1. Compare the writings of Mark Twain with those of Kurt Vonnegut, who has been called a modern-day Mark Twain.

What do these writers have in common in terms of viewpoint, subject matter, and style?

2. Compare the accounts of the Mississippi River in Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Is the river simply part of the background in these books or is it sometimes a character in its own right?

3. William Faulkner's novel The Old Man describes the Mississippi during the flood of 1927. Compare the struggles of Faulkner's unnamed convict as he battles the currents of the river with those of Jim and Huck in Huckleberry Finn. Are Huck and the convict at all similar?

4. Roughing It describes Mark Twain's travels by stagecoach to Nevada in 1861.

It has been said that Twain and Charles Dickens have provided the best descriptions of this...