chapt 1-7 -- Huck Finn

Chapters 1-7 of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn introduce Huck as a young, mischievous boy whom resides with a widowed lady named Miss Watson, and the reader instantly learns that Huck Finn lives his life in the same manner as Tom Sawyer.

A few different instances within these chapters help reveal a few symbols and themes that come along with the time period and location. One section of the reading that seemed rather peculiar and symbolic occurred on page 8 where Huck wanted to smoke, but the widow told him no. The widow, Miss Watson, lectured Huck with reasons why he shouldn’t smoke, yet she uses chewing tobacco herself. This situation makes the reader assume that Miss Watson is a hypocrite. This specific situation represents how judgmental society has become, and still is. Even though Miss Watson uses tobacco in a different form, she judges Huck for wanting to smoke. Miss Watson seems to be a character that could potentially add to a theme about judgmental society.

Another part that stood out to me in these chapters occurred in chapter 3 on page 21. Huck tells a story about him and some other boys running around in the woods and meeting Tom Sawyer. Huck tells, “One time Tom sent a boy to run about town with a blazing stick…and then he said he had got secret news by his spies that next day a whole parcel of Spanish merchants and rich A-rabs was going to camp in Cave Hollow with two-hundred elephants.” Huck always believed every story that Tom Sawyer told, and all of the boys in their gang lived by the same rules as Tom Sawyer. After Tom told the story about seeing A-rabs, elephants, and more, Huck thought he had better go see it all for himself. Huck wrote, “I wanted to see the camels and elephants…and when we got the word we rushed out of the woods and down the hill. But there warn’t no Spaniards and A-rabs, and there warn’t no camels nor no elephants.” Huck learns that he can’t always believe everything that somebody tells him, as he writes on page 23, “So then I judged that all that stuff was only just one of Tom Sawyer’s lies.” This incident also relates to life and has a thematic meaning. We eventually learn that a person can’t always believe what everyone else is telling them and they also need to live their own life.