"Don't betray me, I wish to be your friend." (Twain, 299)

Hello old friend, and here we are. You and me, on the last page.

...Sort of kidding. I'd apologize for the Doctor Who reference but, honestly, you're the one that needs to apologize if you don't watch it. I'll try and save the rest of my snobbery for later and cut to the chase now, anyway. This is the last entry for Huckleberry Finn! How excited are you?
(Don't answer that truthfully. Miss Watkins reads these.)
Starting with chapter thirty here, but not really seeing as nothing too interesting happens in it. The King and the Duke have a short, stupid scuffle because one thinks the other backstabbed him but after some booze all is forgiven, as is the True American Way™. Also a good example of some real friendship, right? Forgiveness and all that.
Chapter 31 is where things get interesting, though - and it only took 31 chapters! Basically, what happens it the King sells Jim to finance a drinking spree. This is a major betrayal to me. I mean, the ultimate way to ruin a runaway slave is to sell him back into slavery and that's exactly what happens here. Not cool.
When Huck finds out what happened, he has a serious crisis of conscience that didn't really surprise me. I've been skeptical about his relationship with Jim from the beginning, so the fact that he still subconsciously thinks of him as "property" only strengthens my belief that this is not a true friendship. It lacks trust and acceptance even after all this time.
Still, Huck does finally resolve to rescue Jim even if it sends him to Hell. The farm he's accidentally directed to by the Duke actually belongs to a relative of Tom Sawyer's because that isn't a totally outlandish and nearly impossible coincidence or anything! Neither is Tom showing up right after Huck does, apparently, seeing as that's exactly what happens. Shenanigans inevitably ensue. It's a lot like the beginning of the book, when the boys lazed around the (spoiler alert: dead) widow's house daydreaming and pranking the slaves.
Eventually, Tom and Huck manage to free Jim for about twelve hours. It's Aunt Polly that comes to his rescue this time. Thank goodness. She ties the story together neatly, declaring both the Widow Douglas and Huck's pap to be dead, therefore both of our main characters are free! When Aunt Polly expresses interest in adopting Huck, however, he immediately runs away again. I don't know how to feel about this in terms of what it means for Huck and Tom's friendship that he could leave him behind so easily the second time, but who really cares, right?
As I'm sure you've already figured out, I chose to focus on the unconventional examples of friendship and betrayal in the text. And I know this is late.

Hick Finn Chapter(s) 22 - 30

Kay, this may be kind of short so I apologize in advance. Seriously, though, isn't this a terrible book? It's getting painful to read, but I'll keep sort if almost doing it. 

So, chapters 22 - 30. We have Tom doing some wandering around early on in chapter 22. He visits a circus and watches the displays in awe. There's all those shenanigans with the so-called king and duke. The two have an interesting relationship with one another. I would consider it a friendship, considering there appears to be a real bond between them that's pretty prominent in chapter 23 where the two easily work together constructing their stage. Not that their friendship wasn't already a thing, but I thought I'd point out their cohesion as a contributing factor to the strength if their friendship. 

I think that the play itself is a good example of betrayal within the text. The first night it's being put on, "the judge" insists that there needs to be more people there the following night. "What we want, is to go out of here quiet, and talk this show up, and sell the rest of the town," (Twain, 177). This is an exaggeration if the truth. Therefore, so long as my parents and teachers haven't been lying to me (at least about this) for the majority of my life, it is a lie. And obviously, lying can be considered a pretty severe betrayal by some people. 

By the way, let's all acknowledge how funny the misuse of "Shakspeare" in this part was. Plagiarisers beware.

Huck and Jim are still...allies, or whatever. Talking about the king behind his back could be considered betrayal, but I feel like I'm getting way too far into little details here and I'm almost certain I've hit enough words at this point, so let's just say I honestly read the rest of the chapters. I didn't enjoy it, and so out of the goodness of heart, I've chosen not to try boring you all to death. Until next time!

Huck Finn #3 (Chapters 16 - 22)

