Huckleberry Finn Study Guide Ch. 1-15

AGENDA:

John Legend's Oscar acceptance speech

Review Themes and Historical Context and MAP

Reading Pointers for Sharper Insights▻

            

To better appreciate The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and understand why most critics believe it is the quintessential American novel, we need to look at some of the concepts that Twain explores.

1. How does the relationship between Huck and Jim change throughout the novel and why is this significant?
2. How do the raft and the shore symbolize civilization and freedom, respectively? What does Twain's message about civilization seem to be? Is he cynical about what civilization has brought to America?
3. What is the correlation between Huck's adventures on shore and his loss of innocence?
4. Examine Twain's development of the following motifs:
5. How do the various dialects contribute to the authenticity and feel of the text?
6. How is the text influenced by having the story told through the eyes of the main character, Huck Finn, a twelve-year old, unschooled, mischievous boy?
7. What are Twain's criticisms of traditional concepts of religion?
8. Notice the objects of Twain's satire:
   
   • sentimentality (being influenced more by emotion than reason) and gullibility (being easily tricked, cheated, or fooled)
   • the average man
   • romantic literature, with its mournful subject matter in poetry and its ridiculous plots in novels
   • a code of honor that results in needless bloodshed and complexities

In groups begin work on Study Guides discussing questions and close reading of passages.  Annotate text.  Explore themes.

HMWK:  Spelling  next 2 sections for Friday quiz
Continue to read----Test  Ch. 1-30  Friday quiz
Finish book for Tuesday, March 3

Themes in Huck Finn

Themes▻

 

            

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, one of the central works of American literature and a worldwide bestseller, traces the moral education of a young boy whose better impulses overcome both self-interest and the negative forces of his culture. Huck, a homeless boy whose only relative is his disreputable father, is taken in by a respectable widow who seeks to educate him. She forces him to go to school, but Huck dislikes being "so cramped up and sivilized [sic] as they call it." His father abducts him, and Huck prefers the freedom of his father's shack to the constraint of more genteel surroundings.
Freed from civilizing influences and placed in the company of his father, a vicious racist who boasts of his own illiteracy, Huck seems like a poor candidate for moral growth. But when Pap Finn nearly kills the boy during an alcoholic delirium, Huck escapes and meets the runaway slave Jim, who provides him with the opportunity to make a significant moral choice. Huck has been shaped not only by his father's view that one should act out of self-interest, but also by his society's belief that God's law mandates slavery. As he protects Jim, Huck feels certain that he will go to hell. Nonetheless, he transcends his upbringing and learns to value essential human bonds of trust beyond his own interest. Throughout the novel the boy witnesses a variety of human corruption, pretension, and violence, but maintains his integrity through his ability to identify with others.
The Walter Scott, the derelict steamer named after the enormously popular author of historical romances, suggests an attitude toward the ideals of chivalry as they are practiced in the American South. These ideals are acted out as murderous fantasies by the Grangerfords, who impress Huck with their refinement and "culture" (plaster parrots and morbid art) but are involved in a bloody feud, and by Col. Sherburn, who shoots down an unarmed man for insulting him. Society's institutions are built on some of the same illusions Tom draws from books, with terrible consequences. Religion is employed in the service of slavery, and Huck has to overcome his "conscience" in order to act morally toward Jim.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Themes▻

 

In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn both Huck and the runaway slave Jim are in flight from a society which labels them as outcasts. Although Huck has been adopted by the Widow Douglas and been accepted into the community of St. Petersburg, he feels hemmed in by the clothes he is made to wear and the models of decorum to which he must adhere. But he also does not belong to the world Pap inhabits. Although he feels more like himself in the backwoods, Pap's drunken rages and attempts to control him force Huck to flee. At the end of the book, after Jim has been freed, Huck decides to continue his own quest for freedom. "I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before." Huck is clearly running from a civilization that attempts to control him, rather than running in pursuit of something tangible. He is representative of the American frontiersman who chooses the unknown over the tyranny of society.
As a slave, Jim has likewise been denied control over his own destiny, and he escapes to prevent being sold down to New Orleans, away from his wife and children. But Jim is chasing a more concrete ideal of freedom than Huck is. For Jim, freedom means not being a piece of property. Jim explicitly expresses his desire to be free as they approach Cairo and the junction with the Ohio River: "Jim said it made him all over trembly and feverish to be so close to freedom." But after they pass Cairo in the confusion of a foggy night, Jim's quest for freedom is thwarted and he must concentrate on survival. After Jim's capture, Tom and Huck attempt to free him in a farcical series of schemes that actually make escape more difficult and dangerous. Huck indicates that a simple removal of the board that covers the window would allow Jim to escape, but Tom declares that is too easy. "I should hope we can find a way that's a little more complicated than that, Huck Finn," Tom says. After Jim escapes and is recaptured, Tom reveals that he has been free all along. Miss Watson had died and left him free in her will. The irony of freeing a free man has concerned many critics, who believe Twain might have been commenting on the failure of Reconstruction after the Civil War.

Conscience
Huck's main struggle in the book is with his conscience, the set of morals with which he has been raised. As they begin to approach Cairo, and Jim looks forward to his freedom, Huck says his conscience "got to troubling me so I couldn't rest." He rationalizes that he didn't lure Jim away from his owner, but "conscience up and says every time, 'But you knowed he was running for his freedom, and you 'could 'a' paddled ashore and told somebody.'" During this scene he wakes up to the fact that he is helping a slave gain freedom, something he has been brought up to believe is wrong. So in an attempt to relieve his guilt, he sets off for shore, telling Jim he is going to find out if they have passed Cairo, but really intending to turn Jim in. When he meets up with two men looking for a runaway slave, he confronts a true test of conscience, and fails, in his eyes. The two men ask him about the man on board, and Huck protects Jim by making up an elaborate tale about his father who is dying of smallpox, a highly contagious disease. When he returns to the raft, Jim rejoices in his cover-up, but Huck instead is "feeling bad and low, because I knowed very well I had done wrong." He decides that he is naturally bad, and that he only did what made him feel better. Not being able to analyze his actions, Huck fails to recognize that he has taken a stand against a morally corrupt society. Later, after Jim has been turned in by the King and Duke, Huck must again wrestle with his conscience as he decides to play an active role in freeing Jim. Up until this point he had only protected Jim from discovery; now he must help Jim escape, an even more serious crime. But rather than let his "conscience" guide him, Huck listens to his heart, which tells him that Jim is a human being, not property. He turns his back forever on society's ethics and decides he'd rather "go to hell" than turn his back on Jim. Through Huck, Twain attacks that part of the conscience that unquestioningly adheres to society's laws and mores, even when they are wrong.

Race and Racism
Probably the most discussed aspect of Huck Finn is how it addresses the issue of race. Many critics agree that the book's presentation of the issue is complex or, some say, uneven. No clear-cut stance on race and racism emerges. Despite the fact that Huck comes to respect Jim as a human being, he still reveals his prejudice towards black people. His astonishment at Jim's deep feelings for his family is accompanied by the statement, "I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks does for their'n. It don't seem natural, but I reckon it's so." And even after he has decided to help free Jim, Huck indicates that he still does not see black people overall as human beings. When Aunt Sally asks "Tom Sawyer" why he was so late in arriving, he tells her the ship blew a cylinder head. "Good gracious! Anybody hurt?" she asks. "No'm. Killed a nigger." "Well, it's lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt," she responds. As some critics have pointed out, Huck never condemns slavery or racial prejudice in general but seems to find an exception to the rule in Jim. Nevertheless, the fact that Huck does learn to see beyond racial stereotypes in the case of Jim is a profound development, considering his upbringing. He lived in a household with the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson where slaves were owned. And Pap's rantings over a free black man indicate his deep racial prejudice. When confronted with the fact that a free black man was highly educated and could vote, Pap decides he wants nothing to do with a government that has allowed this to happen. He wants the free man, whom he calls "a prowling, thieving, infernal, white-shirted free nigger," to be sold at auction. In other words, all black people are slaves, white man's property, in his eyes. Such are the views on race with which Huck has been raised. But there is no agreement as to what Twain's message on the subject of race is. While some critics view the novel as a satire on racism and a conscious indictment of a racist society, others stress the author's overall ambivalence about race. Critics have had a difficult time reconciling the stereotypical depictions of Jim and other slaves in the book with Huck's desire to free Jim.

