Name _______________________________
McMennamy
English III – period _____
Date ________________________________
Chapters XXIV to XXIX
Vocabulary
1. store clothes – readymade clothing bought in a store; in Huck’s time most clothing was still homemade
2. duds – clothes
3. beaver – a hat made of beaver fur
4. Leviticus – the third book of the Old Testament; the story of Noah and the ark appears in the book of Genesis, not Leviticus
5. Ryo Janeero – Rio de Janeiro a city in Brazil
6. hare-lip – an inborn defect in which the upper lip is cleft like that of a hare
7. dissentering – dissenting; a dissenting minister in one who refuses to conform to an established church, especially the Church of England
8. yawl – a small boat used to carry passengers to and from a ship
9. flapdoodle – nonsense
10. doxolojer – doxology; a hymn in praise of God
11. bully – excellent
12. passel – a large number, a group
13. yaller-boys; yaller-jackets – gold coins
14. boss dodge – the cleverest trick of all
15. orgies – wild, unrestrained parties or celebrations; the king confuses orgies with obsequies, or funeral rites
16. flapper – hand
17. lingo – language
18. valley – valet; a personal servant
19. up a stump – cornered, in trouble
20. Congress-water – mineral water from the Congress Spring at Saratoga, New York
21. smouch – steal
22. beats – deadbeats; persons who sponge off others
23. melodeum – melodeon; a small organ
24. pison – poisonously, that is, as hard to take as poison
25. to blow on – to inform on, to accuse
26. Judus – Judas Iscariot; the disciple who betrayed Christ
27. erysipelas – erysipelas; an infectious disease accompanied by fever and inflammation of the skin
28. yaller janders – yellow jaundice; jaundice, a yellow coloring of the body due to malfunction of the liver
29. pluribus-unum mumps – e pluribus unum, Latin, meaning “one composed of many” and used as the motto of the U.S.; a dreadful form of mumps invented by Huck Finn
30. muggins – a foolish person
31. blethers – blathers; talks foolishly
32. cheek – impudence, daring boldness
33. Goliar – Goliath; the Philistine giant whom David slew (1 Samuel 17)
Questions
1. Jim appears briefly at the beginning and end of the Wilks episode
a. What does the duke do to Jim? Why?
b. At the end of Chapter 23, Jim appears in a most admirable and sympathetic light. How do you feel about his treatment by the duke?
2. After their success with the Royal Nonesuch, the duke and the king are ready to try some new swindle.
a. What important facts does the king learn from the “nice innocent-looking young country jake” he picks up near a town?
b. What fraudulent scheme does the king decide to try?
c. What role is Huck to play in this new scheme?
d. Why do you think Huck goes along with the king’s scheme, saying, “I see what he was up to; but I never said nothing, of course”?
3. How are the king and the duke received by the townsfolk? By the three girls?
4. Peter Wilk’s letter, which the king reads out loud to everybody, tells where a bag with six thousand dollars in gold coins is hidden in the cellar. Half his money is to be given to the girls, the other half to the two uncles.
a. When the duke and the king privately discover that the sum is four hundred and fifteen dollars short, what do they do? Why?
b. When they return from the cellar, what do the duke and the king do with the money? Why?
5. How does Dr. Robinson regard the duke and the king? What does he tell the girls about them?
6. How does Mary Jane respond to the doctor’s words? What does she do?
7. Why does Huck resolve to steal the gold back from the king?
8. After stealing the bag of gold, where does Huck hide it?
9. When the duke and the king miss the money, how does Huck keep them from suspecting him?
10. The king tells the girls he will take them back to England with him. He then sells the Wilks slaves to slave-traders and auctions off the rest of the property. How does the duke say he feels about taking this additional loot?
11. Huck tells Mary Jane the truth about the duke and the king.
a. What makes Huck reveal the whole fraud at this point?
b. Why does Huck not want Mary Jane to expose the duke and the king as imposters right away?
c. How does Huck persuade Mary Jane to go away without even seeing the duke and the king?
