AP Language and Composition Summer Homework Mrs. Lineman You will need to buy and read the book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. You will also need to buy the newest edition of Barron s AP English Language and Composition. You will need to bring this book as well as Huckleberry Finn during the first week of school. Learning Objectives: To identify and understand SOAPS: (subject, occasion, audience, purpose, speaker) To understand the elements and purpose of satire. To understand ethos, pathos, & logos and the purpose that these rhetorical devices serve. To understand how tone is created and its influence on meaning. ASSIGNMENTS: You have four assignments spread out within this packet. All assignments must have the questions and answers typed. You should just continue on the same word document and label each section Assignment #1, Assignment #2, etc. Author s Background On my website, you can find four short videos that will give you more insight into Mark Twain. Samuel Clemens rose from a hardscrabble boyhood in the backwoods of Missouri to become, as Mark Twain, American s best-known and best-loved author. Considered in his time as the funniest man on earth, Twain was also an unflinching critic of human nature who used his humor to attack hypocrisy, greed, and racism. He created some of the world s most memorable characters as well as its most quoted sayings. And, in his often-misunderstood novel Huckleberry Finn, he brought forth a masterpiece. In Huckleberry Finn, Twain takes a satiric jab at the sentimental literary style, which was in direct contrast to Twain's brand of literary realism. He uses satire, a harsh and biting brand of humor that readers will continue to see in the novel. Because of his use of realism and satire, Twain knew, no doubt, that his novel would incite controversy. The three most important aspects of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was one of the first novels to be written entirely in dialect. Huck is an uneducated boy from a particular region of the country, and the language and sentence structure in which he tells his story reflect that. Because of its plainspoken voice, the book is considered by many to be the most influential work of fiction in American literature.
Huckleberry Finn's world is a brutal one. From his own father's shack to the house of the apparently genteel Grangerfords to the Phelps farm where Jim is enslaved and Tom is shot, Huck is immersed in deadly violence. The only place he finds tranquility is on the river with Jim. Mark Twain wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as a sequel to his best-selling children's book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. However, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn's language and its themes make it too difficult for children to comprehend. Twain intended it for adults. The opening sentence of the novel notifies readers that Huck Finn is the narrator and will tell his story in his own words, in his own language and dialect (complete with grammatical errors and misspellings), and from his own point of view. By using the first person narrative point of view, Twain carries on the southwestern humor tradition of vernacular language; that is, Huck sounds as a young, uneducated boy from Missouri should sound. Assignment #1 Directions: Answer the following questions. The questions and answers need to be typed. For example, you should type out question number one and then type the answer to it. I don t expect 12 pages of answers. Just answer the questions in enough detail that you can talk about your answer with the class. Your papers will be uploaded to turnitin.com after the first day of school. Also, you will take a test on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. SOAPS Subject, Occasion, Audience, Purpose, Speaker 1. What is the subject of Huckleberry Finn? 2. What is the occasion Time & Setting? How does the occasion influence the subject? 3. Who is the audience? What writing devices does Twain use to reach the audience? 4. What is the purpose of Huckleberry Finn? How does Twain achieve this 5. Who is the speaker? How does the speaker help Twain to achieve his 6. Define vernacular and explain how it is used in the novel. APPEALS TO ETHOS, LOGOS, and PATHOS Ethos: Speakers appeal to ethos (Greek for character ) to demonstrate that they are credible and trustworthy. Think, for example, of a speech discouraging teenagers from drinking. Speakers might appeal to ethos by stressing that they are concerned parents, psychologists specializing in alcoholism or adolescent behavior, or recovering alcoholics themselves. Appeals to ethos often emphasize shared values between the speaker and the audience: when a parent speaks to other parents in the same community, they share a concern for their children s education or well being.