Themes Developed
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, one of the central works of American literature and a worldwide bestseller, traces the moral education of a young boy whose better impulses overcome both self-interest and the negative forces of his culture. Huck, a homeless boy whose only relative is his disreputable father, is taken in by a respectable widow who seeks to educate him. She forces him to go to school, but Huck dislikes being "so cramped up and sivilized [sic] as they call it." His father abducts him, and Huck prefers the freedom of his father's shack to the constraint of more genteel surroundings.
Freed from civilizing influences and placed in the company of his father, a vicious racist who boasts of his own illiteracy, Huck seems like a poor candidate for moral growth. But when Pap Finn nearly kills the boy during an alcoholic delirium, Huck escapes and meets the runaway slave Jim, who provides him with the opportunity to make a significant moral choice. Huck has been shaped not only by his father's view that one should act out of self-interest, but also by his society's belief that God's law mandates slavery. As he protects Jim, Huck feels certain that he will go to hell. Nonetheless, he transcends his upbringing and learns to value essential human bonds of trust beyond his own interest. Throughout the novel the boy witnesses a variety of human corruption, pretension, and violence, but maintains his integrity through his ability to identify with others.
The Walter Scott, the derelict steamer named after the enormously popular author of historical romances, suggests an attitude toward the ideals of chivalry as they are practiced in the American South. These ideals are acted out as murderous fantasies by the Grangerfords, who impress Huck with their refinement and "culture" (plaster parrots and morbid art) but are involved in a bloody feud, and by Col. Sherburn, who shoots down an unarmed man for insulting him. Society's institutions are built on some of the same illusions Tom draws from books, with terrible consequences. Religion is employed in the service of slavery, and Huck has to overcome his "conscience" in order to act morally toward Jim.

Romanticism in Twain's Novel

As local color writing developed in American literature after the Civil War, it served as a bridge between the earlier period of Romanticism and the Realism of the twentieth century. The elements of Romanticism are clearly evident in the novel, especially in Twain’s descriptions of nature and the novel’s themes of personal freedom; the influence of Realism in fiction writing is evident in the many specific details throughout the novel that convey with accuracy and precision the society and culture that existed along the Southern banks of the Mississippi River at a particular time in American history. Despite its realistic depiction of people, places, and daily life, however, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is essentially a work of Romanticism that develops the theme found most consistently in romantic works: the goodness and nobility of the human spirit when it is free of the corruption of society.

 The early writers of Romanticism, especially the Transcendentalists like Emerson and Thoreau, celebrated man’s essential goodness and condemned society as a force that suppresses individual freedom and spiritual enlightenment. The essential tenet of Romanticism is that only in nature, not in society, can an individual discover spiritual truth and live an authentic life consistent with his inherent goodness—and this is the essential theme woven throughout Twain’s novel.

Huck’s experiences take place on the Mississippi or in towns along the river. On the raft, he and Jim experience solitude and peace, surrounded by the natural beauty, mystery, and awesome power of the river. Only when they think of life on shore are they troubled, and only when society encroaches is the quality of their lives diminished. On the river, Huck and Jim are free. On the river—living in nature—Huck questions for the first time the moral and religious beliefs imposed on him by society and struggles to reconcile them with what he knows in his heart to be good or evil. When he cannot reconcile them with his own spirit, he rejects society’s teachings, choosing instead to “go to hell” before turning Jim over as a runaway slave. On the river with Jim, Huck is separated from the corruption of society and its influence, leaving him free to discover the goodness within himself. 

The contrast between goodness found in nature and the corruption of society is developed throughout the novel as life on the river is continually contrasted with life beyond the Mississippi. All that is violent and vile occurs on land or is temporarily exported to Huck and Jim’s raft by dangerous, unwelcome emissaries from society along the river. The bloody Grangerford-Shepherdson feud, the greed and scheming of the phony Duke and King, Huck’s vicious father, and the cruelty of slavery are symptomatic of society’s corruption and the ways it corrupts those who live in it. A great irony in the novel, critics often point out, is that Huck Finn has to escape society in order to become “civilized.” As a work of Romanticism, however, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn isn’t ironic at all. It’s in refusing to be “civilized” that Huck finds the goodness inherent in man’s nature.             

Huck Finn and the Six Pillars of Character

AGENDA:

Introduce the six pillars of character in relation to Huck Finn

https://charactercounts.org/sixpillars/

Huck Finn Historical Background

INTRODUCTION

In the U.S., before 1860, almost everyone in the South and many in the North thought that slavery was a good institution. Most were taught in their churches that it was sanctified by the Bible and ordained by God. The abolitionists were a vocal minority in the North. While they had control of a few states their ideals were not popular with most Americans. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected on a platform that would allow slavery to exist in the South; he just didn't want it to extend to any new states that were to be formed from the Western territories. In the community in which Huck Finn grew up, as in all areas of the South, a belief in the righteousness of slavery was an important shared value.
The River
The Mississippi River is the largest river in the United States flowing 2,348 miles from North to South. It begins in Minnesota and empties into the Gulf of Mexico below New Orleans. The Mississippi's chief tributaries are the Ohio and Missouri Rivers. The Mississippi has been a major transportation artery of the United States since before the Louisiana Purchase. During the period of this story, steamboats were the principal means of transportation on the Mississippi.

Rivers have long served as symbols for freedom, escape, and new beginnings. In his writings, Mark Twain frequently used the Mississippi to help his readers visualize these concepts.

Historical Background:
The United States is arguably the greatest democracy in the world. It was created by the first popular democratic revolution and inspired the French Revolution. Together, the American and French revolutions have served as inspiration for many other modern democratic revolutions, extending through to the Arab Spring of 2011. However, in the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, the founding fathers of the United States found that a bargain with a peculiar type of devil was required to establish the new nation. That devil was slavery. In 1776, leaders of the Southern states saw that Great Britain would soon outlaw slavery in its colonies — it did so in 1833. In the Continental Congress, they demanded that the institution of slavery be protected as the price for agreeing to join the rebellion. This is why the Congress deleted from Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence a reference to slavery as an evil institution foisted on the colonies by the English king. The Constitution continued this bargain with the devil, failing to recognize slaves as citizens and protecting the property rights of slaveholders. In the Constitution, the abominable international slave trade was protected until 1801.

Until 1857, were an escaped slave to reach a free state, one that that did not recognize the "right" of one individual to own another, the slave would be considered free. In 1857, however, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that the Fugitive Slave Law required public officials in the free states to catch, hold and then return runaway slaves to their owners. This ruling was intolerable to fair minded people in the North and helped to ignite the Civil War.

Another law that worked against the elimination of slavery made it a crime to teach slaves to read. Slaveholders knew that if slaves became educated they would be more difficult to control and more likely to rebel. Huck's companion on his adventure, an escaped slave named Jim, was illiterate. Jim and his family communicated with each other through letters written by others on their behalf. This is a common practice when many people cannot read. See Learning Guide to Roots Vol. IV and a short excerpt from Frederick Douglass' autobiography detailing his decision to learn to read at whatever cost.

