TOWNSHEND — Linda Rood said that all her AP English students are planning to go to college. Several who applied early had been accepted by their first-choice schools, from Williams College to the University of Vermont to Sarah Lawrence College to the University of New Hampshire, some with financial aid.
In later conversations, a few students commented on why they liked the class and the book.
Quinn Darrow, who will attend Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y., said that the opportunity “to verbalize our ideas” made the class valuable to him, as well as reading about events that took place during the second half of the 19th century.
“It's so cool that Huck is so young and he sort of grows up. At first, it's like a child's story,” Darrow said.
“The class is a relaxed environment. I mean, everybody wants to be there, some because they want to read a good book,” said Graham Brooks, who plays the guitar in a band and wants to eventually go to Berklee College of Music in Boston.
He chose a passage that describes a lynch mob “because it reflected Twain's own experiences with brutality,” Brooks said. “It really captured the intensity – it was almost entertainment. I think it shows Twain's kind of cynical view about the brutality of man.”
Aaron Meihak applied to seven schools. The University of Denver has accepted him, and he will wait to make up his mind about the rest, noting that costs will play a big role in his decision.
“I'm really glad we're reading an American classic,” he said. “[Huckleberry Finn] comes up so often in American culture. I really like the story, and all the discussion helped me to see different elements, like the significance of the Mississippi.”
“I've seen Huck mature, not so much influenced by Tom Sawyer,” Meihak said. “He doesn't have to seek out adventure and sees there's enough adventure just in life.”
Ashley Meyer takes a more contrary view, agreeing with some critics who think Huck's transformation is relatively pallid.
Meyer, who's applied to several colleges, wants to go to the University of New Hampshire. She will base her choice, in part, on the costs. She thinks she'll major in biology with a goal of doing something in the field of medicine.
“I disagree that he [Huck] has changed all that much,” she said; she and Rood had a lively back-and-forth about Huck's putative transformation. “He seemed to change in the middle, when he loved Jim,” Meyer said. “And then, at the end, when he says, 'I knowed he [Jim] was white inside' he's back again to the deformed conscience.”
Twain's own proposition is that the story's conflict is, in the end, a battle between a sound heart and a deformed conscience.
But Meyer is really glad the book was taught in class. “I wouldn't have gotten much out of it on my own,” he said. “I might have thought of it as a boy's adventure book.”
Tyler Gervais has applied to six schools and plans to study film.
“Just taking AP classes makes you have to think to the maximum, expand your thought process,” Gervais said. “I'm glad we read Huck, but I preferred Crime and Punishment [Dostoyevsky's novel, an earlier assignment]. I just like that style of writing, getting into the mind of a character. I didn't like the book as much as I liked Huck himself.”
He added he was also a fan of class discussions, “because they cement ideas, and they give new perspectives.”