Idaho Conversation League

The Need for a Strong Patriarchal Society as Explained by Our Cultural Heritage By: Michael L. Putnam http://users.wpi.edu/~m1putt/Suff.htm "There is the evil father, sometimes depicted as a monster, or as a villain like Darth Vader in Star Wars . If we take Atticus Finch to be the greatest dad, perhaps one of literature’s most vile fathers is Huck Finn’s. Pap harasses Huck for wearing good clothes and going to school. “Starchy clothes – very. You think you’re a good deal of a big-bud, don’t you?” He accuses Huck of trying to act better than his own father. Pap remarks that no one in his family could ever read, and that he certainly does not want his son to be smarter than he is. He demands that Huck read him something, not believing that Huck can, and soon becomes quite furious as he realizes his son’s new found ability. “I’ll lay for you smarty; and if I catch you about that school I’ll tan you good…. I never seen such a son.” He makes Huck hand over the dollar that Judg...

From Huck Finn: Say, gimme a chaw tobacker, won't ye?" I didn't have none, so he left. I went to the raft, and set down in the wigwam to think. But I couldn't come to nothing. I thought till I wore my head sore, but I couldn't see no way out of the trouble. After all this long journey, and after all we'd done for them scoundrels, here it was all come to nothing, everything all busted up and ruined, because they could have the heart to serve Jim such a trick as that, and make him - 282 - a slave again all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty dollars. Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a slave at home where his family was, as long as he'd got to be a slave, and so I'd better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss Watson where he was. But I soon give up that notion for two things: she'd be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her, and so she'd sell h...