Slavery
  The issue of slavery threatened to divide the nation as early as the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and throughout the years a series of concessions were made on both sides in an effort to keep the union together. One of the most significant of these was the Missouri Compromise of 1820. The furor had begun when Missouri requested to enter the union as a slave state. In order to maintain a balance between free and slave states in the union, Missouri was admitted as a slave state while Maine entered as a free one. And although Congress would not accept Missouri's proposal to ban free blacks from the state, it did allow a provision permitting the state's slaveholders to reclaim runaway slaves from neighboring free states.

The federal government's passage of Fugitive Slave Laws was also a compromise to appease southern slaveholders. The first one, passed in 1793, required anyone helping a slave to escape to pay a fine of $500. But by 1850, when a second law was passed, slaveowners had become increasingly insecure about their ability to retain their slaves in the face of abolitionism. The 1850 Fugitive Slave Law increased the fine for abetting a runaway slave to $1000, added the penalty of up to six months in prison, and required that every U.S. citizen assist in the capture of runaways. This law allowed southern slaveowners to claim their fugitive property without requiring them to provide proof of ownership. Whites and blacks in the North were outraged by the law, which effectively implicated all American citizens in the institution of slavery. As a result, many who had previously felt unmoved by the issue became ardent supporters of the abolitionist movement.

Among those who were outraged into action by the Fugitive Slave Law was Harriet Beecher Stowe whose novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) galvanized the North against slavery. Dozens of slave narratives—first hand accounts of the cruelties of slavery—had shown white Northerners a side of slavery that had previously remained hidden, but the impact of Stowe's novel on white Northerners was more widespread. Abraham Lincoln is reported to have said when he met her during the Civil War, "So you're the little lady who started this big war." White southerners also recognized the powerful effect of the national debate on slavery as it was manifested in print, and many southern states, fearing the spread of such agitating ideas to their slaves, passed laws which made it illegal to teach slaves to read. Missouri passed such a law in 1847.
Despite the efforts of southerners to keep slaves in the dark about those who were willing to help them in the North, thousands of slaves did escape to the free states. Many escape routes led to the Ohio River, which formed the southern border of the free states of Illinois and Indiana. The large number of slaves who escaped belied the myths of contented slaves that originated from the South.

Reconstruction
Although The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn takes place before the Civil War, it was written in the wake of Reconstruction, the period directly after the Civil War when the confederate states were brought back into the union. The years from 1865 to 1876 witnessed rapid and radical progress in the South, as many schools for blacks were opened, black men gained the right to vote with the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875 desegregated public places. But these improvements were quickly undermined by new Black Codes in the South that restricted such rights. White southerners felt threatened by Republicans from the North who went south to help direct the course of Reconstruction. Most galling was the new authority of free blacks, many of whom held political office and owned businesses. While prospects did improve somewhat for African Americans during Reconstruction, their perceived authority in the new culture was exaggerated by whites holding on to the theory of white superiority that had justified slavery.

In response to the perceived threat, many terrorist groups were formed to intimidate freed blacks and white Republicans through vigilante violence. The Ku Klux Klan, the most prominent of these new groups, was formed in 1866. Efforts to disband these terrorist groups proved ineffective. By 1876, Democrats had regained control over the South and by 1877, federal troops had withdrawn. Reconstruction and the many rights blacks had gained dissipated as former abolitionists lost interest in the issue of race, and the country became consumed with financial crises and conflicts with Native Americans in the West. Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, new Jim Crow laws segregated public spaces in the South, culminating in the Supreme Court's decision in the case Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, which legalized segregation.

Minstrel Shows
As the first indigenous form of entertainment in America, minstrel shows flourished from the 1830s to the first decade of the twentieth century. In the 1860s, for example, there were more than one hundred minstrel groups in the country. Samuel Clemens recalled his love of minstrel shows in his posthumously published Autobiography, writing, "If I could have the nigger show back again in its pristine purity and perfection I should have but little further use for opera." His attraction to blackface entertainment informed The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, where, many critics believe, he used its humorous effects to challenge the racial stereotypes on which it was based.

Minstrel shows featured white men in blackface and outrageous costumes. The men played music, danced, and acted burlesque skits, but the central feature of the shows was the exaggerated imitation of black speech and mannerisms, which produced a stereotype of blacks as docile, happy, and ignorant. The shows also depicted slavery as a natural and benign institution and slaves as contented with their lot. These stereotypes of blacks helped to reinforce attitudes amongst whites that blacks were fundamentally different and inferior. The minstrel show died out as vaudeville, burlesques, and radio became the most popular forms of entertainment.

Map of Huck Finn

Huckleberry Finn

AGENDA:

Continue discussions of Huckleberry Finn

Discussion questions Huckleberry Finn

1. The Widow Douglas and her sister, Miss Watson, are both trying to “sivilize” Huck. Compare and contrast their attitudes toward Huck. What method does each one use in her efforts to turn him into a “respectable” citizen? How do those methods differ? How are they the same? Cite examples from the novel to support your argument.

2. Analyze the scene where Huck flips the spider into the candle. Why does he feel that this would bring him bad luck? How does this scene foreshadow superstition in the novel? Support your answer with examples from the novel.

3. Twain chooses a 13-year-old boy as narrator for his novel. In what way does this help to accomplish Twain’s purpose? Discuss the ways in which a young, innocent narrator can make a profound statement about the hypocrisy of his society. Explain your answer.

Chapters 2-3
1. Although Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer are presented as contrasting characters in the novel, they are alike in many ways. Compare and contrast the characters of Huck and Tom, giving examples from the novel to support your argument.

2. Analyze Jim’s idea that he has been ridden around the world by witches. Why was he proud? Were the slaves the only ones who believed Jim’s story? Does Huck believe it? Explain your answer.

3. Analyze the role of respectability in Tom Sawyer’s supposedly lawless gang. Why is it mandatory for each member to have a respectable family? Examine the idea that Huck, who has had more experience with breaking the law than any of the others, comes close to being excluded from the gang.

Chapters 4-5
1. Superstition is a recurring theme in the novel. Analyze Twain’s satiric treatment of the hairball scene. Examine the answers Huck receives about his life. How does Jim keep the hairball’s comments believable?

2. Analyze the relationship of Huck and his father. In what ways was he different from the ideal? How did this influence Huck’s feelings about society as a whole? Explain your reasoning.

3. Analyze Judge Thatcher’s reactions to Huck’s request to take his money. Why did the judge exchange one dollar for six-thousand dollars? Was he cheating Huck? Explain your answer.

Chapters 6-7
1. Huck seems to adapt to almost any situation. He has become accustomed to civilized life with the Widow Douglas. Later he finds life in the woods carefree and easy. Analyze the character of Huck. Discuss possible reasons for his adaptability to different situations. Use examples from the novel to support your argument.

2. In the novel Pap does not appear to be a civilized man. Discuss ways in which he does, however, fit into the larger society. Does he compare to the Widow Douglas in any way? Explain your answer.

3. Huck wishes Tom Sawyer were with him to add some “fancy touches” to his plan of escape. Discuss the difference between Huck’s scheme of faking his death and the attack on the “A-rabs” and “Spaniards” in Chapter 3. Cite examples from the novel to support your ideas.

Chapters 8-9
1. Huck’s most poetic language is prompted by a severe thunderstorm on the island. Discuss the reasons for this. In what way does the storm inspire him? Why is he not afraid of the storm? Use examples from the novel to support your argument.