12. When the real Wilks brothers arrive, by what test does Levi Bell, the lawyer, try to prove which ones are the legitimate heirs and which ones are frauds? Why does the test fail?
13. The real Harvey Wilks suggests another test to tell the true brothers from the false. He challenges the king to describe what was tattooed on peter Wilk’s breast.
a. Since the answers of both the king and the real Harvey Wilks seem unable to satisfy the crowd, what does Lawyer Bell suggest?
b. When the coffin is opened, why does the “big rough husky” named Hines, who has hold of Huck’s wrist, let go?
14. Racing through the stormy night, Huck “borrows” a canoe and paddles to the raft?
a. With the raft floating down the river again, how does Huck feel?
b. What happens to change Huck’s mood?
15. The king is not only an utter scoundrel, but he is also an impressively bold and nimble liar.
a. How does the paragraph about 11 paragraphs into chapter 25 that begins “So the king he blattered on…” testify to the king’s talents?
b. When the duke secretly informs the king that he is using the word orgies for obsequies, how does the king cover up his blunder?
c. Huck assumes that the arrival of the real Wilks brothers on the scene will upset the king. How does the king actually respond to this new threat?
d. What does the king do when he is challenged to describe the tattoo on Peter Wilk’s breast?
16. Much of the king’s success as a confidence man depends on the fact that his victims are sentimental and foolish enough to be taken in by him.
a. What evidence of sentimentalism do you find among the townsfolk in chapter 25?
b. How does the response of Mary Jane and the crowd to the doctor’s warning give evidence of their foolishness?
c. The king, in his cynical wisdom, says to the duke, “ ‘Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?’ ” Does this observation seem to be true of most of the townspeople you have seen so far in the novel?
17. Throughout the Wilks episode, Huck comments with disapproval and even disgust on the king’s lies and poses. Yet you have seen that Huck is an inveterate liar himself, and that he often pretends to be somebody else. Is Huck justified in his disapproval? What difference do you see – if any – between Huck’s lies and disguises and those of the king?
18. Reread the 7th paragraph in chapter 28 that begins “I see I had spoken to sudden…” How does Huck feel about telling Mary Jane the truth? Do you find anything amusing about Huck’s point of view here?
19. When Huck tells the crowd about life in England, Levi Bell, the lawyer, interrupts with a comment on Huck’s talents as a liar. What is ironic about the following remark from the lawyer? “Set down, my boy; I wouldn’t strain myself if I was you. I reckon you ain’t used to lying, it don’t seem to come handy; what you want is practice. You do it pretty awkward.”
20. When the king tries to impress or deceive people, his language becomes as phony as he is.
a. Referring to the dead Peter Wilks, the king calls him “the diseased.” What word does the king really mean?
b. Why is the king’s confusion of orgies and obsequies especially comical?
c. The king’s attempts to use formal English often produce absurd results. Comment on each of the following phrases from Chapter 25:
(1) “The main principal friends”
(2) “He will name the same, to wit, as follows, viz.”
(3) “Him [the body of Peter Wilks] that lays yonder, cold but joyful”
21. In the beginning of Chapter 25, Huck’s language makes us view the crowd of townspeople unfavorably. How does the italicized portion of the following sentence suggest the psychology of a mob?
“Pretty soon we was in the middle of a crowd, and the noise of the tramping was like a soldier march.”
22. In contrast to the disgusting sentimentality of the king and the crowd, Huck says that the people’s singing “made you feel as good as church letting out.” Why is this simile, coming just after the king’s speech “all full of tears and flapdoodle,” especially valid for Huck?
23. Huck’s description of the funeral of Peter Wilks sparkles with comic touches. (Chapter 27)
a. At the sound of the melodeon playing, Huck comments that “Peter was the only one that had a good thing, according to my notion.” Explain.
b. Note Huck’s choice of words to describe the undertaker.
(1) What striking adjectives does Huck use?
(2) What verb does Huck use most often to suggest the undertaker’s way of walking?
24. Huck says admiringly of Mary Jane that “she had more sand in her than any girl I ever see; in my opinion she was just full of sand.” What does Huck mean by sand?
