Starting the reading in chapter one I found out that Huckleberry is simply a boy that has a troublesome dad, Miss Watson who should be his actual guardian, and so far his friends including Tom Sawyer who are all in a robber club destined to kidnap and steal treasure and women. Huck is young maybe about ten years old and lives with Miss Watson who, you could say, trains him to be a good boy. She is religious and teaches Huck about heaven and hell. I found this to be humorous in chapter one on page 8 when Huck said he wanted to smoke. Asking Miss Watson if he could she returns the answer no because she said “it’s a mean practice and wasn’t clean.” But of course, Widow or Miss Watson takes snuff which is ok in her mind. Just by reading this I came up with a hypothesis that throughout the book nothing will really seem to go in the favor of Huckleberry.
Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry are young, naive, and gullible. Anything Tom reads in books he believes will come true. The gang/ club they have with other boys think a ransom is when you keep someone kidnapped until they die. This proves that having Huckleberry Fin as the narrator of the book is and will be hard for readers to believe in him. He would be called an unreliable narrator.
I also learned that throughout this reading people back then were very superstitious. In chapter one when huckleberry accidentally flicked a spider into a candle and burned it he didn’t know if that was a sign that bad luck was coming his way. Another superstitious event is when Huck accidentally spilt salt on the table and threw it over his shoulder and widow yelled at him. This further proves my point that Huckleberry is an unlucky boy.
Fast forwarding through the reading, I come to the part when Huck’s pap comes and takes him away from widow and school so he had control of him. Maybe he is intimidated by the fact that he’s a drunk and his son is smarter than him by going to school. Or maybe he just likes the feeling of being in control. Either or, Huck and is pap now live down the river away from everyone and everything and slowly Huck began liking the feeling of living on their own and fending for themselves. He wonders why he even liked being polite and sophisticated in the first place. The only downside to living down the river with his pap was that his pap was a drunk and abused him. Whenever he left for town to get more liquor there was a chance he would not be back for days while Huck was locked up inside. Huck comes up with this plan to escape and runaway but to frame it to look like someone killed him and dumped his body in the river. He pulled it off and ended up on an island.
While on the island a known but unknown friend appears on the same island. Miss Watson’s Jim or slave has runaway also because Miss Watson could not afford him anymore so he was going to be lynched or killed. Through chapter 8 through 11 Huck and Jim runaway together and face challenges together including finding a house with a dead man in it. I thought this was strange that a random dead man was in the house but they didn’t think anything of it. Back then it must have been not a rare thing to walk into a home with a dead man on the floor because then they continue to steal items from the house.
I noticed satire in chapter 8 when Mark Twain makes fun of religious people who think whenever you pray to God he will make it happen. When the search for Huck was on people put out loaves of bread to see where his body would have floated to. When a loaf reaches Huck he eats it and says,” I reckon the widow or the parson or somebody prayed that this bread would find me and it has gone and done it.” Twain fools around with the idea that religious people who pray for something to happen think it will happen. In this case it did just not in favor of the person praying. I thought this event was quite humorous.
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