2. If Huck keeps Jim’s secret of his escape, people will call him a “low-down Abolitionist.” In what way are those words more effective when spoken by a young narrator? Explain the irony in Huck’s statement. What is Twain’s message about the hypocritical values of his society? Explain your answer with examples from the novel.

3. Miss Watson could sell Jim for eight hundred dollars. He, therefore, feels rich because he owns himself. Explain Twain’s use of satire in Jim’s statement . What was Twain’s attitude toward slavery in this passage? Explain your answer.

Chapters 10-11
1. Huck’s growing concern for Jim’s welfare is evident in many ways. Discuss the events where this concern is reflected in Huck’s behavior. In what ways does he protect Jim from danger? Cite examples from the novel to support your argument.

2. Huck’s ability to tell a story in order to get himself out of a “tight” situation is one of his greatest strengths. How does this apply to his encounter with Mrs. Judith Loftus? What does he do when she realizes he is a boy? Explain your answer.

3. When Huck curls up the snake at the foot of Jim’s blanket, he does not tell Jim that he has done it. What is his reason for keeping his little joke a secret? What lesson does Huck learn from it? How would Jim have felt if Huck would have told the truth? Discuss your answer.

Chapters 12-13
1. Huck’s journey on the river is filled with adventures, but it is also a symbolic journey. What does his journey symbolize? How does his relationship with Jim tie in to the symbolism? Compare the symbolism of the shore to that of the river. Use examples from the novel to support your view.

2. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is often referred to as the embodiment of mythological characteristics. In what way does the journey down the river represent these characteristics? How is Huck’s escape from society and his love for the natural world of the river incorporated into this idea? Explain your answer.

3. Twain uses satire to expose people’s ability to rationalize their wrongdoings. In what way does Twain employ that device in the incident where Huck “lifts chickens” and “borrows watermelons”? What do the words “lifts” and “borrows” connote? Give examples from the novel to support your argument.

Chapters 14-15
1. The relationship between Huck and Jim is brought into focus in these chapters. How does their frightening separation in the fog draw them closer together? How do they feel about each other at this point in the novel? Give examples from the novel to support your viewpoint.

2. Huck and Jim carry on a lengthy conversation about royalty. In what way does Twain satirize royalty in these chapters? What is Jim’s opinion of King Solomon? Why does he feel that way? Give examples from the novel to support your argument.

Chapters 16-17
1. Huck makes a moral decision concerning Jim’s freedom in Chapter 16. How does this decision affect Huck as a character in the novel? Discuss the first time in the novel that he made a decision to help Jim escape to freedom. How did the decision affect him then? Cite examples from the novel to support your view.

2. There is irony in the statement Jim makes about stealing his children. In what way is it ironic that Jim’s children belong to someone else? Why did Huck feel it was morally wrong for Jim to claim his children as his own? Give examples from the novel to support your argument.

3. Critics believe Twain stopped writing the novel for a few years after he finished Chapter 16. Why would this have been a difficult place for Twain to continue? How does the setting of the novel change at this point? Explain your answer.

Chapters 18-19
1. Harney Shepherdson and Miss Sophia are victims of the feud between the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons. Compare and contrast their conflict with that of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. In what way was their situation the same? How was it different? Was Huck sympathetic with the young couple? Give examples from the novel to support your argument.

2. Twain employs satire throughout the novel to speak out against the hypocrisy and corruption in his society. In what way is the church service, attended by the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons, an attack on the religion of Twain’s day? How does the hog incident add to the satire? Explain your answer.

3. In these chapters life on the raft is contrasted sharply with the violence and bloodshed Huck has recently encountered on the shore. How does this contrast bring out the theme of freedom in the novel? How does Huck feel about life on the raft? How does Jim feel? Use examples from the novel to support your viewpoint.

Chapters 20-21
1. In the novel Huck continually tells stories to get himself out of tight situations. Why doesn’t this bother Huck’s conscience? In what way is Huck forced to tell a lie? Is Huck morally wrong in doing so? Defend your argument with examples from the novel.

2. It is during a natural phenomenon such as a thunderstorm that Huck uses his most artistic language. Discuss Huck’s feeling about the thunderstorm. Why is he not afraid of the storm? How does this symbolize his life on the river as opposed to life on the shore? Explain your answer.

3. There are many examples of gullibility in the novel. In what way does Twain satirize the gullibility of the people at the camp meeting? How does the king trick them into taking up a collection? Why do they believe him? Support your argument.

Chapters 22-23
1. Twain is satirizing the lynch mob in these chapters. In what way can the individuals in a mob be seen as cowards? Discuss the psychology of a lynch mob. Why is Sherburn successful in breaking up the mob? Cite examples from the novel to support your argument.

2. Through the characters of the duke and the king, Twain is satirizing royalty. What qualities in a king would make him a “rapscallion?” How does Huck’s reference to kings throughout history prove his point? Explain your answer.

3. The relationship between Huck and Jim is growing deeper as the novel progresses. How is Jim’s humanity expressed through the eyes of Huck? How does Jim feel about Huck? How can Huck tell? Explain your answer.

Chapters 24-25
1. In these chapters Twain satirizes the gullibility of the townspeople who believe an imposter like the king, but, ironically, do not believe Dr. Robinson. Write an essay comparing the gullibility of the townspeople to people in today’s world. In what ways are people gullible? What makes them gullible? Explain your answer.

2. Huck has become more critical of the duke and the king than he was in preceding chapters. Why has this change taken place in his character? Explain Huck’s moral development as it relates to previous chapters in the novel. Cite examples from the novel to support your argument.

3. The ultimate sacrifice in the eyes of the townspeople is when the king and the duke give the Wilks girls the whole six thousand dollars. Why do they give it away? What is their motive? What do they hope to gain? Support your argument with examples from the novel.

Chapters 26-27
1. The king and the duke have been involved in several fraudulent schemes along the river. Compare and contrast the Wilks episode to The Royal Nonesuch in the last town. Why does Huck take action against the frauds in the Wilks episode? Why was he merely an observer in The Royal Nonesuch? How do they compare? How are they different? Use examples from the novel to support your argument.

2. The two frauds have supposedly been duped through their sale of the slaves. In what way do the king and the duke judge the slaves by their own standards? In what way do they think the slaves have played a game in order to get away with the money? Defend your argument with examples from the novel.

3. The separation of families through the selling of slaves is a recurrent theme in the novel. What is Twain’s attitude about this controversial issue? Cite at least two examples from the novel that deal with the separation of families and point out the way in which Twain satirizes the issue.

Chapters 28-29
1. The novel is filled with examples of stories Huck tells when he is in a tight situation. In Chapter 28 he decides that truth is better than lies, however. Why does he have a change of heart in this chapter? How does Huck feel about Mary Jane? Does he trust her with the truth? Does he ever lie to her? Why does he depend on lies to get through difficult situations? Cite examples from the novel to support your argument.

2. Throughout the course of the novel, Twain uses descriptions of thunderstorms. Compare and contrast the description of the thunderstorm in Chapter 29 with descriptions in other parts of the novel. How are they the same? How is this one different? Cite examples from the novel to support your argument.

3. Mary Jane is one of Huck’s favorite people in the novel. What qualities does she possess that makes Huck fond of her? How is she different from her sisters? Explain your answer.

Chapters 30-31
1. Huck makes his ultimate moral decision in Chapter 31 of the novel. What is Twain satirizing in this episode? Explain Huck’s natural morality as opposed to society’s morality. Use examples from the novel to support your answer.

2. Twain sheds a slightly different light on the duke in these chapters. What is different about the actions of the duke? How does this make us feel about him? Is the duke less evil than the king? Explain your answer.

