probably this is common for a child unaware of the life. Another tract that differentiates the two is that Tom tends always to be the boss, while Huck uses to follow Tom. Tom is more intrepid than Huck and he likes the risk.
8. Tom thinks that is important that the gang is considered “highwaymen” because in this way their deeds will be more adventurous. Burglars just steal houses and cattle and things simple like that while they are going to robber stagecoaches and carriages on the road, kill people, and take their watches and money, everything with masks on and that is more exciting.
9. Miss Watson tells to Huck to use to pray because praying he can have done everything he prays for. But Huck, trying and retrying, never obtains anything of what he asks in his prayers. He concludes that Miss Watson has lied him about the prayers so the religion doesn’t seems so useful to him.
10. Tom Sawyer calls Huck a “numskull” because Huck wants to face the magicians that transformed the Arabs and the elephants in a School picnic and this would be a very dangerous and imprudent action. In the reality there are no magicians and Tom makes the deed so dangerous only because wants to keep secret his lie.
11. Huck admits that Tom believed in what he said: the Arabs, the elephants, the magicians. But for Huck those seem unreal as unreal are all the things he has to study at the Sunday school, so all the things about religion and God. Here it is like the religion is compared to a lie, to a kids’ game.
12. Because, probably, he doesn’t want his father to get them or he doesn’t want seem well-off to his father now that he knows that his father is back.
Good full answers!
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