83TJ123-8-2009 LK VWD0011 Tradition Humanistic 6th Edition W:220mm x H:292mm 175L 115 Stora Enso M/A Magenta (V)Q Which descriptive details are most effective
in setting the tone of this novel?READING 30. 6
CHAPTER 30 Industry, Empire, and the Realist Style 8383and places, that had been dark vaults all day, now shone red-
hot, with figures moving to and fro within their blazing jaws,
and calling to one another with hoarse cries—night, when the
noise of every strange machine was aggravated by the
darkness; when the people near them looked wilder and more
savage; when bands of unemployed laborers paraded in the
roads, or clustered by torch-light round their leaders, who told
them in stern language of their wrongs, and urged them on to
frightful cries and threats; when maddened men, armed with
sword and firebrand, spurning the tears and prayers of women 50
who would restrain them, rushed forth on errands of terror and
destruction, to work no ruin half so surely as their own—night,
when carts came rumbling by, filled with rude coffins (for
contagious disease and death had been busy with the living
crops); when orphans cried, and distracted women shrieked and
followed in their wake—night, when some called for bread, and
some for drink to drown their cares; and some with tears, and
some with staggering feet, and some with bloodshot eyes, went
brooding home—night, which, unlike the night that Heaven
sends on earth, brought withit no peace, nor quiet, nor signs of 60
blessed sleep—who shall tell the terrors of the night to that
young wandering child!Mark Twain’s literary classic, The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn, is the most widely taught book in
American literature. Published as a sequel to the popular
“boys’ book” The Adventures of Tom Sawyer(1876), which,
like Dickens’ novels, appeared in serial format, the book
recounts the exploits of the young narrator, Huck Finn,
and the runaway slave, Jim, as the two make their way
down the Mississippi River on a ramshackle raft. As
humorist, journalist, and social critic, Twain offered his
contemporaries a blend of entertainment and vivid insight
into the dynamics of a unique time and place: the
American South just prior to the Civil War. More general-
ly, he conveys the innocence of youthful boyhood as it
wrestles with the realities of greed, hypocrisy, and the
moral issues arising from the troubled relations between
black and white Americans in the mid nineteenth century.
These he captures in an exotic blend of dialects—the ver-
nacular rhythms and idioms of local, untutored speech.
In the excerpt that follows, Huck, a poor, ignorant, but
good-hearted Southern boy, experiences a crisis of con-
science when he must choose between aiding and abetting
a fugitive slave—a felony offense in the slave states of
the South—and obeying the law, by turning over his older
companion and friend to the local authorities. Huck’s
moral dilemma, the theme of this excerpt, was central
to the whole system of chattel slavery. Historically, slaves
were considered property (chattel), that is, goods that
could be bought, sold, or stolen. Clearly, however, they
were also human beings. In opting to help Jim escape,
Huck is, in effect, an accomplice to a crime. Nevertheless,
Huck chooses to aid Jim the man, even as he violates the
law in harboring Jim the slave.
From Twain’s The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn(1884)
Chapter 16
We slept most all day, and started out at night, a little ways 1
behind a monstrous long raft that was as long going by as a
procession. She had four long sweeps^1 at each end, so we
judged she carried as many as thirty men, likely. She had five
big wigwams aboard, wide apart, and an open camp fire in the
middle, and a tall flag-pole at each end. There was a power of
style about her. It amountedto something being a raftsman on
such a craft as that.
We went drifting down into a big bend, and the night clouded
up and got hot. The river was very wide, and was walled with 10
solid timber on both sides; you couldn’t see a break in it hardly
ever, or a light. We talked about Cairo,^2 and wondered whether
we would know it when we got to it. I said likely we wouldn’t,
because I had heard say there warn’t but about a dozen houses
there, and if they didn’t happen to have them lit up, how was
we going to know we was passing a town? Jim said if the two
big rivers joined together there, that would show. But I said
maybe we might think we was passing the foot of an island and
coming into the same old river again. That disturbed Jim—and
me too. So the question was, what to do? I said, paddle ashore 20
the first time a light showed, and tell them pap was behind,
coming along with a trading-scow, and was a green hand at the
business, and wanted to know how far it was to Cairo. Jim
thought it was a good idea, so we took a smoke on it and waited.
There warn’t nothing to do, now, but to look out sharp for the
town, and not pass it without seeing it. He said he’d be mighty
sure to see it, because he’d be a free man the minute he seen
it, but if he missed it he’d be in the slave country again and no
more show for freedom. Every little while he jumps up and
says: 30
“Dah she is!”
But it warn’t. It was Jack-o-lanterns, or lightning-bugs;^3 so
he set down again, and went to watching, same as before. Jim
said it made him all over trembly and feverish to be so close to
freedom. Well, I can tell you it made me all over trembly and
feverish, too, to hear him, because I begun to get it through my
head that he wasmost free—and who was to blame for it?
Why, me. I couldn’t get that out of my conscience, no how nor
no way. It got to troubling me so I couldn’t rest; I couldn’t stay
still in one place. It hadn’t ever come home to me before, what 40
this thing was that I was doing. But now it did; and it staid
with me, and scorched me more and more. I tried to make out
to myself that I warn’t to blame, because I didn’t run Jim off
from his rightful owner; but it warn’t no use, conscience up and
says, every time, “But you knowed he was running for his
freedom, and you could a paddled ashore and told somebody.”
That was so—I couldn’t get around that, noway. That was
where it pinched. Conscience says to me, “What had poor
Miss Watson done to you, that you could see her nigger go off
right under your eyes and never say one single word? What did 50(^1) Long oars.
(^2) A city in Illinois.
(^3) Fireflies.