Creative Post- a different perspective

This section from the perspective of the Duke-

"Come back here!" "No-good thieves!" "Cheats!" I heard the crowd yell behind us.

"Go, faster!" I yelled to my partner, the crowd was gaining on us.

A little scam gone wrong, in the wrong town, had put us in a compromising position. The town that we had chosen for our latest scam was not a town that enjoyed being messed with. Tarred and feathered as we were, we continued to run.

Scamming was all we had ever known together, our tight little partnership. We had made our millions together, which was hidden where no one would ever find it. Lot of good it was to us now though. It couldn't help us out of this situation.

I took a split second to turn around. The crowd was getting closer, if that was even possible.

"They're gaining on us!" I yelled, urging my partner to run faster.

As we ran, I saw a little boy, and it was like I was seeing a ghost. It looked like little Huck, that boy that had abandoned us. He looked well off. I wanted to kick him in his little tush, for kicking us to the curb like that. We wouldn't be here right now, fighting for a nickle and our lives if it weren't for that little twerp. But that was all I could think before it all went black.

the End.

Tom's Ideas: Unnecessary and Thoughtless Trouble

Tom's showy and unnecessary tactics for rescuing Jim from the shed are too much. They don't show true greatness at all. The greatness lies in their idea and their actions. Their decision to rescue Jim despite the ideas and prejudices against is where their greatness lies. Their showiness, however, detracts from their greatness in my mind, because it shows that they, or at least Tom, are just doing it for the sake of the popularity and legacy. I would have enjoyed it much more if they would have just gotten Jim out, the simple way.

The Duke and the Dauphin, tarred and feathered.

The last time that we see the Duke and the Dauphin, they are being chased by members of a town, being tarred and feathered. Huck replies to the scene by saying that "human beings can be awful cruel to one another". He feels pity for the Duke and Dauphin, despite everything that they have done to him and to countless other innocent people. However, I think Huck is able to see something that the rest of us miss. I don't know about you, but I see justice in the final end of the Duke and Dauphin. I feel as if they deserve it; that they got what is coming to them. But Huck sees that no matter how much people do that is wrong, everyone deserves forgiveness and a second chance. I think that that is a very important take away from this section. There was a better way to handle the Duke and the Dauphin, and different measures could have been taken to punish them, or rehabilitate them. Huck realizes that no one deserves to be treated like that, and that regardless of what they've done, they're human beings. No human would want that to be done to them, so why do we do it to others?

Creative Post

Poem on Jim's escape-

Deep in the dark, black
Southern night
Two young boys creep towards
A dim shed light
They peek through a crack on
The side of the door
And see a young black man sitting
On the floor
Ratt-a-tatt-tatt
The door swings forward
Recognition is met in silence
Ratt-a-tatt-tatt
The door swings back
Leaving them to work in
Silence
Scratch and clang, like an untrained band,
The black man's chains clank against the hard ground
Elaborate, showy the escape should not be,
But, alas, what is one to do, with two boys
Who have spent their lives,
Living a show?

Huck's decision to save Jim

While, I agree that Huck should try to save him, I don't know that his decision was morally correct. Jim is a runaway slave, and while the duke and the dauphin didn't necessarily have the right to sell him, in this situation, he is still someone else's property. While that isn't necessarily right, it is man's law, and we're supposed to obey our superiors on earth. Jim was sold by the duke and the dauphin to a man, who paid for him. Jim is a runaway slave. There's so much legally and some morally wrong with this whole situation that it's harder to say what is right and wrong. I think that in this particular situation, I would have acted as Huck did, but I don't think it was morally correct.

Mary Jane: courageous or naive?

When Mary Jane is constantly warned by the good doctor about the fake Wilks brothers, she decides to go ahead and give them her entire inheritance to invest as they see fit. She seems to see this as a courageous and heroic act, showing the entire town that she will do as she sees fit and that she has faith in her "family", regardless of the facts presented against them. However, rather than being courageous, I think Mary Jane is being naive. She seems to think that they could not have tricked her, regardless of the evidence that the doctor presents against them, and the fact that they seem to have no real proof of being her family. She puts her entire inheritance, and her sisters, in the hands of relative strangers, family or not. This action is just downright foolish. I think that the smarter action would have been to defend her "uncles" and to continue to care for them and house them, but to have kept the money to herself. She got extremely lucky that Huck decided to steal the money back for them, otherwise the sisters would be completely poor and all alone, thanks to Mary Jane's decision. So, I think that Mary Jane wasn't being courageous, but she was being foolish.

Creative Post #2

Dual Creative Post between Emily Campbell and Laura Horton.

