Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Chapters 37-43


            The ending to this novel seemed, like we discussed in class, more romanticized than realistic.  Jim is freed and given money—he also is treated like a king and given money.  Whether it is prior or after the civil war it does not seem realistic as to how African Americans were treated.  It seems like a feel-good ending with Jim and Huck making plans to go on another adventure with no repercussions.  These guys have been lying to everyone and it seems that they are not punished in the least bit for what they did. 
The fact that Pap died I was not expecting to happen—yet again a problem that Huck will no longer have to deal with.  I did not pick up on the foreshadowing back in earlier chapters when Jim tells Huck not to look at the face of the body that was floating in the house.  My question is what Pap’s body was doing there in the first place; perhaps I need to go back and read it again.  I actually read this book in high school and I do not remember Pap dying when I read it the first time.
It seems the second part of Huckleberry Finn is used as a social commentary that Twain is making on society of the time—especially of the African Americans.  Perhaps he was being hopeful for blacks that they would be treated equally one day and as whites were treated in that day. 

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