3. Huck faces a moral decision to help Jim escape in three different epiodes of the novel. Explain each dilemma and describe how it affects Huck’s development as a character. Cite examples from the novel to support your argument.

Chapters 32-33
1. Twain paints a bleak, depressing picture of the Phelps Plantation. Compare and contrast Huck’s view of life on the plantation to life on the raft. In what way is his view affected by his recent loss of Jim? Cite examples from the novel to support your argument.

2. Huck is shocked when Tom Sawyer tells him he will help steal Jim out of slavery. What does Tom know about Jim and how does that affect his decision? How does Huck view Tom as a member of society? How does he view himself? Support your answer with examples from the novel.

3. Jim acts as an informant in the case of the king and duke’s Royal Nonesuch show. In what way is justice being done? Why do you think Jim is seen in a different light in this section of the novel? Do his actions seem believable? Defend your argument with examples from the novel.

Chapters 34-35
1. The contrasting personalities of Huck and Tom provide the reader with the satiric humor in these chapters. In what way do their personalities contrast? How are Tom’s romantic notions brought out in the plan to free Jim? How does Huck disagree? Cite examples from the novel to support your argument.

2. Tom and Huck disagree on the idea of stealing and borrowing. What does Huck call borrowing? What does Tom consider stealing? When does Tom consider stealing all right? When is it wrong? Support your argument with quotes from the novel.

3. In this section of the novel Tom already knows that Jim has been freed by Miss Watson. In view of this fact, how do you interpret his actions in the plan of escape? Is Tom unusually cruel to Jim by making him wait unnecessarily? Why doesn’t he tell Huck and Jim? Explain your answer.

Chapters 36-37
1. Two different types of morality are demonstrated in the novel. Contrast Huck’s morality with Tom’s. How are they different? Explain the origins of each of the boys’ sense of morality? Cite examples from the novel to support your argument.

2. Twain often satirizes the religious sensibilities of his day through the characters in the novel. In what way is he satirizing Uncle Silas’s prayers with Jim? Do you feel Uncle Silas is being kind to Jim? Why does Jim feel his kindness? Explain your answer.

Chapters 38-39
1. Jim is taken out of his prison to help Huck and Tom with the grindstone. In what way is this humorous incident ironic? Why does Jim go back to his prison? Why doesn’t he leave while he has the chance? Why don’t the boys help him to escape? Explain your answer.

2. Tom often prescribes cruel treatment for Jim in order to carry out his elaborate plan of escape. How does one account for his lack of sensitivity to Jim’s feelings? Is Tom a cruel person? How does Tom treat other people in the novel? Cite examples from the novel to support your argument.

3. Tom works on a coat of arms for Jim. Does he have sufficient knowledge of this subject? Is his knowledge limited? Why doesn’t he give Huck the definitions of “fess” and “bar sinister”? Support your answer with examples from the novel.

Chapters 40-41
1. Jim unselfishly gives up his freedom so they can get a doctor for Tom. Does this act seem consistent with Jim’s character? Why does he do it? Describe one other instance in the novel where Jim is unselfish. Cite examples from the novel to support your argument.

2. Tom is happy when they reach the raft in spite of the fact that he has a bullet in his leg. Why is he happy? Why doesn’t he want to see a doctor? What instructions does Tom give Huck about the doctor? How is this a part of Tom’s plan of escape? Explain your answer with examples from the novel.

3. Huck invents stories throughout the novel to get himself out of tight situations. Is Huck’s story to the doctor as believable as his stories have been in the past? Does the doctor doubt Huck? Are there any flaws in his story. Use examples from the novel to support your argument.

Chapters 42-43
1. Jim is often referred to as a noble character in the novel. In what way is his nobility shown in the last few chapters. How does he show courage by helping the doctor? Why does he do it? What price does he pay? Support your answer with examples from the novel.

2. The men who are attending to Jim want to hang him as an example to other slaves who might attempt to escape. Why do they decide against it? How does this incident satirize the morality of the men? Cite examples from the novel to explain your answer.

3. At the end of the novel Huck wants to escape so Aunt Sally will not try to “sivilize” him. How has the meaning of the word “sivilize” changed for Huck? In what way has Huck grown as a character in the novel? Give examples from the novel to support your argument.

Go over 19th century packets

Vocabulary Huck Finn

Vocabulary Huck Finn

Vocabulary for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Chapters I- VII

1.     big-bug (noun) - an important person

2.     bullyrag (verb)- browbeat, harass

3.     delirium tremens (verb)- violent hallucinations caused by excessive drinking

4.     pungle (verb) - pay up

5.     raspy (adjective) - harsh, irritating

6.     skiff (noun)- a small, light rowboat

7.     slouch (noun)- a soft, wide-brimmed hat

8.     ingots (Noun)- a piece of metal formed from a mold.

9.     sumter (noun) - a pack animal

10.  temperance (adjective)- self-control, especially in drinking

Vocabulary for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Chapters VIII - XVI

1.     chucklehead (adjective)- fool, blockhead

2.     contrived (verb)- planned, devised

3.     corn-pone - a cheap kind of corn bread

4.     crawfish (verb)- to back out

5.     dolphin (dauphin) (noun) - the eldest son of a king

6.     fan-tods (adjective)- a state of nervousness or fear

7.     haggled (verb)- cut in a clumsy or awkward way

8.     pilot-house (noun)- a compartment on a steamboat in which the pilot works

9.     rapscallions - rascals, scoundrels

10.  wigwam - a hut built for shelter

Vocabulary for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Chapters XVII- XXX

1.     disposition - desire, inclination

2.     doxolojer (doxology) - a hymn of praise to God

3.     frowsy-headed - unkempt or sloppy looking

4.     greenhorns - unsophisticated people

5.     histrionic - theatrical

6.     obsequies - funeral rites

7.     phrenology - examining the shape of a person's head to tell his fortune

8.     pommel - a bump at the front of a saddle

9.     pulpit - a high table or lectern used for preaching

10.  slouch - a lazy or incompetent person

 

Vocabulary for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Chapters XXXI – Chapter the Last

1.     bogus (adjective)- false, fake

2.     brickbat (noun)- any small, hard object used for throwing

3.     desperadoes (noun)- bandits, criminals

4.     fox-fire (adjective)- a glow from decaying wood

5.     mortification (adjective)- death of a body part

6.     owdacious (audacious) (adjective)- bold, impertinent

7.     pettish (adjective)- fretful

8.     powderhorn (adjective)- a flask for holding gunpowder

9.     rascality (adjective)- mischief, wickedness

10.  stealthy (adjective)- secret, hidden

Huck Finn and the N-word controversy

AGENDA:

Continue to discuss Ch. 1-10

The N-word controversy:
60 minutes   http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/huckleberry-finn-and-the-n-word-50106341/

CBS: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/edited-huckleberry-finn-stirring-heated-debate/





Questions

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdVm-ij3MCA

www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/12/jon-stewart-takes-on-huck_n_807921.html

etext.virginia.edu/railton/huckfinn/huchompg.html

www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7369826n

HMWK:  Read to Ch.  XXX        over the break

Huck/How to Mark a book and Morton Adler's advice

AGENDA:

Discuss reading to Ch. 10 and mark up books!

Thanks to your fellow students who offered to pay for the books immediately, I also understood that this book ownership with notes would be valuable to you in future years.  I decided that the books are yours--my little personal present of a classic of American fiction (and one of my favorite books). You really might need your notes later in college (as I did). That means you have to apply some of Adler's techniques to reading this book.

