1. The fog is the element that signs the passage to the freedom. It is the obstacle to overcome to achieve the freedom. It signs the rebirth. In the fog the two characters lose each other who meet again after, when the fog is gone. The river can be considered the individuals and the fog the society that oppresses the individuals. The exit from the fog is the exit form the oppression of the society.
2. Huck realizes he hurts Jim a lot, and he has to say sorry to him. In this part, for the first time Huck shows his feelings; he can be sorry to someone else because he is a human.
3. Discussion about quotes:
a. Huck has a strange feeling because on one side is glad to have helped Jim, on the other he feels guilty because let a slave to escape is one of the worst crime he can do, only murder is worse.
b. The irony is that Jim has to steel or buy his own children, and that this is considered crime. Children should stay with the parents, and that’s a nature laws who with anyone should interfere.
c. Huck reflects about acting good or bad. He doesn’t understand why he should act rightly if that will bring him troubles, while acting wrong without having troubles will have the same consequence.
d. Jim is talking about bad luck especially referred to the snake episode.
4. The bounty hunters give Huck money because they thought he and “his ill father” need help, giving the money is the middle way between directly help and not help at all. In the reality there is any ill father, it’s only a trick to let Jim go in the free land. The irony is right this, that the bounty hunters believe to Huck words, that he was on the raft with his very ill father, so they don’t go close to him and leave him money to help him, while in the reality is all a trick.
5. The new technology that destroys the old symbolizes that the emerging industrial society won’t take care of the nature but that only consume (destroy) its sources.
6. Twain wanted to write a sequel to “Tom Sawyer’s adventures” but he didn’t know how. He started a book called “Life on Mississippi” about adventures along the Mississippi river. By the time he met interesting people that give him the inspiration to write about “Huckleberry Finn”, affording the theme of the slavery and the racism against blacks. The book is writing later, when the slavery was already over, but however racism wasn’t ended and there were groups of people as the Ku Klux Klan extremely against blacks and people who helped blacks too.
7. In the description of the house Taiwan talks satirically about the romantic idea of the death, making fun of it. The family can be considered incoherent because they go to the Church and believe in God and pretend to behave politely, but as out of the Church they take on the weapons and go against the enemy family without any specific reason.
8. Huck takes fun of Buck because he is able to see how silly “the Feudus”, romantic societies whose Buck’s values are, are.
9. In the reaction of Buck question about “Moses and the candles” Huck shows his concrete practicality and his realism. In the novel Huck is associated to the Moses’ figure because both of them free slaves. Twain, who isn’t religious, wants to show that people can do good things without being religious.
10. In the description of the church Twain satirizes about what the church represent. The church should be the place were people freely go with happiness to learn about God. But the people go to the church only when they have to, while the only presence always in the church is the one of the hogs that sleep under the floor. Another contradiction about the religion is that the family who are considered the most religious as soon as out from the church start fight and kill each other.
11. The feud is typical in romantic literature. It is referred to the Shakespeare’s Rome and Juliet. In a feud two families kill members of each other in a cycle of murders based on a continuous revenge. The reason why they do that isn’t even known, they just continue it on and on because their ancestors did it, without knowing the reason. The feud id wrong and completely nonsensical.
12. Huck and Jim find the raft more comfortable because there they have the freedom. On the raft they are apart from the corrupted society and they can be themselves freely, without any rules. The theme expressed is the conflict between the individuality, the freedom, against the society.
13. The clothes represent the conventions of the society. On the raft the can be naked because they are free from the society, they have free souls.
14. Because he doesn’t want to get in trouble. One thing he learnt is that it is useless to discuss with Duke and King because they won’t change and they are powerful people so if you contradict them you can only get in troubles. Plus he is a great supporter of the individual freedom so let them do and express their selves as they want. He demonstrates is growing up, he is becoming more mature.
15. Huck because doesn’t say all the truth about what he knows about the Duke and the King.
16. The feud in Romeo and Juliet is and element that contributes to a very romantic atmosphere. Twain take fun of both the feud, the Romeo and Juliet’s and the Duke and King’s because in the book he take fun on the romanticism in general that is too far from his extreme realism.
17. The king is the pirate, e bad criminal. He wants to redeem himself but also he says that he hasn’t change. To achieve is goal he speculates on the good people, who use to see goodness in everyone. Twain satirize right this, that good and respectable person trust this criminal and help him while they shouldn’t. You can consider everyone as good because people are mean.
18. Twain shows King and Duke as bad person, he makes them the opposite of how they should be. This probably reflects Twain’s society view, where the leaders are corrupted and consequently the society.
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