TSI, Notes 1

[Michael Perez]

The first two "Notes" posts are two long notes and some commentary for
the beginning of the story, both notes having much to do with works by
Mark Twain.  The other two are from the rest of the story.  I had to
split them up because of the 10K limit and resent them.

Michael

141.13 "wart":  The following exchange regarding warts with a few
comments from Tom and Huck about the veracity of African Americans is
from _The Adventures of Tom Sawyer_, published in 1876, p. 72-76,
available at
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/browse-mixed-new?id=Twa2Tom&tag=public&images=images/modeng&data=/lv1/Archive/eng-parsed
(cut and copy link if desired, since it is too long to click from this
e-mail message) 

     "What's that you got?"
     "Dead cat."
     "Lemme see him, Huck. My, he's pretty stiff. Where'd you get him?"

     "Bought him off'n a boy."
     "What did you give?"
     "I give a blue ticket and a bladder that I got at the
slaughter-house." 
     "Where'd you get the blue ticket?"
     "Bought it off'n Ben Rogers two weeks ago for a hoop-stick."
     "Say -- what is dead cats good for, Huck?"
     "Good for? Cure warts with." 
     "No! Is that so? I know something that's better." 
     "I bet you don't. What is it?" 
     "Why, spunk-water." 
     "Spunk-water! I wouldn't give a dern for spunk-water." 
     "You wouldn't, wouldn't you? D'you ever try it?" 
     "No, I hain't. But Bob Tanner did." 
     "Who told you so!" 
     "Why, he told Jeff Thatcher, and Jeff told Johnny Baker, and
Johnny told Jim Hollis, and Jim told Ben Rogers, and Ben toltold Jim
Hollis, and Jim told Ben Rogers, and Ben told a nigger, and the nigger
told me. There now!"
     "Well, what of it? They'll all lie. Leastways all but the nigger.
I don't know him . But I never see a nigger that wouldn't lie. Shucks!
Now you tell me how Bob Tanner done it, Huck." 
     "Why, he took and dipped his hand in a rotten stump where the
rain-water was." 
     "In the daytime?"
     "Certainly."
     "With his face to the stump?"
     "Yes. Least I reckon so."
     "Did he say anything?"
     "I don't reckon he did. I don't know."
     "Aha! Talk about trying to cure warts with spunk-water such a
blame fool way as that! Why, that ain't a-going to do any good. You got
to go all by yourself, to the middle of the woods, where you know
there's a spunk-water stump, and just as it's midnight you back up
against the stump and jam your hand in and say: 

'Barley-corn, barley-corn, injun-meal shorts, 
Spunk-water, spunk-water, swaller these warts,' 

