Welcome, eighth graders! I hope you are enjoying your books, and I hope you will enjoy the chance to communicate with each other on the blog.
For the first post, both groups will be reading this same post and answering the same question. After this first post, the two groups will have different questions. Feel free, however, to read what your classmates in the other group have to say about their books. You’re also welcome to visit (and even to comment on) the seventh grade blog; you might find their posts interesting, especially if you read that book last year.
Here’s your first question. Mark Twain is considered a comic writer—that is, his work is meant to be funny. We will talk about this whole idea in class (and read an essay in which Mark Twain himself has something to say about being called a comic writer), but for now let’s look at one part of it. Mark Twain makes fun of lots of things. For instance, in “The Cat and the Painkiller,” a chapter from Tom Sawyer which you read in your reading book last year, Twain makes fun of Aunt Polly for her belief in quack doctors and fake medicine.
Choose one thing that Twain makes fun of and write a paragraph or two about it. You could tell how he makes fun, why he thinks it’s funny, or why you thought what he said was funny. Answer thoroughly—don’t just write a sentence or two.
Your posts will be graded on the following three criteria:
- Does the post respond to the question? Does it do what was assigned?
- Is there interesting content? Does it add something meaningful to the discussion?
- Is the post mechanically correct—free of grammar and spelling mistakes?
When you post a comment, remember the blog rules:
- Be nice. Don’t say anything negative about a classmate or any other person.
- Posts must be signed with your first name only. (Remember: your name starts with a capital letter!)
13 comments:
I thought that is was funny when Mark Twain wrote about Tom Sawyer telling everyone that wanted to join the gang had to leave their oath of blood on a sheet of paper. It was also funny when everybody that wanted to join the gang thought the oath was beautiful. When the whole oath was about if you betrayed us we would kill you and that some boy thought that they should kill the families of the boys, but Huck Finn didn’t have a family so they were thinking about ruling him out cause he didn’t have anyone to kill. I think that when Mark Twain was writing this he was just trying to cause some feud between the gang itself.
I think that it’s funny how Mark Twain makes fun of how the characters talk, especially Jim. You can tell that he is trying to make you feel as if these people are really talking, which I think makes the book more interesting. He also uses incorrect English to show how the people talked back then, and I think that that helps people understand the setting better.
Though how the characters speak is very funny, it can be kind of confusing. I have to read the text very closely and try to sound out all of the words because you can’t read it quickly and try to understand it, but so far I’ve enjoyed the book and am excited to continue reading it.
Tom was a comic writer because he can just pull a great story right out of his head, and people love it. Mainly so far I think the funny thing he wrote was when he had to whitewash the fence and he did not want to so he acted like it was so fun so that other people wanted to try it and he would make it so they would beg him to so then he would let them and he did not have to do any work but he got all the correct for the job when the fence was done. Also when he makes fun of how other people talk is really funny. I think I am really going to like this book
I do believe that Mark Twain is a very comic writer. When Huck and Jim were talking about one of them going into town to find out the recent news, I didn’t think that he would say that Huck was dressing up as a girl. I thought that Huck would just dress up differently; I didn’t think that he would take it to that extreme as dressing as a girl. But then again, I guess he couldn’t really dress up as anything else because back then every body would recognize him. Anyway, I thought that the woman was very smart for doing all of the “tests” to see if he was a girl or not. When she asked what Huck’s girl name was and he said a different name than before I thought that was pretty funny. I thought it was also good fun when the woman talked about how her house is infested with mice and that she had to throw things at them. All together, as far as I have read I am really enjoying the book.
I think it's funny when Mark Twain first talks about Huck Finn. He makes fun of his appearance and how he's hated by all the mothers of the town. Huck is basically the biggest hillbilly in St. Petersburg. The funny thing about this is how all of the children admire him for that. They always want to be around him, even when they're not supposed to, and all of them wish to be like him. They want this because Huck would always come and go at his own free will. He didn't have to go to school or take orders from anybody. He didn't even have to wash his clothes or put new ones on. So he's basically what every child wants to be.
This book is really good, but kind of confusing because of the way they talk. But from what I've read so far, I can tell that this will be an interesting book for me to read.
Mark Twain uses various writing techniques that make his work fun and interesting to read. For instance, he uses the local dialect to make each character different in the way that he or she talks. Also, he sometimes tells the same story a couple times, each time from the perspective of a different character (example: Huck’s mishap when the fog closed in and separated him from Jim during the night, and then Jim’s interpretation of “the dream” in chapter 15). Not only do these things make his books more interesting, but in many cases they make his passages easier to read.
