My apologies to Deidre Holmes for misspelling her name. I have done some
scholarly work on J.M. Synge, author of _Deirdre of the Sorrows_ and other
plays and I tend to see what I'm used to seeing. You did NOT used the
phrase "old codgers"; I did, in a perhaps ill-aimed effort to avoid
sounding paternalistic when dispensing advice from a distance. Though
you may not have succeeded in getting everyone to "like" Huck, it
seems to me that you certainly got everyone acquainted with him and
thinking about him - and maybe you should be satisfied with that this
time out. I'd be very interested to read those journal responses. I suspect
that your analysis of the other factors - external to the novel - producing
resistance is correct. And so your note describes rather well the
complexity of classroom teaching and some of the factors - cultural and
practical - that help determine reader responses. I've shared it with a
colleague who supervises our English student teachers. One of the frus-
trating, mysterious, and fascinating things about teaching is that you
may not have heard, and may never hear, from the one (or two? or three?)
students who liked, even identified with Huck but, sensing the prevailing
mood in the class, chose not to express his/her/their view(s). And, of
course, you'll probably never hear, either, from the students who
vociferously
expressed their displeasure but who will change their minds six months, a
year,
ten years from now. The important thing is to drop the stone into the pond;
how the ripples stir the reeds is not in our power to know.

Gus Sponberg
Valparaiso University