and then walk away quick, eleven steps, with your eyes shut, and then
turn around three times and walk home without speaking to anybody.
Because if you speak the charm's busted."
     "Well, that sounds like a good way; but that ain't the way Bob
Tanner done."
     "No, sir, you can bet he didn't, becuz he's the wartiest boy in
this town; and he wouldn't have a wart on him if he'd knowed how to
work spunk-water. I've took off thousands of warts off of my hands that
way, Huck. I play with frogs so much that I've always got considerable
many warts. Sometimes I take 'em off with a bean."
     "Yes, bean's good. I've done that."
     "Have you? What's your way?"
     "You take and split the bean, and cut the wart so as to get some
blood, and then you put the blood on one piece of the bean and take and
dig a hole and bury it 'bout midnight at the crossroads in the dark of
the moon, and then you burn up the rest of the bean. You see that piece
that's got the blood on it will keep drawing and drawing, trying to
fetch the other piece to it, and so that helps the blood to draw the
wart, and pretty soon off she comes."
     "Yes, that's it, Huck -- that's it; though when you're burying it
if you say 'Down bean; off wart; come no more to bother me!' it's
better. That's the way Joe Harper does, and he's been nearly to
Coonville and most everywheres. But say -- how do you cure 'em with
dead cats?"
     "Why, you take your cat and go and get in the graveyard 'long
about midnight when somebody that was wicked has been buried; and when
it's midnight a devil will come, or maybe two or three, but you can't
see 'em, you can only hear something like the wind, or maybe hear 'em
talk; and when they're taking that feller away, you heave your cat
after 'em and say, 'Devil follow corpse, cat follow devil, warts follow
cat, I'm done with ye!' That'll fetch ANY wart."
     "Sounds right. D'you ever try it, Huck?"
     "No, but old Mother Hopkins told me."
     "Well, I reckon it's so, then. Becuz they say she's a witch."
     "Say! Why, Tom, I know she is. She witched pap. Pap says so his
own self. He come along one day, and he see she was a-witching him, so
he took up a rock, and if she hadn't dodged, he'd a got her. Well, that
very night he rolled off'n a shed wher' he was a layin drunk, and broke
his arm."
     "Why, that's awful. How did he know she was a-witching him?"
     "Lord, pap can tell, easy. Pap says when they keep looking at you
right stiddy, they're a-witching you. Specially if they mumble. Becuz
when they mumble they're saying the Lord's Prayer backards."
     "Say, Hucky, when you going to try the cat?"
     "To-night. I reckon they'll come after old Hoss Williams
to-night."
     "But they buried him Saturday. Didn't they get him Saturday
night?"
     "Why, how you talk! How could their charms work till midnight? --
and then it's Sunday. Devils don't slosh around much of a Sunday, I
don't reckon."
     "I never thought of that. That's so. Lemme go with you?"
     "Of course -- if you ain't afeard."
     "Afeard! 'Tain't likely. Will you meow?"
     "Yes -- and you meow back, if you get a chance. Last time, you
kep' me a-meowing around till old Hays went to throwing rocks at me and
says 'Dern that cat!' and so I hove a brick through his window -- but
don't you tell."
     "I won't. I couldn't meow that night, becuz auntie was watching
me, but I'll meow this time.  . . . "

  The following is from Joe Boulton's article "'Children and Slaves in
the West':  Imagining Fraternity among Outlaws in 'The Secret
Integration'"
      Oklahoma City University Law Review 
      Volume 24, Number 3 (1999) 
     
"The integration that Jim experiences with his association with
children is of limited use to him. First of all, it is an association
that implies that black men and white children are social equals. Jim
and Huck engage in dialogue--they discuss the virtues of King Solomon,
and the creation of the stars--but the equality implicit in this
dialogue is demeaning to the black man. Similarly, in Twain's preface
to Tom Sawyer, what "children and slaves in the West" share are a range
of 'odd superstitions.' While they are associated in their outlaw
status, and in their beliefs, that outlaw status and those beliefs are
things white children will grow out of. Twain also said he wrote the
book to remind adults of what they "once were." The association between
blacks and children, while it offers equality for blacks, qualifies
that equality. First, it is equality with children, the implication
being that only children are naive enough to share the odd
superstitions of naive blacks. Second, it is equality in the eyes of
children, who have odd superstitions which they will grow out of, odd
superstitions which could include the equality of blacks."

  Then later in the article:
"Like Twain, Pynchon presents children as outside the jurisdiction of
adults. So the story begins with Tim wondering how he is going to get
out past his racist mother, just as Tom Sawyer begins with Tom trying
to escape his slave- owning aunt.61 The association of children with
outsiders is epitomized by the fact that Hogan Slothrop is welcome at
Alcoholics Anonymous but thrown out of the Parent-Teachers' Association
(PTA).62 As outsiders, the children are also hostile to adult society.
Etienne Cherdlu's practical jokes are targeted toward "institutions"
such as school and the PTA. His antisocial behavior is to be
interpreted as a form of critique of society, just as Silberman says
that antisocial behavior of blacks is a critique.63 Grover Snodd
refuses to accept adult systems of representation as true, and instead
looks for their motivation for representing things in the way they do.
As a result, he prevents Dr. Slothrop's suggestion therapy for working
on Tim's wart by explaining it to him. More importantly, he does not
accept the representations of blacks in the children's books he reads,
and instead decides that these representations are designed to teach
him racist attitudes. As a group, the children integrate themselves
while befriending Carl Barrington, the new black kid on the block."

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