Seriousness mixed with humor

When writing a story or novel, it is important to vary the type of tone that the author uses. When Mark Twain is talking about Emmeline and the feud, he uses seriousness mixed with humor. This is important because it keeps the readers attention. If the tone of the entire passage had been serious, with no breaks, the reader would be very bored. It is never good to be too serious. However, the flip side is also true. You cannot spend an entire passage, or an entire book for that matter, just focusing on humor. You will lose the audience very quickly, because it would get boring. Regardless of it's humorous nature, endless humor begins to get dull. Also, it's not a realistic portrayal of life. All of life is not humorous, and all of life is not serious. It's a mixture of both. Even at serious times, humor pokes through, and even at the funniest of times, seriousness can make it's way into a conversation. For the sake of the book, the author and the reader, a book must have an equal balance of humor mixed with seriousness in order to make it an enjoyable read.

Who are the duke and the dauphin?

The duke and the dauphin are introduced in this sections reading. Huck invites these two mysterious characters onto his raft. One introduces himself as the duke of someplace in England and the other as a dauphin. One claims to speak French, which he actually doesn't, which proves Huck's point from his earlier arguments with Jim. Jim, curiously, instead of being defiant, accepts that the character speaks French. However, his French is fake. Soon, we find out that the duke and the dauphin are actually two scam artists.

Creative post: An excerpt from one of Huck's pirate stories

"Drop the anchor and raise the flag," Captain ordered. "This is where we make our stand."

As the pirate ship drew closer and closer, we prepared to engage in battle to take back the property of the kingdom. The pirates looted and raided our cities, and we had come to take back what was ours.

Despite the superiority of our ship and our manpower, I could not help but have an ominous feeling about heading into naval battle with pirates. After all, we could not expect them to play by the rules. As the ship grew closer, our ship became quieter. Men ceased their mumblings, and went to their assigned stations. Half the men manned cannons, while the others of us took to our guns, looking to take out individual pirates, rather than the entire ship.

"Blow 'er til she sinks," Captain yelled as the ship came into range.

"But sir," second in command Rowley responded, "we came all this way to reclaim our treasures. How shall we do that if the ship, along with all of the gold and prized items, lay at the bottom of the ocean?"

The Captain turned to us all with a grim look on his face. "I would rather see our beloved treasure at the bottom of the ocean than in the hands of pirates. Now fire!"

Every man on the boat turned back to his stations. Cannons blasted and the heat of their fire could be felt throughout the entire ship. Return fire rocked our ship hard and men were thrown across the ship and overboard into the crashing, ice-cold winter waves. I stood steady at my post, aiming and firing with every new pirate that came into sight. Often I met my mark. The look of shock and sorrow in the eyes of the men I hit as they went down made me feel pity for them, and I sent up a prayer for their weary souls.

Cannon fire continued at a steady pace from each side for what seemed like hours. Both sides were struggling to put out fires on their ships, patch up leaks, and keep their ship afloat. What we did have on our side was superior artillery, and much more of it than the pirates had to defend their ship. We could continue at this rate of fire for many more hours, while I suspected that the pirates were coming to the end of their cannon supplies.

Just as I was growing weary from the mundane continuity of the battle, the pirates ship was hit with a cannon that set fire to the ship. The deck lit up in bright oranges and yellows and the flames licked their way up the post in the middle of the ship and burnt the pirates flag to ashes. There were cries from both sides; those of victory and those of shock and anguish. While my shipmates rejoiced, I stood and watched the pirate ship sink into the frozen waters, marveling at the life that was there one minute and gone the next, before I turned to the festivities.

THE END

Purpose of Prayer

In the story, one of the women(I believe it was Miss Watson but I am not entirely positive) tells Huckleberry that if he prays to God, he'll get whatever he asks for. Huck begins to pray to God asking for a fishing hook, and when God doesn't answer his prayers, he gets frustrated and angry. Eventually he gives up praying altogether. If the she had accurately presented prayer to Huck, he could have had a much better experience. When I read the woman telling Huck that he would get whatever he asked for when he prayed, I had this moment where I was like "I wish." If that really happened, there would be a lot more Christians in the world, I think. But prayer is supposed to be a way for us to communicate with God and foster our relationship with Him, not just ask Him to give us stuff, whether it be a promotion, a good grade on our test, or something more serious like for someone to be cured from cancer. While I wish that was how prayer worked, I've had it explained to me that when we pray, God will give us one of three answers: Yes, no or not right now. I feel like ninety percent of the time I either get a no or a not right now, but I have to remember that God has His reasons and His plan and that in the end it will all work out ten times better than it would have if I had gotten everything that I wanted. There was a reason that Huck didn't get that fishing hook. I don't know what it was, but if the widow would have explained that to him, his prayer experience could have been greatly improved, and if we look at prayer the right way, it will be a better experience for us, too.

Dialects

While I think that the use of Huck's unique dialects does add some flavor to the story, it more often than not just makes the story more difficult to read. I for one have more difficulty reading the story because the dialect is distracting and sometimes actually manages to take away from the story. Some wording and phrases are almost too colorful, and often in my head I almost have to translate what Huck is saying into something that I can actually understand. So while I understand why Twain uses the dialect, for color and uniqueness, I think that it would make it easier for the readers if we used regular language instead of the country, for lack of a better word, hick dialect of Huck.