Reading Prompts for the class of October 23 - Chapter 11 of Huckleberry Finn + Ellen Watkins, "The Two Offers"

Choose one or more:

1.  In chapter XI of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck tries to embody the stereotypes of being a girl in the 19th C but he fails. In what ways do the two cousins in Watkins' story (not) conform to the same or other stereotypes? Isn't it more the women's mind that's at stake in that story? How are differences characterized.

2. Comment on the shift(s) from direct to indirect speech in "The Two Offers" and on the effects they convey to the readers.

3. In keeping with the text's style, write a short creative piece imagining how Laura, at the end of her life, would answer to Janette's question: "Well, suppose there is [the risk of being an old maid], is that the most dreadful fate that can befall a woman?

Chronology of political events in the US (mid 19th C)

 

1845

• March 1: President John Tyler signs official proposal of statehood for Texas. Mexican leaders warn that annexing Texas could lead to war.
• March 4. Democrat James K. Polk elected President

• 1846

  • May 13: US Congress declares war on Mexico.

  1847

  • February 22-23: The Battle of Buena Vista is the last major battle in the northern theater. The Americans will hold the ground they gained until the end of the war, but not advance any farther.
  1848
  • March 10: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is ratified by the USA. The treaty called for the U.S. to pay US$15 million to Mexico.  It gave the United States the Rio Grande as a boundary for Texas, and gave the U.S. ownership of California and a large area comprising roughly half of New Mexico, most of Arizona, Nevada, and Utah, and parts of Wyoming and Colorado. 
  • 1849
  • Gold discovered in California
  • 1850
  • The compromise of 1850 (including the Fugitive Slave Law)
  • 1852
  • Franklin Pierce - Democrat president elected; Jefferson Davis is his secretary of War
  • 1854
  • Kansas-Nebraska Act (Kansas becoming a slave state infringes the Missouri compromise)

Reading prompts for the class of October 18: Huck Finn, chap 10 + excerpt from "The Heroic Slave" by F. Douglass

As always, choose either of the reading prompts to comment on:

 

HW for October 15 - William Apess, an Indian's Looking Glass (1833) and Huck Finn, once more

 Comment on one or more of the reading prompts:

1. What can you interpret from William Apess's use of deictics  (you may compare this with the use of pronouns in "The Declaration of Independence")

2. Choose 2-3 rhetorical questions from the text and analyse them in terms of effect.

2. In chapter VIII of Huckleberry Finn, Huck decides to side with Jim even if for that he is accused of being an Abolitionist. How moral or contradictory with the Church of the time do you find that decision, having in mind the "sermon"/speech given by William Apess to his audience?

HW for Oct. 10 - "Young Goodman Brown" by N. Hawthorne, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (until chapter 9)

 Comment on one (or more) of these reading prompts:

1. Present a literary text analysis of the incipit (initial part) of "Young Goodman, Brown":

YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN came forth at sunset, into the street of Salem village, but put his head back, after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young wife. And Faith, as the wife was aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street, letting the wind play with the pink ribbons of her cap, while she called to Goodman Brown. 

"Dearest heart," whispered she, softly and rather sadly, when her lips were close to his ear, "pr'y thee, put off your journey until sunrise, and sleep in your own bed to-night. A lone woman is troubled with such dreams and such thoughts, that she's afeard of herself, sometimes. Pray, tarry with me this night, dear husband, of all nights in the year!"

2. Compare Young Goodman, Brown, and Huck Finn in terms of their attitude towards religion and/or morality.

3. Compare the strategies of direct speech in Nathaniel Hawthorne's tale and Mark Twain's novel.

HW for October 9 - "Rip van Winkle" by Washington Irving (and the inevitable "Huck Finn")

 Answer to one of the following:

1. Read here about nine types of heroes in fiction, and justify how you would classify Huck Finn and Rip van Winkle. Which characteristics do they share and what draws them apart?

2. Can you draw contrasts and resemblances between the use of the sceneries of the "woods" and wilderness in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and "Rip van Winkle"? Justify

HW for October 4 - close reading practice

 Choose one of the following passages from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for a close-reading analysis, focussed on the literary and cultural aspects that you find more relevant. 

Suggested topics: theme(s) and structure; importance of the text within the context of the author’s work and time; subject of the enunciation; point of view and effect upon the reader/addressee; rhetoric and linguistic devices and language tropes (descriptive, lyric or dramatic text type, figures of speech, symbolism, innovation / surprising markers, collocations, or pattern traces within the author’s work); intertextuality with texts studied in this class or others.

chapter V, p. 32:

"And looky here – you drop that school, you hear? I’ll learn people to bring up a boy to put on airs over his own father and let on to be better’n what HE is. You lemme catch you fooling around that school again, you hear? Your mother couldn’t read, and she couldn’t write, nuther, before she died. None of the family couldn’t before THEY died. I can’t; and here you’re a-swelling yourself up like this. I ain’t the man to stand it – you hear? Say, lemme hear you read.”

I took up a book and begun something about General Washington and the wars. When I’d read about a half a minute, he fetched the book a whack with his hand and knocked it across the house."

chapter VII, p. 46-47:

"They won’t ever hunt the river for anything but my dead carcass. They’ll soon get tired of that, and won’t bother no more about me. All right; I can stop anywhere I want to. Jackson’s Island is good enough for me; I know that island pretty well, and nobody ever comes there. And then I can paddle over to town nights, and slink around and pick up things I want. Jackson’s Island’s the place.

I was pretty tired, and the first thing I knowed I was asleep. When I woke up I didn’t know where I was for a minute. I set up and looked around, a little scared. Then I remembered. The river looked miles and miles across. The moon was so bright I could a counted the drift logs that went a-slipping along, black and still, hundreds of yards out from shore. Everything was dead quiet, and it looked late, and SMELT late. You know what I mean–I don’t know the words to put it in."