PLEASE READ THIS IMPORTANT CLASSIC ESSAY ABOUT ANNOTATING:

Essay How to Mark a Book By Mortimer J. Adler, Ph.D. from The Radical Academy Belorussian translation to You know you have to read "between the lines" to get the most out of anything. I want to persuade you to do something equally important in the course of your reading. I want to persuade you to write between the lines. Unless you do, you are not likely to do the most efficient kind of reading. I contend, quite bluntly, that marking up a book is not an act of mutilation but of love. You shouldn't mark up a book which isn't yours. Librarians (or your friends) who lend you books expect you to keep them clean, and you should. If you decide that I am right about the usefulness of marking books, you will have to buy them. Most of the world's great books are available today, in reprint editions. There are two ways in which one can own a book. The first is the property right you establish by paying for it, just as you pay for clothes and furniture. But this act of purchase is only the prelude to possession. Full ownership comes only when you have made it a part of yourself, and the best way to make yourself a part of it is by writing in it. An illustration may make the point clear. You buy a beefsteak and transfer it from the butcher's icebox to your own. But you do not own the beefsteak in the most important sense until you consume it and get it into your bloodstream. I am arguing that books, too, must be absorbed in your blood stream to do you any good. Confusion about what it means to "own" a book leads people to a false reverence for paper, binding, and type -- a respect for the physical thing -- the craft of the printer rather than the genius of the author. They forget that it is possible for a man to acquire the idea, to possess the beauty, which a great book contains, without staking his claim by pasting his bookplate inside the cover. Having a fine library doesn't prove that its owner has a mind enriched by books; it proves nothing more than that he, his father, or his wife, was rich enough to buy them. There are three kinds of book owners. The first has all the standard sets and best sellers -- unread, untouched. (This deluded individual owns woodpulp and ink, not books.) The second has a great many books -- a few of them read through, most of them dipped into, but all of them as clean and shiny as the day they were bought. (This person would probably like to make books his own, but is restrained by a false respect for their physical appearance.) The third has a few books or many -- every one of them dog-eared and dilapidated, shaken and loosened by continual use, marked and scribbled in from front to back. (This man owns books.) Is it false respect, you may ask, to preserve intact and unblemished a beautifully printed book, an elegantly bound edition? Of course not. I'd no more scribble all over a first edition of 'Paradise Lost' than I'd give my baby a set of crayons and an original Rembrandt. I wouldn't mark up a painting or a statue. Its soul, so to speak, is inseparable from its body. And the beauty of a rare edition or of a richly manufactured volume is like that of a painting or a statue. But the soul of a book "can" be separate from its body. A book is more like the score of a piece of music than it is like a painting. No great musician confuses a symphony with the printed sheets of music. Arturo Toscanini reveres Brahms, but Toscanini's score of the G minor Symphony is so thoroughly marked up that no one but the maestro himself can read it. The reason why a great conductor makes notations on his musical scores -- marks them up again and again each time he returns to study them--is the reason why you should mark your books. If your respect for magnificent binding or typography gets in the way, buy yourself a cheap edition and pay your respects to the author. Why is marking up a book indispensable to reading? First, it keeps you awake. (And I don't mean merely conscious; I mean awake.) In the second place; reading, if it is active, is thinking, and thinking tends to express itself in words, spoken or written. The marked book is usually the thought-through book. Finally, writing helps you remember the thoughts you had, or the thoughts the author expressed. Let me develop these three points. If reading is to accomplish anything more than passing time, it must be active. You can't let your eyes glide across the lines of a book and come up with an understanding of what you have read. Now an ordinary piece of light fiction, like, say, "Gone With the Wind," doesn't require the most active kind of reading. The books you read for pleasure can be read in a state of relaxation, and nothing is lost. But a great book, rich in ideas and beauty, a book that raises and tries to answer great fundamental questions, demands the most active reading of which you are capable. You don't absorb the ideas of John Dewey the way you absorb the crooning of Mr. Vallee. You have to reach for them. That you cannot do while you're asleep. If, when you've finished reading a book, the pages are filled with your notes, you know that you read actively. The most famous "active" reader of great books I know is President Hutchins, of the University of Chicago. He also has the hardest schedule of business activities of any man I know. He invariably reads with a pencil, and sometimes, when he picks up a book and pencil in the evening, he finds himself, instead of making intelligent notes, drawing what he calls 'caviar factories' on the margins. When that happens, he puts the book down. He knows he's too tired to read, and he's just wasting time. But, you may ask, why is writing necessary? Well, the physical act of writing, with your own hand, brings words and sentences more sharply before your mind and preserves them better in your memory. To set down your reaction to important words and sentences you have read, and the questions they have raised in your mind, is to preserve those reactions and sharpen those questions. Even if you wrote on a scratch pad, and threw the paper away when you had finished writing, your grasp of the book would be surer. But you don't have to throw the paper away. The margins (top as bottom, and well as side), the end-papers, the very space between the lines, are all available. They aren't sacred. And, best of all, your marks and notes become an integral part of the book and stay there forever. You can pick up the book the following week or year, and there are all your points of agreement, disagreement, doubt, and inquiry. It's like resuming an interrupted conversation with the advantage of being able to pick up where you left off. And that is exactly what reading a book should be: a conversation between you and the author. Presumably he knows more about the subject than you do; naturally, you'll have the proper humility as you approach him. But don't let anybody tell you that a reader is supposed to be solely on the receiving end. Understanding is a two-way operation; learning doesn't consist in being an empty receptacle. The learner has to question himself and question the teacher. He even has to argue with the teacher, once he understands what the teacher is saying. And marking a book is literally an expression of differences, or agreements of opinion, with the author. There are all kinds of devices for marking a book intelligently and fruitfully. Here's the way I do it: Underlining (or highlighting): of major points, of important or forceful statements. Vertical lines at the margin: to emphasize a statement already underlined. Star, asterisk, or other doo-dad at the margin: to be used sparingly, to emphasize the ten or twenty most important statements in the book. (You may want to fold the bottom comer of each page on which you use such marks. It won't hurt the sturdy paper on which most modern books are printed, and you will be able take the book off the shelf at any time and, by opening it at the folded-corner page, refresh your recollection of the book.) Numbers in the margin: to indicate the sequence of points the author makes in developing a single argument. Numbers of other pages in the margin: to indicate where else in the book the author made points relevant to the point marked; to tie up the ideas in a book, which, though they may be separated by many pages, belong together. Circling or highlighting of key words or phrases. Writing in the margin, or at the top or bottom of the page, for the sake of: recording questions (and perhaps answers) which a passage raised in your mind; reducing a complicated discussion to a simple statement; recording the sequence of major points right through the books. I use the end-papers at the back of the book to make a personal index of the author's points in the order of their appearance. The front end-papers are to me the most important. Some people reserve them for a fancy bookplate. I reserve them for fancy thinking. After I have finished reading the book and making my personal index on the back end-papers, I turn to the front and try to outline the book, not page by page or point by point (I've already done that at the back), but as an integrated structure, with a basic unity and an order of parts. This outline is, to me, the measure of my understanding of the work. If you're a die-hard anti-book-marker, you may object that the margins, the space between the lines, and the end-papers don't give you room enough. All right. How about using a scratch pad slightly smaller than the page-size of the book -- so that the edges of the sheets won't protrude? Make your index, outlines and even your notes on the pad, and then insert these sheets permanently inside the front and back covers of the book. Or, you may say that this business of marking books is going to slow up your reading. It probably will. That's one of the reasons for doing it. Most of us have been taken in by the notion that speed of reading is a measure of our intelligence. There is no such thing as the right speed for intelligent reading. Some things should be read quickly and effortlessly and some should be read slowly and even laboriously. The sign of intelligence in reading is the ability to read different things differently according to their worth. In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through you -- how many you can make your own. A few friends are better than a thousand acquaintances. If this be your aim, as it should be, you will not be impatient if it takes more time and effort to read a great book than it does a newspaper. You may have one final objection to marking books. You can't lend them to your friends because nobody else can read them without being distracted by your notes. Furthermore, you won't want to lend them because a marked copy is kind of an intellectual diary, and lending it is almost like giving your mind away. If your friend wishes to read your Plutarch's Lives, Shakespeare, or The Federalist Papers, tell him gently but firmly, to buy a copy. You will lend him your car or your coat -- but your books are as much a part of you as your head or your heart.