25. Greed proves to be the downfall of the king and the duke.
a. Explain how this is true.
b. Mention at least one other instance in the story when greed caused one ore more characters to lose everything.
Chapters XXX to XXXI
Vocabulary
1. shekel – a coin
2. Spanish moss – a plant with long, hanging, grayish-green tufts that grows on trees in the southern United States
3. yellocution – elocution; the art of public speaking; Huck’s version of the word suggests that the two frauds’ elocution was mostly yelling
4. doggery – a cheap bar or saloon
5. shook the reefs out – let out sail on a boat to catch more wind and thus go faster
6. no-siree-bob – an emphatic no; not at all
7. shirk – sneak away, avoid
Questions
1. How did the gold save the duke and the king?
2. Why does neither the duke nor the king suspect Huck of having stolen the gold?
3. From the boy walking on the road near Pikesville, what does Huck learn has happened to Jim?
4. Alone on the raft, Huck suffers agonies of guilt and misery.
a. Of what does Huck feel guilty?
b. What letter does he think he should write?
c. What does he do with the letter?
d. What does Huck finally resolve to do about Jim?
5. The argument between the duke and the king in chapter 30 is an amusing contradiction of Sir Walter Scott’s famous saying: “There is honor among thieves.”
a. As a result of the king’s careful probing, what truth is revealed about the secret thoughts of each man had concerning the gold?
b. The duke, who is younger and stronger than the king, forces the old man to confess that he took the money and hid it in the coffin. What is ironic about this “confession”?
6. Huck says, “You can’t pray a lie – I found that out.” What is the lie that keeps Huck from praying?
7. The duke remarks that if they had not escaped from the angry mob, “ ‘We’d ‘a’ slept in our cravats to-night – cravats warranted to wear, too – longer than we’d need ‘em.’ ” What are cravats? In what humorous sense does the duke use the word?
8. After writing the letter to Miss Watson, Huck is racked with indecision. “I was a-trembling,” he says, “because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it.” What do you think these two things are?
9. Why does Huck tear up the letter he has written?
10. As a result of this moral crisis in his life, does Huck realize that the institution of slavery itself is wrong? Give evidence to support your answer.
11. Does Huck’s attitude toward the institution of slavery make his decision to help Jim escape seem more or less admirable? Explain.
12. Many readers of Huckleberry Finn regard Huck’s struggle with his conscience in Chapter 31 as the climax of the novel.
a. What earlier episode, in which Huck experiences a similar moral conflict regarding Jim, foreshadows this final struggle?
b. In what way is Huck’s final decision more courageous than his earlier action regarding Jim?
Chapter XXXII to XXXIX
Vocabulary
1. nap – a soft fuzzy surface on fabric or leather
2. smokehouse – a building in which meat or fish is cured, or preserved, by exposing it to dense smoke
3. ash-hopper – a container to hold ashes, once used with animals fat (tallow) in making soap
4. gourd – a part of the hollow shell of a hard-rind fruit of the squash family, used here as a dipper
5. spinning-wheel – a small household machine once used for spinning thread from a bunch of cotton, flax or wool; the thread, or yarn, was later woven into cloth
6. rolling-pin – a long, heavy wooden cylinder for rolling out the dough used in baking
7. spinning-stick – the slender staff, or distaff, once used to hold the bunch of fibers from which thread was spun
8. Lally Rook – Lalla Rookh, a highly romantic poem by the English poet Thomas Moore; as with the Walter Scott, Mark Twain’s name for the steamboat suggests the exaggerated romanticism of the old South
9. mortification – death of living tissue due to loss of blood supply; gangrene
10. meeky – a verb created by Huck meaning “to walk meekly”
11. owdacious – audacious; boldly insolent
12. Methusalem-numskull – a numbskull, or idiot, as old as Methuselah, the oldest man mentioned in the Bible (Genesis 5: 25-27)
13. whelps – puppies or young boys or girls; a term of mild disapproval
14. putrified – Aunt Sally means petrified, or turned to stone, not putrefied, or made putrid, decayed, or rotten