So, chapters 16 - 22. Exciting, right?
...
Yeah, let me just get this over with as quickly and painlessly as possible.
That whole family feud business had plenty of great examples of betrayal. Lots of (sometimes literal) backstabbing, murder, and all that exciting stuff. But in all honesty, I don't care about betrayal here. What I was most attracted to in this section of the book was one part in particular, and I think it's one of the strongest portrayals of a friendship we've seen in Huckleberry Finn so far.
What I'm typing about is, of course, the relationship between Huck and the late Emmeline Grangerford. To save the trouble of checking your book, that would indeed be the deceased teenage daughter of the Grangerford family. From the end of page 122 to page 126, Huck tells us all about young Emmeline. He describes her work, the peculiar portraits and poems she wrote in honor of the dead. Additionally, Huck explains that her room is still untouched. The part that really got me about this whole little passage was when he mentions going up to her room and leafing through her scrapbooks. Then he says "Poor Emmeline made poetry about all the dead people when she was alive, and it didn't seem right that there warn't nobody to make some about her, now that she was gone; so I tried to sweat out a verse or two..." (Twain, 125). I can't really put into words what I liked about this part any better than this. It just seemed so meaningful and nice, you know? And it was nice of Huck.
Then again, I really just like angst. Whatever.
*Side note that actually has nothing to do with the passage but still kind of relevant to our lives at the present moment:*
Just so everybody is aware, there is an absolutely ridiculous run-on sentence on page 140. It starts with "The first thing to see..." and goes on for the whole rest of the paragraph without a single period. I triple-checked. It's just irritating that Twain gets special privilege because he's writing a so-called work of literary genius (which isn't actually all that great, let's be real), but the second anybody else uses a measly semicolon it's like a disembodied voice shouts "There goes your literacy!" I mean, how annoying is this? I say we start a protest.

Huckleberry Finn Chapters 6 - 16

Forgive me for skipping around randomly, I'm covering a lot of chapters here. Anyway, I think that chapter six and/or seven is where the action really takes off. In April's last journal entry (which I unfortunately can't link you to because of several reasons), she brought up the point that Huck's dad embodies betrayal by not being a good father to Huck, by beating on him, etc. I thought that was a really good point and so I wanted to mention it because it continues at least through to chapter six. Huck does run away, and he meets with Jim The Slave again. And that brings us right into the friendship part of this entry! So, I wouldn't exactly say Huck and Jim have a "friendship" - there's plenty of communicating and even some bonding, but I really feel like there is no trust on either side of the spectrum, so to speak. Trust, to me, is necessary for a friendship to be legitimate. I don't see any real trust there.

Ending with a quote because I need one, let's just say that I found Huck telling Jim that "I wouldn't want to be nowhere but here" (Twain 51) to be a really rad, friendshippy thing to be said. 

Huckleberry Finn - "Friendship and Betrayal" Blog #1 (Chapters 1 - 5)

First thing's first: shout-out to Miss Watkins for assigning us a book that I don't hate already. Guess good ol' Sam Clemens should get some recognition as well while we're on the topic. Anyway, onto the actual point of this. The themes I'm supposed to be taking pointed notice of while reading the novel are those of friendship and betrayal. Even though we've only read through the first five chapters, I think that it's pretty obvious that this book is going to a veritable gold mine of both.
As is true in most situations, friendship seems like a reasonable place to start here. So, I'm pretty sure we've all read the prequel to Huckleberry Finn, otherwise known as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Throughout that novel, Tom and Huck's friendship developed in a very noticeable fashion. The two boys go from being acquaintances who enjoy one another's company because they're misunderstood little twelve-year-olds who don't have middle school experiences and My Chemical Romance to counteract their whining and angsting. This relationship seems to have carried over into Huckleberry Finn. We see almost from the very beginning of the novel that Tom and Huck are still friends - best friends, even. Daydreaming together, meeting in the woods with the other boys and planning to lead a pack of robbers are but a mere handful of the shenanigans these boys pull off before the real plot even begins.
Additionally, I think friendship shows its face in the form of that whole little anecdote about the rise and fall of "Tom Sawyer's Gang. Everybody that wants to join has got to take and oath and write his name in blood." (Twain, 7). I just think that entire situation - boys playing together in the woods, wanting to cause trouble and generally having a great time - has legitimate undertones of friendship even if said undertones may not be the strongest.
None of the other characters have really exhibited friendly feelings towards another yet save for the widow caring for Huck, but I consider that more maternal instinct or familial love than anything else.
Now, onto the main event.
Well, that may be exaggerating a little. Still, there must be a reason that Taylor Swift writes more songs about being stabbed in the back than hugged by a friend, right? Betrayal is interesting.
However, it has yet to make a huge appearance in the novel. You could probably make an argument for little betrayals here and there, such as Huck's blatant and repeated disrespect for the widow's rules as well as her beliefs (though he doesn't intentionally disrespect her faith).
That's about all I got for now. I know Miss Watkins told us that friendship/betrayal will be a major theme when Huck finally runs away with Jim the slave and has all that quality internal conflict. Not going to lie, I'm looking forward to things getting a little more interesting. Also, my prediction is that Huck's dad is going to bring on the betrayal in a big way at some point, possibly soon but there are literally hundreds of pages of possibility so who really knows?

The Scarlet Letter: The Rest a.k.a. In Conclusion, I'm Not Impressed.