Week of Feb. 9-13 MARK TWAIN/SATIRE

AGENDA:

Work on Mark Twain Essays and Satire

Twain's  "Cooper's Literary Offenses"
"Advice to Youth"---answer questions and do the vocabulary.  Vocabulary test on Friday. 
http://nedstuckeyfrench.com/essays-in-america/advice-to-youth-by-mark-twain-1882/
Satire Packet--Answer First and Second Reading questions.  Turn in for credit.
Read aloud--Diary of Adam and Eve

http://wn.com/the_diary_of_adam_and_eve

Quiz on Friday:  Spelling---to  "except"
Latin/Greek prefixes
Vocabulary from "Advice to Youth"
Characteristics of satire

Satire

ESSENTIAL QUESTION:

What are the two types of satire?

Definitions

Satire--Literary art of diminishing a subject by making it ridiculous and evoking toward it attitudes of amusement, contempt, scorn or indignation.  Takes its form from the genre it spoofs.

Horatian satire--After the Roman satirist Horace:  Satire in which the voice is indulgent, tolerant, amused, and witty.  The speaker holds up to gentle ridicule the absurdities and follies of human beings, aiming at producing in the reader not the anger of a Juvenal, but a wry smile.

Juvenalian satire--After the Roman satirist Juvenal:  Formal satire in which the speaker attacks vice and error with contempt and indignation  Juvenalian satire in its realism and its harshness is in strong contrast to Horatian satire.

Burlesque-- A form of comedy characterized by ridiculous exaggeration and distortion.A serious subject may be treated frivolously or a frivolous subject seriously.  The essential quality that makes for burlesque is the discrepancy between subject matter and style.  That is, a style ordinarily dignified may be used for nonsensical matter, or a style very nonsensical may be used to ridicule a weighty subject.

Parody--A composition that imitates the serious manner and characteristic features of a particular work, or the distinctive style of its maker, and applies the imitation to a lowly or comically inappropriate subject.  Often a parody is more powerful in its influence on affairs of current importance--politics for instance--than its original composition.  It is a variety of burlesque.
Irony--Saying one thing and meaning another.



There are three main types of satire: Horatian, Juvenalian, and Menippean. While each type is distinct from the other in some factors, any satire may contain elements of all three. Horatian satire gently mocks, Juvenal aims to destroy and to provoke, and Menippean spreads its mental barbs at a wide number of targets. These types should not be confused with the different satirical devices, such as wit, sarcasm, and irony.
Horatian satire is the gentlest of the types of satire. It does not aim to find evil in things; instead, it is done from an affectionate, almost loving point of view. The emphasis is put on humor and on making fun of human dysfunction. While the subject of the fun can be social vices, it is usually an individual's follies that are teased. A key element of Horatian satire, unlike most other types, is that the audience is also laughing at themselves as well as at the subject of the mockery.
A good example of Horatian satire is the works of Jane Austen. Her novels, such as Pride and Prejudice, are mild mockeries of the Gothic novels produced by other female writers of her age. In Pride and Prejudice, she turns her Horatian satire on people and how they are viewed by the rest of society. This includes the noble landowner in Mr. Darcy, the priest in William Collins, and soldiers such as George Wickham.

Juvenal satire is the harshest type of satire, and it does not hold back in its barbed lacerations of its targets. Social vices, individuals, companies, and organizations can be the targets. The purpose of such invectives is to provoke an angry reaction from the audience aimed at the subject. As a result of this intention, the humor is put into the background and biting social criticism and polarized opinion come to the forefront.
William Golding's Lord of the Flies is a good example of Juvenalian satire. The object of mockery is people's need for power and rules, and it also mocks the lengths which people go to in order to obtain power and how this lust changes them. It is also an unsentimental look at the relationships between boys and how awful they can be.
Menippean satire is named after Menippus, and most closely resembles Juvenal's ideas on satire; however, it lacks the focus of a primary target. Rather than a single target, it takes a scattergun approach that aims poisonous prongs at multiple targets. As well as not sustaining narrative and being more rhapsodic, Menippean satire is also more mental. That said, this type of humor is typically baser at the same time.
While primary examples of the types of satire as produced by Horace and Juvenal themselves survive, the same cannot be said of Menippus. A good example of Menippean satire is Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. The whole novel is a random collection of satires about people Carroll knew or knew of and of Oxford itself, both as a city and as a lifestyle.

More about satire:

Satire can be described as the literary art of diminishing or derogating a subject by making it ridiculous and evoking toward it attitudes of amusement, contempt, scorn, or indignation. It differs from the comic in that comedy evokes laughter mainly as an end in itself, while satire "derides"; that is, it uses laughter as a weapon, and against a butt existing outside the work itself. That butt may be an individual (in "personal satire"), or a type of person, a class, an institution, a nation, or even (as in Rochester's "A Satyr against Mankind," 1675, and much of Swift's Gulliver's Travels, 1726, especially Book IV) the whole human race. The distinction between the comic and the satiric, however, is a sharp one only at its extremes. Shakespeare's Falstaff is a comic creation, presented without derision for our unmitigated enjoyment; the puritanical Malvolio in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night is for the most part comic but has aspects of satire directed against the type of the fatuous and hypocritical Puritan; Jonson's Volpone (1607) clearly satirizes the type of man whose cleverness—or stupidity—is put at the service of his cupidity; and Dryden's MacFlecknoe (1682), while representing a permanent type of the pretentious poetaster, ridiculed specifically the living author Shadwell.
Satire has usually been justified by those who practice it as a corrective of human vice and folly; Pope remarked that "those who are ashamed of nothing else are so of being ridiculous." Its frequent claim (not always borne out in the practice) has been to ridicule the failing rather than the individual, and to limit its ridicule to corrigible faults, excluding those for which a person is not responsible. As Swift said, speaking of himself in his ironic "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift" (1739):

Yet malice never was his aim;
He lashed the vice, but spared the name. . . .
His satire points at no defect,
But what all mortals may correct. . . .
He spared a hump, or crooked nose,
Whose owners set not up for beaux.

