Quotation Repsonse 10/30

Read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn pp. 197-214, then to 232

Mark Twain: "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" p. 203

1. "After all this long journey, and after all we'd done for them scoundrels, here it was all come to nothing, everything all busted up and ruined, because they could have the heart to serve Jim such a trick as that, and make him a slave again all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty dollars."

Huck is discouraged here. The journey that he and Jim just made seems for naught now. Jim was captured by an old stranger, in exchange for forty dollars. Huck is detestful of the "scoundrels" who would give away the fact that Jim is a slave. He seems to feel badly for Jim who is about to be returned to his life of servitude. Huck will most likely get him out of his predicament, though. He is proficient in coming up with plans and is sure to find a solution to this problem.

Mark Twain: "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" p. 211

2. "-'Good gracious! anybody hurt?' 'No'm. Killed a nigger.' 'Well, it's lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt.'"

This is a conversation between Huck and a white woman that lives in the plantation that Jim had been sold to. Huck is thought to be the woman's nephew who had taken a ferry to the plantation and was a few days late. Huck, obviously not being the woman's kin, had to make up a story of why he was late. He fibbed that the ferry had blown a cylinder-head. You can tell, by this passage, that whites in the South didn't regard blacks as actual people, more so like property (even as Huck had done earlier on in the book when he found out that Jim had been sold). It struck me as strange that this would be so blatantly obvous, though.