Huck Finn Chapters 4-6

Huck Finn Chapters 4-6

• Over a few months, Huck adjusts to his new life and actually goes to school!

Sees a boot print in the snow (knows it is his Pap’s

• Sells his fortune to Judge for $1

Huck sees Pap’s boot in the snow

HF sells his money to Judge Thatcher

Reaction: 1—logical reasoning: Pap will leave when he finds out HF is poor

Chapter 5 Summary

Goes to Jim who has a “magic hairball” and asks what his dad wants with him

Jim says that Pap has 2 angels—a black and a white—and he doesn’t know which Pap will listen to, but Huck is safe for now

2—Superstition: Jim’s hairball

Jim’s hairball makes more sense than MW’s religion

This is the start of Jim as HF’s father figure

Goes home and Pap is waiting for him

• Pap looks horrible
• Deadly white skin

Next day: Pap is drunk and goes to Judge for Huck’s money

Judge Thatcher and WD try to get custody of Huck but a new judge won’t separate father and son

Pap goes to jail

• New judge takes Pap in and he repents but then gets drunk again

Huck still doesn’t abandon Pap immediately. Why?

Pap: embodiment of pure evil

Chapter 6 Summary

Pap sues Judge Thatcher for Huck’s money and threatens Huck about his going to school

Huck keeps going to spite Pap

Pap kidnaps Huck and takes him to a cabin in the woods

Huck is going to escape (escape everyone: WD, Pap, Judge, etc.) but Pap comes home

Pap rants about a mixed race man in town

This man can vote in his home state of Ohio

Can’t be sold into slavery until he has been in Missouri for 6 mo

Pap thinks chances he will get Huck’s money is good but he will pry lose the custody fight

Pap wakes from drunken sleep and thinks Huck is the “Angel of Death”

Chases him around with a knife and tries to kill him

Huck points a rifle at sleeping Pap and waits

We are given no background as to why he is poor or so horrible=role is purely symbolic

Skin is so white=symbolizes whiteness

Twain implies that it is whiteness (not blackness) that is evil

He sees Hucks nice clothes and says that Huck must think he is better than Pap (deserves a beating for it)

Says that he will teach WD not to meddle

Outraged that Huck has learned to read (1st in the family)

Wants money—Huck says he doesn’t have any—takes Huck’s $1 and goes to buy whiskey

Comment of the society of the time and its attempts to reform

Well-meaning ppl who act foolishly or cruelly

New judge won’t give Huck to the Widow

Question morality of public figures

Huck is given to pap because he is “property”—abuse doesn’t matter

Like a slave

He is the worst of white society

Huck is in the middle of failures and breakdowns of society

Illiterate, ignorant, violent, very racist

His family, legal system, community can’t protect him

Contrasts w/ the mixed-race man in town

Huck is still a young boy and Pap is his father

He can’t find a set of values that satisfy him

He is clean, knowledgeable

No religion or superstition

He is used to social abuses