Huckleberry Finn 2: P28-46

I. Quotations
1. "You're educated, too, they say; can read and write. You think you're better'n your father, now, don't you, because he can't? I'll take it out of you." (page 28-29)

• There was a sense of insecurity in Pap's voice. He was intimidated by the fact that his son, being civilized, is going to become a better person than he is: "I'll learn people to bring up a boy to put on airs over his own father and let on to be better'n what he is" (29). Therefore, from a historical perspective, this insecurity has a symbolic meaning - the whites' fear of losing their dominance over black people. In Pap's mind, he "was Huck Finn's boss" (33) and his son is his "property" (36). It may be strange for us to hear and hard for us to understand that why Pap would view a person as his own property; but back in the days, when slavery still exists, it is very common to own someone's freedom and make full use of it. On one hand, Huck's dad use him as a cash cow to get money for alcohol, which implicates the Old South Tradition of whites forcing slaves to work on cotton fields in order to make a fortune. On the other hand, Pap saved his brittle pride by dominating his son, which symbolizes the evil privilege of whites dominating black slaves in the old days. Therefore, Pap represents the ruthless white slaveholders and Huck represents the helpless black slaves.
  

2. "There was a free nigger there, from Ohio; a mulatter, most as a white as a white man [...] they said he was a p'fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything [...] And to see the road if I hadn't shoved him out o' the way. I say to the people, why ain't this nigger put up at auction and sold." (page 36-37)

• Huck's father is the embodiment of ignorance and stubbornness. He represents the worst of whites in the Old South - illiterate, violent, ignorant, and, above all, profoundly racist. It is such an irony that Pap, the ignorant old fogy, thinks he is way better than a mixed-race college professor. The society that tolerates the cruelty of slavery gave the whites, like Pap, priority over blacks. By contrasting the knowledgeable mulatto professor and the illiterate white Pap, Mark Twain mocked the ugliness of slavery in the South indirectly.
  

II. Vocabulary
1. jolt - [n.]
1> a sudden impact
2> an abrupt spasmodic movement
Ex. "That is, after the first jolt, as you may say, when my breath sort of hitched - he being so unexpected." (28)

2. nabob - [n.]
1> a a governor in India during the Mogul empire
2> a rich or important person
Ex. "He had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed cane - the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the State." (21)