One thing that I found funny was at the beginning of the book, when Huck and Tom Sawyer played a trick on a neighbor slave: Jim. Jim thought he heard someone in the woods near his home. Next he sat down right in between the boys, (though they were hidden) and eventually fell asleep. Once he fell asleep, Tom decided it would be fun to play a trick on him. While he was still sleeping, Jim’s hat was hung on a branch above him by Tom. However, Jim didn’t admit he was tricked. He claimed that witches put him in a trance and took him all over the countryside, and placed his hat above him to prove it. Also, he said he had come face-to-face with the devil. This made Jim somewhat of a local celebrity, for he told everyone that would listen about his “adventure.”
Mark Twain makes fun of Huckleberry Finn for believing Tom Sawyer’s tall tales. Tom Sawyer said that Spanish merchants and rich Arabs had come to town. After Huck went to see if they were there and found that they weren’t, Tom said that only magicians could bring the Spaniards and Arabs by using a genie. When Huck heard that he took a tin lamp and tried to call upon a genie. When Huck finally realized that what Tom said was a lie he felt like a fool.
I think that Mark Twain was making fun of how easy it was to make people believe whatever you wanted them to believe. Throughout the book he shows that people were very superstitious during that time period and they believed whatever others told them. I think that what Mark Twain said is true even today. Mark Twain found humor in this and I can see why.
I thought that Mark Twain has always taken a sort of goofy aproach to thing, and never really seriously in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I think that in the first chapter Mark Twain was making fun of Aunt Polly. He was probably trying to explain how she wasn't the brightest lightbulb in the twelve-pack, if you know what i mean, and I also thought that he treated Tom Sawyer as the "king" of the book. Almost every event coplies with his wants and needs, but that may change throughout the rest of the book
Mark Twain was a very comical man when it came to his writing. I thought when Huckleberry Finn dressed up as a girl was the funniest part, next to that of the rattlesnake. Twain made it funny because he wrote how Huck was finally outsmarted by someone who was smarter than him, but the person was not a man...she was a woman! I liked how she tricked Huck into saying one name, and then she tricked him to say another name when she asked him again. Twain made it seem like she did not know that Huck was not a female at all, but I believe, she did know that Huck was fibbing.
I think Mark Twain was a comical writer. How he expresses it varies in different stories.
In Huckleberry Finn he expresses this with his character’s way of speaking
The other way his characters are funny is that you never know what is going to happen next. First Huck runs away from his pap, and he meets his old friend Jim. . Jim is a slave that spoke broken English. Jim is one of his funnier characters. Now if Jim spoke like a thirty five year old and was well educated the book would be less humorous. The book goes on from there with Jim’s and Huck’s adventures down the river. Which at some point Huck does not want to be noticed and dresses up as a girl? Mark twain also is very descriptive and you could really picture him in that dress. So, I think Mark Twain is a comical writer.
In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn When Huck and Tom Sawyer were sneaking away from Widow Douglas's house Huck made a noise and Jim, a slave belonging to Miss Watson, heard them. He sat outside and waited to hear it again, but he fell asleep. So Tom Sawyer, as a joke, put Jim's hat on a branch of the tree he was sleeping by. When Jim woke up and saw the hat on the branch he made up a story that a witch rode him around town on her broom and set him back under the tree and put his hat there. And he told the story to the whole time and every time the story was different.
I think he meant this to be funny because Tom was exaggerating when he made his story. In that time I think people thought exaggeration was funny and making fun of people was funny too. That is why Mark Twain wrote exaggerations as funny things.
In "Huckleberry Finn", I noticed in chapter four Twain makes fun of Huck. Huck says he is learning about the multiplication tables and says he can only remember up to six times seven is thirty-five. Twain was making fun of how Huck is not good at school. Twain also makes fun of the way they all talk. Sometimes I cannot understand what Jim is saying, but I really like this book. I t is funny.
I think it is funny how Mark Twain writes about Tom Sawyer tricking the other kids into doing his work for him. Tom makes it look like he is having fun white-washing and that makes the other kids very interested. If they'd ask if they could try Tom would tell them that it was very important and that it had to be done correctly. Once the boys started painting they had white-washed the fence three times for Tom and when Aunt Polly came out she expected for only about half of it to be finished and she was very grateful of Tom for doing the whole thing. I think it is funny how Tom gets other kids to do his work for him by being sneaky.
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