1. Some scholars believe that when Clemens began to work on Huckleberry Finn in the late 1870s, he was planning to write the novel as a mystery. Do you see "clues" being planted in the opening chapters (I-XIII)? If Clemens abandoned a mystery plot for Huck, did he weaken the book by doing so? What sort of plot did he replace it with? Is there a plot in this novel?
2. Look carefully at the way that Jim is portrayed in chapters XIV and XV. How would you describe his portrayal in the earlier chapter? In the later one? Does this succession of chapters indicate that Clemens has changed his mind about Jim in the process of creating him? Or are there continuities here that we should observe in thinking about Jim as an imaginative creation? Now look at the way in which Jim is portrayed in chapter XXXVII, and comment on how Clemens is developing Jim at this point.
3. Some critics regard Tom Sawyer as one of the villains of this novel--a young boy who forces the real world and actual people into dramatic forms and types that he has picked up from reading romantic fiction. How many other people in the novel suffer from overexposure to romanticism? Is this a major theme in the novel? If Huckleberry Finn ranks as a major work in the American realist tradition, then is its "realism" evident in the values that are affirmed -- or in the values that are rejected? Offer evidence from the novel in developing your answer.