Thursday, January 20, 2011

42 Days with Huck Finn 2:42


Quotes in Context:

Context: Tom and Huck play a trick on Jim.  JIm explains the trick by ways of vodoo magic.  

Niggers is always talking about witches in the dark by the kitchen fire; but whenever one was talking and letting on to know all about such things, Jim would happen in and say, "Hm! What you know 'bout witches?" and that nigger was corked up and had to take a back seat. Jim always kept that five-center piece round his neck with a string, and said it was a charm the devil give to him with his own hands, and told him he could cure anybody with it and fetch witches whenever he wanted to just by saying something to it; but he never told what it was he said to it. Niggers would come from all around there and give Jim anything they had, just for a sight of that fivecenter piece; but they wouldn't touch it, because the devil had had his hands on it. Jim was most ruined for a servant, because he got stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches.


Context: The boy's gang is debating what it is to ransom someone, without  a complete knowledge of the word:

"Because it ain't in the books so -- that's why. Now, Ben Rogers, do you want to do things regular, or don't you? -- that's the idea. Don't you reckon that the people that made the books knows what's the correct thing to do? Do you reckon YOU can learn 'em anything? Not by a good deal. No, sir, we'll just go on and ransom them in the regular way."

Poetic Response:

Story book notions, play with your itch.
Highway boys nest, 
and break,
fences.
_ _ _ _ _ _





Thoughts on Notes from a Native Son and Mark Twain's Novel


At once, a need, for saving de
"Nigger". White absolves;
black+red
is blank.


No comments:

Post a Comment

Search This Blog