ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY
FINN
BY: MARK TWAIN
Background Information
What is satire?
• Satire is the use of ____________ or sarcasm to
denounce or make fun of a specific idea, object,
concept, or person.
• Mark Twain uses satire to:
• show the wrong in a very serious problem,
_________________
• point out flaws in human nature
• point out social “ills” of the pre-Civil War time
frame
Who is Mark Twain?
• Mark Twain's real name was Samuel Langhorne
Clemens.
• Before becoming a writer, he held a variety of odd
jobs including piloting a _________________ up and
down the Mississippi River.
• He was licensed as a steamboat pilot in 1859 and
worked on the river until fighting there during the Civil
War ended traffic traveling from north to south.
• His experiences along the ____________ helped him
come up with his pen name, Mark Twain.
How did Twain get his pseudonym?
In 1863, when Clemens was 27, he wrote a
humorous travel story and decided to sign his name
"Mark Twain." This name comes from something
shouted by crewmen on a boat.
To test the depth of the water, a crewman shouts
"mark twain!" The crewman is calling for two
fathoms, or a depth of 12 feet, which is barely
enough for a boat to navigate safely.
"Twain" is an _____________________ of saying
"two" and a fathom is six feet. "Mark Twain" is a "pen
name" in the same way that many people in show
business use a "stage name."
What is the setting of Huck Finn?
• Time: Before the _________________;
roughly 1835–1845; Twain said the novel was
set forty to fifty years before the time of its
publication
• Place: The __________________ town of St.
Petersburg, Missouri; various locations along
the river through Arkansas
What is a major focus of Huck Finn?
• Slavery _____________ the moral fabric of
life
• Struggle against societies’ standards and
expectations
• Intellectual and _______________ education
• Hypocrisy of “civilized society”
What elements are necessary in an
American Novel (1851-1875)?
• 1. No geographic limitations
• 2. _________________________:
immigrants in large numbers were arriving to
the United States
• 3. Growth of industrialization: division of north
and south; north becomes industrialized, south
remains agricultural.
What was Twain’s original intention in writing
Huck Finn?
• He wanted to share his philosophy of society and culture at
the present time.
• Twain makes a social commentary about the
____________________________ of society, as well as
how people were treating each other unjustly.
– As a result, he depicts the issue of slavery very accurately; he creates
characters who represent the presiding attitudes of the time.
– This means you will see demeaning/cruel language and horrible
treatment of the slave characters, particularly Jim. This is to shed light
on just how poorly slaves were treated.
• Twain was convinced that slavery is
___________________________.
Why does the main character’s name seem out
of place?
• A “huckleberry” is a wild, dark blue berry
which resembles the blueberry.
• Huckleberries have hard seeds in the center
and a _________________ than the
blueberry
• Usually found in the eastern and northern parts
of the United States
Dialect in Huck Finn
• Representing the living speech of Twain’s day, the following
examples of various ____________ that typify a
__________________ of language found in the areas along
the Mississippi River.
• Missouri slave: Jim “Goodness gracious, is dat you, Huck? En
you ain’ dead-you ain’t drownded-you’s back ag’in? It’s too
good for true, honey, it’s too good for true. Lemme look at you
chile, lemme feel o’ you. No, you ain’ dead! you’s back ag’in,
‘live en soun’, jis de same ole Huck-de same ole Huck, thanks
to goodness!”
• Extremist form of the backwoods Southwestern dialect:
Arkansas Gossips (Sister Hotchkiss) “Look at that-air grindstone,
s’I; want to tell me’t any cretur ‘t’s in his right mind’s a-goin’
to scrabble all them crazy things onto a grindstone? s’I.”
Dialect cont
• Ordinary _______________ : Huck “My folks was living in Pike
County, in Missouri, where I was born, and they all died off but me
and pa and my brother Ike.”
• Modified “Pike County”: Thief on the Sir Walter Scott, Jake
Packard “I’m unfavorable to killin’ a man as long as you can git
aroun’ it, it ain’t good sense, it ain’t good morals. Ain’t I right?”
• Modified “Pike County”: King “Well, I’d ben a-runnin’ a little
temperence revival thar ‘bout a week . . . and business a-growin’
all the time, when somehow or another a little report got around
last night that I had a way of puttin’ in my time with a private jug
on the sly.”
Dialect cont.
• Modified “Pike County”: Bricksville Loafers “Gimme a chaw
‘v tobacker, Hank.”
• “Cain’t; I hain’t got but one chaw left. Ask Bill.”
• Modified “Pike County”: Aunt Sally and Uncle Silas Phelps
“Good-ness gracious!” she says, “what in the world can have
become of him?”
• “I can’t imagine,” says the old gentleman; “and I must say it
makes me dreadful uneasy.”