The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn
By Mark Twain
Historical Background
Novel is set along the Mississippi River during the
1830s or 1840s.
This region was still a frontier area.
Large stretches of land were sparsely inhabited.
Few cities and towns.
Majority of people lived off the land, farming, hunting,
fishing and trapping.
Industrialization was still in its early stages.
Steam technology was becoming dominant.
Historical Background
Few schools in rural Missouri, Illinois, Arkansas, and
Mississippi.
Most children attended classes only long enough to
learn to read and write.
No theaters, libraries, or museums in the region.
Entertainment and popular education were offered by
traveling showmen, musicians, circus performers,
preachers, and lecturers.
In the 1830s and 1840s, after the North had abolished
slavery, there began the great national debate over its
extension in the new states created from the western
territories.
Historical Background
Northerners opposed the extension of slavery, citing moral as
well as practical objections.
Southern states were dependent on slave labor.
The whites in the South generally defended slavery and
supported its extension into the new states.
Most white Americans, no matter where they lived and what
their attitudes toward slavery were, agreed that black people
were intellectually and morally inferior to white people.
Racist beliefs, attitudes, and behavior that would be
considered reprehensible today were commonplace then.
The Fugitive Slave Act
The Fugitive Slave Act mandated the return of runaway
slaves, regardless of where in the Union they might be situated
at the time of their discovery or capture. Along with the
Kansas-Nebraska Act and the ratification of Kansas'
admission for free statehood, this legislation is part of the
chain of events which culminated in the American
Civil War.
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Setting
The main action takes place along the Mississippi River, which
propels Huck and Jim into the southern states of Tennessee,
Arkansas, and Mississippi.
The river functioned as the border between the relatively
settled and industrial East and the primarily unsettled and
undeveloped West.
The Miss. River was a major artery of transportation between
the North and the South. The Mississippi River and its
tributaries, the Ohio and the Missouri rivers, also connected
the East to the western frontier.
By the 1840s steamboats dominated the Mississippi, although
it was still possible to travel the river at little cost by raft,
flatboat, keelboat, and canoe.
Setting
On the Mississippi, rich and poor, Northerner and Southerner,
frontiersman and city dweller, come together seeking adventure.
Some, including Huck, traveled to escape from constraints of
civilization.
Others, including Jim, sought freedom in the next town, the next
state, or beyond the frontier.
The state of Missouri also represented a frontier between the North
and the South.
One of several border states between the free North and the
slaveholding South, it was torn between pro-slavery and anti-slavery
sentiment.
Slavery was permitted in Missouri, but the commitment to the
peculiar institution evidenced in the Deep South was not shared by
many white citizens of the state.
Racism and the “N” word
Pejorative word in the early nineteenth century, distinguishing
whites from slaves.
In general, who can or can't say the word? When, if ever, can it
be said?
How do you feel about the use of the word?
Is the use of the word in the classroom different from its use
outside the classroom?
Is it different to read a text by an African American who uses it
than it is to read it in a text by a non-African American? Why
or why not?
Does the use of the word in a "classic" literary work give it
validity outside of the classroom? If so, how?
Incident by Countee Cullen
Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee;
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.
Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, "Nigger."
I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember.
Stereotypes
Huck Finn is often criticized because of its use of stereotypes.
How were stereotypes used to justify slavery? To reassure slave
owners?
Why might slaves themselves have reinforced stereotypes?
How have slave stereotypes influenced portrayals of African
Americans today?
What do the Hughes and Dunbar poems express?
What are some "masks" that oppressed groups use? What is the
function of such a mask? How can masks be used as a form of
resistance?
We Wear the Mask – Paul Laurence Dunbar
WE wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!
Minstrel Man – Langston Hughes
Because my mouth
Is wide with laughter
And my throat
Is deep with song,
You do not think
I suffer after
I have held my pain
So long?
Because my mouth
Is wide with laughter,
You do not hear
My inner cry?
Because my feet
Are gay with dancing,
You do not know
I die?
Stereotypes and Satire
Consider portrayals of African Americans in movies,
television, and advertising today. What are the common
stereotypes? How are these stereotypes related to the slave
stereotypes? Have new stereotypes arisen as well?
Can stereotypes be used in a positive way?
Satire - the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in
exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.
- Although satire is usually meant to be funny, its greater
purpose is constructive social criticism, using wit as a weapon.
- This "militant" irony or sarcasm often professes to approve (or
at least accept as natural) the very things the satirist wishes to
attack.