Huck Finn

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Recommended: Preface to Pygmalion

Pg. 2
“After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all abut him; but by and by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn’t care no more abut him, because I don’t take no stock in dead people.”

In the beginning of the book, when Huck is first taken into Widow Douglas’ house, she tries to get him to be more civilized. She reads to him from the Bible, teaches him how to read and behave, and even forces him to wear shoes. This quote was [I’m guessing] Huck’s first encounter with religion, because obviously his father wouldn’t have taken him to church. Huck is first intrigued by the adventures people experienced, but is quickly bored when he finds out that they all died a while ago.
In this passage, Mark Twain uses Huck to show his objection to the blind faith that civilized society places towards religion. I’m guessing Mark Twain wasn’t a very religious man. This whole book is on the different downfalls of society, and I guess Mark Twain considers religion to be one of those. I do agree with him on this count. Although I’m Christian, I do agree with the various slight comments he makes throughout the book to show how people fell it’s ok to do whatever as long as they can justify it by the bible or something.

Pg. 12
“per'aps if we keep them till they're ransomed, it means that we keep them till they're dead.”

When Huck Finn sneaks out to go play with Tom Sawyer and all their other friends, they decide to form a gang of robbers. They decide to hold people ransom, except they don’t really know what ransom is, so Tom just comes up with a meaning to the word that he thinks sounds about right. All of the boys in the gang agree. I think this quote fits in with the theme of the book “satire of society.” While the meaning of the word ransom may not be a crucial topic, the concept that I think Mark Twain is trying to illustrate is that if one person says something everyone will follow. The boys have no way of knowing what the real meaning of ransom is, so they just blindly go along with whatever Tom suggests, and that is one of the biggest downfalls of society, even today.

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