Huck Finn Web Quest
Directions: Create a
Google Document with me (shipdog65@gmail.com) and follow the directions on that
document.
Go to the websites as
directed and answer the questions that follow.
otherwise noted:
1.) encomium:
2.) excoriated:
3.) oeuvre:
4.) philistine:
5.) pious (definition
2):
6.) contrarian:
7.) imperialist:
Know the Author:
8.) In what year
was Mark Twain born?
9.) In what year did he
die?
10.) What event was
present at both his birth and death?
11.) What was the title
of his first novel and when was it published?
12.) What happened in
1861?
13.) When did he go
bankrupt and why?
14.) What was the title
of his best selling novel?
15.) Why did Mark Twain
give up on scrapbooks?
16.) What was his only
invention that made money?
Click on The Gilded Age
1869 – 1871 on the right. Then scroll through the pages
answering these
questions.
17.) Who did Mark Twain
marry?
18.) Describe his study
in Elmira.
19.) In the format of a
short essay (5 sentences) answer the following: Mark Twain describes his book,
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as “a book of mine where a sound heart and a
deformed conscience come into collision and conscience suffers defeat. “ What
do you think he meant by this quote? Make sure you explain why.
Getting Past Black and White
Read the article,
“Getting Past Black and White”:
His is an American
classic that has been challenged time and again for reasons both substantial
and frivolous; Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is
a perennial favorite of supporters and critics alike. In his TIME
article, “Getting Past Black and White,” Stephen Carter observes that, “Only a
few books, according to the American Library
Association, have been kicked off the shelves as often as
Huckleberry Finn,
Twain's most widely read tale. Once upon a time, people hated
the book because it struck them as coarse.
Twain himself wrote that the book's banners considered the novel
"trash and suitable only for the slums." More
recently the
book has been attacked because of the character Jim, the escaped
slave whose adventures twine with Huck's,
and its frequent use of the word nigger. (The
term Nigger Jim, for which the novel is often excoriated, never
appears in it.)”
The challenge for
educators required to teach The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is
to make it relevant in 2009. This is ultimately the challenge and goal of
teaching any piece of literature, but even more so with a controversial classic
such as Twain’s. I have decided with my latest reading of the text that
the key to unlocking the novel is through Jim and his internal conflicts.
For the modern
adolescent reader, an adult escaped slave, portrayed through superstitious
beliefs and with a complex and confusing southern dialect, is not easy to
connect with. It might be easier to simply dismiss him and focus attention
instead on Huck. But doing so neglects Jim and his very real social
struggles. It neglects the complicated racial, social, political
complexity of the time that Twain sought to not only explore, but
exploit. To neglect understanding Jim is to allow the charges of Huck
Finn as a racist book to proliferate. It allows the book to be
misread and misunderstood, and therefore not learned from.
But reality, of course,
tells us that Jim, though fictional, is rooted in reality. Jim’s
experiences are similar to those of real people. His emotions are real
emotions; his dialect a written form of a real pattern of speech; his escaped
community a mirror to the real communities of the time period. Some real
slaves, not unlike Jim, really escaped their masters and sought to make better
lives for themselves somewhere else. The stories of those real people
might help us to accept Jim not as a confusing caricature, but as an
enlightening character that might reveal some of the realities Twain ultimately
wants his readers to explore.
By listening to and
reading the accounts of those who lived in Jim’s time and experienced the world
through a lens much closer to his than those of us in 2009, their stories and
experiences might help make Jim’s a little more understandable.
Twain, Huck, and his best friend Jim are ultimately still relevant
because, as Carter observes, Twain (and his creations) “may have done more to
rile the nation over racial injustice and rouse its collective conscience than
any other novelist in the past century who has lifted a pen.
20.) How can someone who
uses the ‘N’ word in his writing also be characterized as “the man who
popularized the sophisticated literary attack on racism”?
How would you describe
Mark Twain? List 3 adjectives that characterize the man and the author. Be
prepared to explain why you think these are appropriate descriptions.
21.)
22.)
23.)
Now that you are a Mark Twain Expert:
- Click START PLAYING
- Answer the questions on HIS LIFE: LEVEL 1
- Upon completion of LEVEL 1, click the HIS TIMES: LEVEL
1. Complete the questions below.
24 - 25.) The Civil War
broke out in ____________________. Samuel Clemens served _______________ on the
___________________ side.
26 - 27.) . When was the
Spanish American War? _____________________ How did it
change Mark Twain‟s
views?
28.) When was the California
Gold Rush?
29.) When did the
last “Indian Territory”, Oklahoma, open legally for settlement?
30.) When was Uncle
Tom’s Cabin published? ___________________ Why was it
important to Mark
Twain?
31 - 32.) What is
the Reconstruction Era? When did it end?