Logos: Speakers appeal to logos, or reason, by offering clear, rational ideas. Appealing to logos means thinking logically having a clear main idea and using specific details, examples, facts, statistics, or expert testimony to back it up. Creating a logical argument often involves defining the terms of the argument and identifying connections such as causality. It can also require considerable research. Evidence from expert sources and authorities, facts, and quantitative data can be very persuasive if selected carefully and presented accurately. Sometimes, writers and speakers add charts and graphs as a way to present such information, but often they weave this information into their argument. Pathos is an appeal to emotions, value, desires, and hopes, on the one hand, or fears and prejudices, on the other. Although an argument that appeals exclusively to the emotions is by definition weak it s generally propagandistic in purpose and more polemical than persuasive an effective speaker or writer understands the power of evoking an audience s emotions by using such tools as figurative language, personal anecdotes, and vivid images. Assignment #2 1. How does Twain establish his credibility (ethos)? 2. List an appeal to logos. Use a quote and explain how the quote is an appeal to logos. No citation/no credit. 3. List two appeals to pathos. Use a quote and explain how the quote is an appeal to pathos. Include the citation WHAT IS TONE? Tone is the attitude writers take toward their subjects. Authors may write about something they respect or something they hate, but all writers have some perspective or attitude. The attitude or emotion an author conveys in writing is suggestive or the tone of a speaker s voice. Tone is often expressed through word choice especially the descriptive words (adjectives, adverbs, figures of speech) used in a passage. Sentence length and rhythmic flow may also suggest tone. Assignment #3: 1. Identify two different tones in the novel. How does he create these tones? What is Twain s purpose in using these two different tones?
SATIRE Definition: the literary art of diminishing or derogating a subject by making it ridiculous and evoking toward it attitudes of amusement, contempt, scorn, or indignation. An important distinction: Satire differs from the comic in that comedy evokes laughter mainly as an end in itself, while satire derides; i. e., it uses laughter as a weapon, and against a butt an object that exists outside the work itself. Objects: The butt, or object, of satire may be an individual (in personal satire ), or a type of person, a class, an institution, a nation, or even the entire human race. Purpose: Satire has usually been justified by those who practice it as a corrective of human vice and folly. According to these same practitioners, the aim of satire is to ridicule the fault or failing of the individual rather than the individual person and to target only those faults that are correctable, not those for which the individual is not responsible. The typical satirist is a blend of idealist and realist. He is an idealist in that he wants to improve the world and is keenly aware of the great discrepancy between what the world could be and what it is. He is a realist in that he recognizes that he must go beyond the customary avenues of appeal in order to influence. Satires vs. works containing satire: Satire occurs as an incidental, or side, element (i. e., not a main element) within many works whose overall mode is not satiric in a certain character or situation, or in an interpolated passage or an ironic commentary on some aspect of the human condition or of contemporary society. For example, Jane Austen s novels Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice contain satire but are not considered to be satire since satire is not the main focus of either novel. However, literary writings, whether poetry or prose, in which ridicule is the primary organizing principle constitute a distinct literary genre termed satire. Outstanding examples of this genre include Jonathan Swift s Gulliver s Travels. Persona (mask): Satirists often make use of a special kind of narrator, called a mask or persona, which normally confused with the author s own voice. (Example: Mark Twain s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in which Twain is NOT personally advocating the naïve and innocent but nonetheless racist mindset of the work s persona, Huck Finn.) Types of Satire: Satire is divided into two types based on the tone of the writing: 1. Horatian satire: tends to be lighter, gentler, less serious in tone. The speaker manifests the character of an urbane, witty, and tolerant man of the world, who is moved more often to wry amusement than indignation at the spectacle of human folly, pretentiousness, or hypocrisy.
2. Juvelian satire: tends to be more serious, even harsh and bitter, in tone. The character of the speaker is that of a serious moralist who uses a dignified and public style of utterance to decry kinds of vice and error that, while ridiculous, are usually more serious or dangerous. Instead of amusement, in this type of satire the speaker attempts to evoke from readers contempt, moral indignation, or sadness at the aberrations of humanity. Assignment #4 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1. Find one example each of Twain satirically criticizing civilization, racism, and religion. Find two examples of hypocrisy and superstition. You will have a total of seven examples. These examples need to be quoted, explained, and cited. No citation, no credit. 2. Pay attention to the river versus the shore. Explain Huck and Jim s experiences alone on the raft to those experiences with people and/or on the shore. What is Twain s How does he go about achieving this