Covering chapters ten to about twenty here, and I know that seems slightly excessive, but bear with me here. First off, let's get something straight here: this story ended up being pretty lame as a whole. Yeah, it has a definite beginning and end, some absolutely delightful prose, and some pretty lengthy threats of eternal damnation like every self-respecting piece of Puritan literature ought to possess, but those are pretty much its only redeeming facets.
The story is predictable by about chapter twelve. Dimmesdale is the father. Chillingworth got close to him with the hopes of exacting some peculiar revenge scheme. Pearl is confused. Hester is on the same level as Pearl literally and figuratively. It could've been a short story - or a horrible soap opera written in a play format.
Forget what I said about this covering to chapter twenty, I'm going to go ahead and rant about the whole rest of the book. Like, seriously. I actually liked Hester until the end when she agrees to Dimmesdale's plea that the three of them run off somewhere. She automatically agrees, and that made me so unbelievably angry because that crooked preacher was a total tool! (And some other things I thought better of typing aloud.) He lets Hester spend seven years being tormented by the townspeople. She's publicly humiliated, jailed, shoved out of town and forced to wear an eternal reminder of her indiscretion that puts her at odds with her daughter repeatedly throughout the story.
All Dimmesdale does is angst about it so dramatically that he drops dead.
It makes me angry because Hester's life literally turned to shambles because of their actions. However, she still protected him through everything and never gave away his identity. Even when it caused a strain in her relationship with Pearl, she wouldn't tell. Dimmesdale is so worried about his precious morals and reputation that he chooses to run away from it all rather than stand and face the controversy like Hester had to. It makes me mad because I consider it another example of how not even gender, but being a female is so frowned upon in this story and in this society.
I'm not really sure how I wanted to the story to end, but I do know that I wish Hester had some more character development like Pearl did. Her dying a creaky old adulteress seems wrong to me. Maybe if Hester had something to say to Dimmesdale that didn't pretty much translate to her fawning all over him when they met in the woods, I would have been pleased. (Not likely.) I'm literally seething over this. People say Twilight destroyed women's power, but if you ask me this book really isn't any better.
I guess a good thing that I took from reading this book was that the person in charge of making the story more modern for Easy A missed a few key points. Not that I'm complaining.
So basically, what I learned in boating school from this book is that Puritans were total sexist losers.

Scarlet Letter, Chapters 7- 9

For the record, I was absent from school today because I was born with the unfortunate affliction of being allergic to everything, and the second I opened this book, my eyes were watering from the amount of dust in it. BHS needs to take better care of their reading material.
Near-death experience aside, I read chapter seven through chapter nine. Chapter seven begins with Hester going to see the town governor because she heard that the people want to take Pearl away from her. I think this is a little ridiculous. It's been long enough that Pearl can walk and talk already, and all of a sudden the townspeople are scared that she's the Antichrist or something. Like, this isn't the first season of American Horror Story, relax.
As stated in previous entries, I really hate long descriptions of seemingly pointless things, but the way Hawthorne describes Governor Bellingham's house on page 99 was beautiful. "...it glittered and sparkled as it diamonds had been flung against it". The word choice, the way that the sentences flow together so seamlessly, the picture that appears in my mind so vividly as if it were real.
I just really love words.
The next chapter is when we actually meet the governor and his posse of old white men. Reverend Dimmesdale and Chillingworth are part of the group, though Reverend Wilson is the one to "examine" Pearl - basically, he's supposed to see if Hester has been raising her to be a good little Christian. I can almost say that this doesn't really bother me, because in such a devout Christian community, should you really expect different behavior? But think of it this way: if it were a man taking care of his born-out-of-wedlock child, would this situation be different? because I'm pretty sure it would be.
There's a little talk of witchcraft and I think some stuff about marrying the Devil but Hester doesn't seem to be down with that. Hester gets to keep Pearl, though I really don't know if it'll last long.
Chapter nine is a mini-biography on Chillingworth and how he became close friends with Dimmesdale. I don't care about him so I didn't find it very interesting and don't have much to say about it, except these people are really paranoid because they're seeing Satan everywhere and it's getting slightly ridiculous already.
Hester's part in these chapters is what interested me the most. Her interactions with the Governor and the other men reminded me of a story my sister once told me about. I've never read it myself, but it's called the Yellow Wallpaper. It's a short story about a woman who suffers from some such affliction and so her husband locks her away in a room of their home so that she can get better. With nothing better to do, the woman spends all day staring at the wallpaper in her room. As her sanity declines, she begins to think that she sees things in the pattern of the wallpaper, people that are trapped and screaming to be released. Eventually, she loses her mind and tears the wallpaper off the wall, freeing the people while her mind stays imprisoned in the four - now empty - walls.
The tale of the Yellow Wallpaper reminds me of Hester's plight because of the similarities in the story. Both are centered around women whom are trapped (or nearly so in Hester's case) by men who think that they need to control their weak, unstable women and may also be trying to destroy them. I personally kind of like Hester, so I hope that the men don't win in her story.