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21st Century Teaching

Posted by Mr. Dittes on February 03, 2011

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Huckleberry Finn, chapters 9-17: A Friendship Grows

In the second section of Huckleberry Finn, which we read as we studied Americans' relentless westward expansion and horror-filled Gothic lives, Huck and Jim grow as friends. Nowadays, interracial friendships and romances are so common, they seldom even get noticed. From Eminem and Rihanna singing in a duet to Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson in "Shanghai Knights," race isn't something we expect to fight about anymore. But in Huck Finn's day, before the Civil War when slaves like Jim had no rights, race was a big deal. The idea of a white boy--even one as poor and woebegone as Huck--forming a real relationship with a black man like Jim was quite revolutionary. Chapter 9 of your reading began with Huck and Jim setting off from Jackson Island down the Mississippi. Throughout a number of adventures, their loyalties were tested--especially as Huck found people all too willing to kidnap an escaped slave and return him for a nice reward. By Chapter 17, they had become

Huck Finn: Essay Questions, first eight chapters

In these first eight chapters of Huckleberry Finn, I see connections with the literature that we read (covering American literature from pre-1492 to the writing of the Constitution in 1787-88). I see a lot of Thomas Jefferson in Tom Sawyer , the way he set up a gang of robbers and tried to govern them. I think Jim , with his superstition and his witchcraft, would have been quite infamous in Salem . I think the Widow Douglass and Jonathan Edwards had a hell of a lot in common I read about Pap and Huck's struggles to be free of his drunkenness, and I can almost see King George III , fighting to keep the American colonies under his thumb. I try to see similarities between these events and me . I connect with the stories and the characters. How do you connect with Huckleberry Finn? What are some stories from the reading that you identified with? Leave your answer as a comment below. To receive credit, agree or disagree with one of the connections I mention above in an essay of

Huckleberry Finn, chapters 17-33: Whom Can You Believe?

One of the first lessons we learned was "don't talk to strangers," and there was a good reason for that lesson: you can't trust everyone; some people are just out to hurt you. The story of Huckleberry Finn is really a story about a boy learning to trust. The people he should trust--his pa and his friend, Tom Sawyer--aren't really trustworthy. And he has traveled down the river with an escaped slave that most people would argue should not be trusted. This reaches a climax in Chapter 31, when Huck decides to write a letter to Miss Watson. He wants to tell her where Jim is and how to get him back. That's the truth, after all. If he confesses, then he'll be right. But it would also be wrong, returning a many to a life of slavery--and a friend at that. The moral climax of the book happens here: I took [the letter] up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a mi

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