Satire occurs as an incidental element in many works whose overall mode is not satiric—in a certain character, or situation, or interpolated passage of ironic commentary on some aspect of the human condition or of contemporary society. But in many literary achievements, verse or prose, the attempt to diminish a subject by ridicule is the organizing principle of the whole, and these works constitute the formal genre of "satires." In discussing such writings the following distinctions are useful.
(1) Critics make a broad division between formal (or "direct") satire and indirect satire. In formal satire the satiric voice speaks out in the first person; this "I" may address either the reader (as in Pope's Moral Essays, 1731-35; for example, Epistle II, "Of the characters of Women") or else a character within the work itself, who is called the adversarius and whose major function is to elicit and guide the satiric speaker's comments. (In Pope's "Epistle to Dr. Arbuth-not," 1735, Arbuthnot serves as adversarius.) Two types of formal satire are commonly distinguished, taking their names from the great Roman satirists Horace and Juvenal. The types are defined by the character of the persona whom the author presents as the first-person satiric speaker, and by the attitude and tone that such a persona manifests toward the subject matter and the readers of the work.
In Horatian satire the character of the speaker is that of an urbane, witty, and tolerant man of the world, who is moved more often to wry amusement than to indignation at the spectacle of human folly, pretentiousness, and hypocrisy, and who uses a relaxed and informal language to evoke from readers a smile at human follies and absurdities—sometimes including his own. Pope's Moral Essays and other formal satires for the most part sustain an Horatian stance.
In Juvenalian satire the character of the speaker is that of a serious moralist who uses a dignified and public style of utterance to decry modes of vice and error which are no less dangerous because they are ridiculous, and who undertakes to evoke from readers contempt, moral indignation, or an unillusioned sadness at the aberrations of humanity. Samuel Johnson's "London" (1738) and "The Vanity of Human Wishes" (1749) are distinguished instances of Juvenalian satire,

(2) Indirect satire is cast in another literary form than that of direct address. The most common indirect form is that of a fictional narrative, in which the objects of the satire are characters who make themselves and their opinions ridiculous by what they think, say, and do, and are sometimes made even more ridiculous by the author's comments and narrative style.
One type of indirect satire is Menippean satire, named for its Greek originator, the philosophical Cynic Menippus. It is sometimes called Varronian satire, after a Roman imitator, Varro; while Northrop Frye, in Anatomy of Criticism, pp. 308-12, suggests an alternative name, the anatomy, after a major English instance of the type, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (1621). Such satires are written in prose—though often with interpolated passages of verse—and constitute a miscellaneous form often held together by a loosely constructed narrative. Their major feature, however, is a series of extended dialogues and debates (often conducted at a banquet or party) in which a group of loquacious eccentrics, pedants, literary people, and representatives of various professions or philosophical points of view serve to make ludicrous the attitudes and viewpoints they typify by the arguments they urge in their support. Examples are Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel (1564), Voltaire's Candide (1759), Thomas Love Peacock's Nightmare Abbey (1818) and other satiric fiction, and Huxley's Point Counter Point (1928), in which, as in Peacock, the central satiric scenes are discussions during a weekend at a country manor. Frye also classifies Lewis Carroll's two books about Alice in wonderland as "perfect Menippean satires."

Irony/Satire

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satire#Horatian_vs_Juvenalian

Horatian vs Juvenalian

"Le satire e l'epistole di Q. Orazio Flacco", printed in 1814.

Satirical literature can commonly be categorized as either Horatian or Juvenalian,^[15] although the two are not entirely mutually exclusive.
Horatian satire, named for the Roman satirist, Horace (65 BCE – 8 BCE), playfully criticizes some social vice through gentle, mild, and light-hearted humour. It directs wit, exaggeration, and self-deprecating humour toward what it identifies as folly, rather than evil.^{[citation needed]} Horatian satire's sympathetic tone is common in modern society.^{[citation needed]} Examples of Horatian satire include:

• Daniel Defoe's The True-Born Englishman
• Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock
• C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters
• Matt Groening's The Simpsons
• Rick Mercer's The Rick Mercer Report
• The Ig Nobel Prizes.
• Have I Got News For You

Juvenalian satire, named after the Roman satirist Juvenal (late 1st century - early 2nd century CE), is a type of satire that is more contemptuous and abrasive than the Horatian. Juvenalian satire addresses social evil through scorn, outrage, and savage ridicule. This form is often pessimistic, characterized by irony, sarcasm, moral indignation and personal invective, with less emphasis on humour. Strongly polarized political satire is often Juvenalian.
Examples of Juvenalian satire:

• Joseph Hall's Virgidemiarum
• Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal and The Predictions for the Ensuing Year (written as Isaac Bickerstaff).
• Samuel Johnson's London
• George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm
• Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho
• Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451
• William Golding's Lord of the Flies
• Stanley Kubrick's Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
• Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
• Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange
• Chris Morris's "Brasseye" & "The Day Today"
• Joseph Heller's Catch-22
• William Burroughs' Naked Lunch
• Jon Stewart's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
• Stephen Colbert's performance at the 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner
• Trey Parker & Matt Stone's South Park
• Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy^{[citation needed]}
• Julian Barnes' England, England

Compare and contrast Twain's "Advice to Youth" with the essay below.  Which one uses Horatian satire and which one Juvenalian?  Cite passages that support your argument.

Only a Nigger

By Mark Twain

Buffalo Express (Aug. 26, 1869).

 
 

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This short satirical essay was published in the Buffalo Express while Mark Twain was co-owner and editor of that newspaper. It appeared unsigned but has been attributed to Mark Twain in Philip S. Foner's Mark Twain: Social Critic (New York: International Publishers, 1958), and is included in Mark Twain at the Buffalo Express, ed. Joseph B. McCullough and Janice McIntire-Strasburg (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1999), which is the source of the text presented here.

"Only a Nigger" is important within Mark Twain's writings as an early protest against lynching, a subject he addressed most powerfully in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) and "The United States of Lyncherdom" (1901), and for its self-conscious use of the word "nigger." Objections to the repeated use of that word in Huckleberry Finn are commonly raised by those who would like to see the book removed from school reading lists today. In this essay, written seven years before he began work on Huckleberry Finn, Twain clearly uses the word to signify the racist dehumanization of African Americans by Southern whites. Twain's satirical use of the word here provides a background for understanding his similar use of the word in chapter 32 of Huckleberry Finn, when Aunt Sally asks if anyone was hurt in a steamboat accident. Huck replies, "No'm. Killed a nigger." In the novel, Mark Twain let Huck speak as a young boy raised in a slaveholding community. In "Only a Nigger," he uses the words negroes and negro, and consistently puts "nigger" in quotes to indicate that it is the dehumanizing word used by the Southerners whose mob law he is criticizing in the essay.

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A dispatch from Memphis mentions that, of two negroes lately sentenced to death for murder in that vicinity, one named Woods has just confessed to having ravished a young lady during the war, for which deed another negro was hung at the time by an avenging mob, the evidence that doomed the guiltless wretch being a hat which Woods now relates that he stole from its owner and left behind, for the purpose of misleading. Ah, well! Too bad, to be sure! A little blunder in the administration of justice by Southern mob-law; but nothing to speak of. Only "a nigger" killed by mistake -- that is all. Of course, every high toned gentleman whose chivalric impulses were so unfortunately misled in this affair, by the cunning of the miscreant Woods, is as sorry about it as a high toned gentleman can be expected to be sorry about the unlucky fate of "a nigger." But mistakes will happen, even in the conduct of the best regulated and most high toned mobs, and surely there is no good reason why Southern gentlemen should worry themselves with useless regrets, so long as only an innocent "nigger" is hanged, or roasted or knouted to death, now and then. What if the blunder of lynching the wrong man does happen once in four or five cases! Is that any fair argument against the cultivation and indulgence of those fine chivalric passions and that noble Southern spirit which will not brook the slow and cold formalities of regular law, when outraged white womanhood appeals for vengeance? Perish the thought so unworthy of a Southern soul! Leave it to the sentimentalism and humanitarianism of a cold-blooded Yankee civilization! What are the lives of a few "niggers" in comparison with the preservation of the impetuous instincts of a proud and fiery race? Keep ready the halter, therefore, oh chivalry of Memphis! Keep the lash knotted; keep the brand and the faggots in waiting, for prompt work with the next "nigger" who may be suspected of any damnable crime! Wreak a swift vengeance upon him, for the satisfaction of the noble impulses that animate knightly hearts, and then leave time and accident to discover, if they will, whether he was guilty or no.