The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn:
Exploring Cultural Tensions During the Time this Book was written. Here are the resources, rubric, and paper information. I need this paper to be exceptional. If I get an A on it, I will tip you $100usd. Use the rubric below to format the paper. All of the resources you need can be found in this document.
What this paper should be about:
The time has come to begin the process of writing a paper about Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Before we look at a rubric or sample essay and actually start drafting, I want you to select a topic and assemble five passages you will examine for your topic.
- Selecting a Topic. Your topic for the paper will be an American culture tension from our tensions list. You may choose any topic there that is not connected to race (yep — no race as a paper topic because it is too impossibly broad for this work). Anything else is fair game – but do make sure you understand the tension before you select it (if you feel unclear about a tension you are interested in, you can always text or email me.
- Then find five passages from the novel you think relate to your tension — passages where you think Twain is making an argument about one or both ideas in that tension. Remember — and this is crucial — you do not have to pick five passages that all say the same thing about the tension and your passages do not have to represent both sides of the tension. What makes Twain interesting is his ambivalence and inconsistency. Do not put yourself or Twain in a box by trying to find passages that all say the same thing (that would be pretty boring anyway!!). And passages comment on one end of the spectrum or the other are just as good as ones that focus on both. Finally, pick passages rich with figurative and literary devices! Those will work the best for a paper that requires you to discuss those literary devices in each paragarph!!
Literary Devices: Some Key Literary Devices to Note: You can note these in the margin and/or circle particularly strong examples in the text (see below): Connotation, Symbolism, Imagery, Metaphor, Simile, Irony, Metonymy, Synecdoche, Antithesis (Juxtaposition), Parallelism, Allusion, Hyperbole, Understatement, Litotes, Paradox, Apostrophe, Anaphora, Assonance, Alliteration, Chiasmus, Personification, Pun, Oxymoron, Rhyme, Meter…
American Cultural Tensions List
In the list below, I have organized these tensions thematically. To be clear — a theme is one idea or topic; a tension is a spectrum between two ideas, beliefs or values. In this class, we use exploring tensions as a way to engage in dynamic discussions about cultural themes.
Tensions related to American Individualism
- individualism and communalism (or community)
- individualism and social conformity
- freedom and equality
- human agency (control over our own lives and personal development) and determinism (environmental, social, religious, biological, etc.)
- alienation and connection
Tensions related to class
- competitive elitism and communal egalitarianism
- social hierarchy and social mobility
- freedom and equality
Tensions related to femininity
- traditional female subordination and ideals of equality
- woman as domestic leaders and women and public leaders
- woman as revered and women as objects of sexual desire (virgin / whore dichotomy)
- family as liberating and family as constraining
- work as liberating and work as constraining
Tensions related to masculinity
- aggressive masculinity (hunter, warrior, predator) and communal masculinity (man as collaborator or cultivator)
- man as outlaw hero and man as official hero
- man as provider and man as beatnik/loader
- man as frontiersman and man as settler
- family as liberating and family as constraining
- work as liberating and work as constraining
Tensions related to gender categories and identities
- Imposition of heterosexual gender binaries as normative and acceptance of a wider range of sexual identities (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersexual, asexual…)
Tensions related to race and ethnicity in America
- racial hierarchy and racial equality
- the desire to move beyond racial categories and the desire to recognize and address existing and historical abuses/ racism
- assimilation and pluralism and separatism
- integration and segregation
Tensions related to epistemology (how we determine what is true or “real”)
- religious faith and intellectual reasoning
- spirituality and rationality
Tensions related to ethics (how we live our lives and organize our society)
- spirituality and materialism
- Christian idealism and material / economic desire
- democratic idealism and material / economic desire
- Christian idealism and democratic idealism
- alienation and connection
- individualism and communalism
- family as liberating and family as constraining
- work as liberating and work as constraining
- education as liberating and education as constraining
- art as personal or aesthetic expression and art as political expression
Tensions related to our environment
- nature as transcendent space and nature as commodity
- technology/science as progressive and technology/science as destructive
- spirituality and materialism
Tensions related to government and law
- anxiety about big government and a desire for government to address social problems
- freedom and equality
- individual rights and collective rights
- personal freedom and collective security
- education as liberating and education as constraining
- a desire for freedom from taxation and a desire for increasingly complex / expensive government services and support systems
Rubric that paper is graded on:
