Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Other Ideas (Discussion Topic)

Do you have ideas or insights regarding the novel that don't fit into any of the posted discussion topics? If so, please share your ideas here. Remember to read the other comments before posting your own so that you can engage with the ideas already put forth. Also, remember to use specific examples from the novel and quotations (with page numbers, of course!) whenever possible.

Portrayals of Women (Discussion Topic)

Do you have ideas or insights regarding the portrayals of women in the novel? If so, please share them in a comment. Remember to read the other comments before posting your own so that you can engage with the ideas already put forth. Also, remember to use specific examples from the novel and quotations (with page numbers, of course!) whenever possible.

Here are some questions to get you thinking:

How are women portrayed in Twain’s novel? The book is a resolutely male-oriented novel; the Narrator is a young boy who tells a tale largely devoted to a friendship
between two male characters. Huck’s tale opens with a variety of portrayals of women, but they always appear as obstacles to Huck’s desires and ambitions. Identify the women in the novel, track what they have to say about themselves, and examine what each represents as an underrepresented or marginalized character. After all, the book expresses a major set of issues in American culture, so why/what does it mean that the women are so marginalized in this representation? In what specific ways are they marginalized and what specific roles do they play?

Issues Surrounding Slavery (Discussion Topic)

Do you have ideas or insights regarding issues of slavery in the novel? If so, please share them in a comment. Remember to read the other comments before posting your own so that you can engage with the ideas already put forth. Also, remember to use specific examples from the novel and quotations (with page numbers, of course!) whenever possible.

Here are some questions to get you thinking:

In the first chapters the issue of slavery and also the status of slaves crops up many times. Jim’s status in relation to other slaves (via his special knowledge of Magic) speaks of power and status within slave communities: what does Jim’s status tell us? Also what does Jim’s worry about being sold imply about slavery and the new conditions slaves could expect upon being sold?

Magic, Religion, Superstition, and Belief (Discussion Topic)

Do you have ideas or insights regarding the presence or meaning of magic, religion, superstition, and/or belief in the novel? If so, please share them in a comment. Remember to read the other comments before posting your own so that you can engage with the ideas already put forth. Also, remember to use specific examples from the novel and quotations (with page numbers, of course!) whenever possible.

Here are some questions to get you thinking:

There are many references to magic, religion, the supernatural, and witchcraft in Huckleberry Finn. How do these issues help to shape the story? What kinds of conflicts do they represent? (Conflicts such as truth vs. falsehood, sacred vs. profane, good vs. evil, superstition vs. knowledge) How do these conflicts shape the meaning of the text? How does Jim profit from his claim to supernatural knowledge? What can we say about Huck’s view of each of these conflicts?

Lying and Storytelling (Discussion Topic)

Do you have ideas or insights regarding the role of lying and storytelling in the novel? If so, please share them in a comment. Remember to read the other comments before posting your own so that you can engage with the ideas already put forth. Also, remember to use specific examples from the novel and quotations (with page numbers, of course!) whenever possible.

Here are some questions to get you thinking:

What is the role of lying in the novel? Are the lies the characters
tell “good” or “bad”? Huck frequently admits to lying – does that mean we do not trust the story he tells? How do we see through the lies? How is lying similar to or different from storytelling in the novel?

The River (Discussion Topic)

Do you have ideas or insights regarding the river? If so, please share them in a comment. Remember to read the other comments before posting your own so that you can engage with the ideas already put forth. Also, remember to use specific examples from the novel and quotations (with page numbers, of course!) whenever possible.

Here are some questions to get you thinking:


What is the significance of the Mississippi River in the novel? Is the river a place
of peace or of danger? How do the main characters’ perspectives on the river
change, depending on whether they are on the raft or on the riverbank? How does the meaning of the river itself change as Huck and Jim travel further south? How is the river important to the story or to the characters? What does the river represent?

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Mid-July Check In

Hello Maybeck,

I have just added a series of links to help your writing and stimulate your thinking about Huckleberry Finn. The links in the first batch are about Twain himself and his writing, but I have also added a series of links to sites devoted to the issue of slavery, the underground railroad, black history and US literature.

You will probably have noticed that the writing assignments for the course have shifted from writing a paper to writing posts to the blog. However very few posts have accumulated so far, and this is a bit alarming. You should feel an obligation, if you want to do well on this assignment, to check in with the blog from time to time and to generate a series of posts containing your responses to the question raised in the assignments mailed out.

Don't make the mistake of assuming that you should wait unitl the end of the summer to produce your blog posts, rather, you should be deep in the novel already, and the ideas generated by your reading of this funny and controversial book should already be helping you to generate some writing, thinking and questions in response. To stimulate this process, please review the assignments posted at http://www.maybeckhs.org/. Also don't feel that you should have finished the novel before you generate your posts; there is more than enough to think about as you move through the book to help you to generate something significant to say.

In closing, thanks to the few of you who have already begun the conversation via their posts, but more of you need to be checking in. Comb the postings already sent, check out the links, and above all, read hard, annotate carefully, think, write, and enjoy.

Yours,

Michael Ditmore