Lesson Title: Friendship and Character Education in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: How important relationships emerge from the mud, mire and fog of human understanding.
By: Maria Inglefield
Burning Question:
How do we gain and retain friends in life? Are Huck and Jim able to withstand the vagaries of life on the lam from slavery and servitude (to Miss Watson and Pap respectively) and become friends? How we do we test the limits of friendship in our own lives?
Objective/Introduction:
As students are preparing to leave our K-12 school system, they have had opportunities to make, keep and lose friends, been exposed to character education lessons on friendship vs. bullying, and have, over time, experienced the curative affects of true friendship as both bearer and receiver of that gift. They may think their reasons for having or dismissing certain friends are capricious or whimsical, but true friendships are as important as those relationships within a family, partnership or marriage, and need to be taken seriously to participate fully in home life and the larger world of work.
Context:
Students should be able at this advanced age in secondary school to process the following: decision making, responsibility, forgiveness, choice, change, potential and indebtedness.
Materials:
· Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Puffin Classics). London: Puffin, 2008.
· Selected poetry.
· Pen/Pencil/Paper.
· Fleischman, Paul. Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices. New York: HarperCollins, 2004.
Time Span:
variable
Procedures:
· Pre-read and talk about the following sections of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
a. Chapter 8. Huck finds Jim occupying Jackson’s Island, wakes him, thereby astounding Jim. Jim is at first afraid that Huck is a ghost, but soon realizes he is the real boy he is genuinely thrilled to see.
b. Chapter 9. Jim and Huck catch up, fix up the cavern, fish and eat together, gather things to set up camp, construct temporary shelter in the middle of the Mississippi River and Missouri slave country, and set the groundwork for real friendship.
“Jim, this is nice,” I says. “I wouldn’t want to be nowhere else but here. Pass me along another hunk of fish and some hot corn-bread.”
“Well, you wouldn’t a ben here, ‘f it hadn’t a ben for Jim. You’d a ben down dah in de woods widout any dinner, en gittn’ mos’ drownded, too, dat you would, honey.”
And, after the raid on the floating house, the chapter ends with, “We got home all safe.”
-students should produce a “quickwrite” (10/15 minutes) on any of the following prompts: “Home,” “All/Family,” or “Safe.”
c. Chapter 10. Huck plays a practical joke on Jim by placing a dead rattlesnake in a coil at the foot of his bedding. Huck’s joking seems lighthearted, but he does not remember that a rattlesnake will seek its mate, and Jim ends up getting a terrible bite on his heel. Huck doesn’t tell Jim he put the snake there, but feels he made a poor and rash choice and did not like seeing Jim hurt for four days after the bite. He understands that his black friend can feel pain, just as he does.
–students should produce a “quickwrite” (10/15 minutes) on any of the following prompts: “Jokes/Pranks,” “Intentions,” or “Wounds.”
d. Chapter 15. Huck and Jim are separated in the fog and call out to each other over the swift current and white blindness. When the fog clears, Huck rejoins the damaged raft and exhausted/sleeping Jim. Jim is overjoyed to see Huck alive (again) and Huck proceeds to lie to him, claiming the separation was a bad dream likely induced by drink. Jim questions his own memory of events, believing Huck is telling him truth, only to see the damaged raft and find himself duped by the little white boy he thought was loyal to him. Jim is devastated by Huck’s meanness, calling him “trash,” asserts himself, and retreats in silence to the shelter on the raft. Huck feels the wound he has inflicted, realizes Jim’s stature as a human and friend, and apologizes. This is seen as many to be a turning point in the novel for Huck. Huck sees Jim as a man, and Huck is becoming a man by saying he is sorry and feeling true remorse for injuring a black man. This section of the book opens the door to the idea of empathy. The ability to see another’s point of view is crucial to our success as interpreters of life, rather than as mere participants in a rousing and drowsing cycle.
**If able, please see the notes for Chapter 15 from The Annotated Huckleberry Finn, by Michael Patrick Hearn.
-students should produce a “quickwrite” (10/15 minutes) on any of the following prompts: “Friend of Consequence,” “Apology,” “Fog,” “Empathy vs. Sympathy”.
· Process the following poems with students, using whichever reading protocol works best for your size of class:
a. “Your Catfish Friend,” by Richard Brautigan
b. “Fog,” by Amy Clampitt
c. “Riverbank Blues,” by Sterling A. Brown
d. “A Boy and His Dad,” by Edgar Guest
e. “We Have Been Friends Together,” by Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton
f. “How I Am,” by Jason Shinder.
These poems can all be accessed on poets.org. They give a feel for setting and friendship. They speak to a friendship or fatherhood that could not be provided by Tom Sawyer or Pap Finn. They are varied and accessible.
-students should produce their own “Found” or “Recycled” poem using phrases captured from the poems read as a class. OR, students can take one of their “quickwrites” and polish it into a more refined prose piece or poem.
Extensions: This is not an exhaustive list.
Discuss what makes a “Good Man” or a “Bad Man.” Read the Flannery O’Connor Southern Gothic story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” Her writing is irresistibly macabre and altogether Southern, showing a different style of writing using dialect. Have students write a two-voice poem (examples found in the text A Joyful Noise, by Paul Fleischman and Eric Beddows) using Pap and Tom (Bad Man) OR Jim and Huck (Good Man) as speakers.
As a group, define “humility” and “epiphany.” Students “quickwrite” about these ideas.
Compare/Contrast assignment: Students process the characters of Tom Sawyer and Jim as pertains to the development of Huck’s personality and emerging manhood. Talk about influence and choices and what Huck would have been like if he had different life experiences. Have them write about whom they would have picked to be their friend, Jim, Huck or Tom, providing reasons why they would chose that character in particular.
Discuss, at length, the end of the book. Does Huck really understand friendship if he is willing to go along with Tom’s devious lies during the “Evasion.” How could he take part in the torture of his friend in this manner? Could he be expected to do better at his age and living in the time and place he inhabits? How do you hold someone accountable for his actions, especially a young boy? The questions raised after reading about Jim’s torture are difficult for readers, students, critics and scholars alike.
Rationale:
The underlying reason for teaching this lesson is to illuminate the importance of friendship among human beings and the appreciation of all humans as a potential source of friendship. Huck’s feelings for Jim go beyond the realm of tolerance for someone different than himself into real friendship as Jim becomes foster father while the novel progresses. It is empowering to see the example of a young boy capable of such change in such an unlikely time period/setting. Even Although Huck never calls Jim “friend” in the course of the novel, it is clear that he sees him as man, teacher, father, and friend, and that gives the reader something grand, which is hope.
Resources:
· Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Puffin Classics). London: Puffin, 2008.
· Twain, Mark and Michael Patrick Hearn, ed. The Annotated Huckleberry Finn. New York: Norton, 2001.
- Fleischman, Paul. Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices. New York: HarperCollins, 2004.
- Canyon View High School Writers, 2008/2009
- poets.org (to access the work of the above listed poets)