Note any unanswered questions or issues your study could not address and describe the generalizability of your results to other situations. If a limitation is applicable to the method chosen to gather information, then describe in detail the problems you encountered and why. Make Suggestions for Further Research. You may choose to conclude the discussion section by making suggestions for further research [as opposed to offering suggestions in the conclusion of your paper].
Although your study can offer important insights about the research problem, this is where you can address other questions related to the problem that remain unanswered or highlight hidden issues that were revealed as a result of conducting your research. You should frame your suggestions by linking the need for further research to the limitations of your study [e. NOTE: Besides the literature review section, the preponderance of references to sources is usually found in the discussion section.
If a study that you cited does not support your findings, don't ignore it--clearly explain why your research findings differ from theirs. Problems to Avoid. Analyzing vs. Department of English Writing Guide. George Mason University; Discussion. Department of Biology. Bates College; Hess, Dean R. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Sauaia, A. Lund Research Ltd. The Writing Center. Writing the Discussion. Writing in Psychology course syllabus. University of Florida; Yellin, Linda L.
A Sociology Writer's Guide. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, Interpretation is a subjective exercise. As such, you should always approach the selection and interpretation of your findings introspectively and to think critically about the possibility of judgmental biases unintentionally entering into discussions about the significance of your work.
With this in mind, be careful that you do not read more into the findings than can be supported by the evidence you have gathered. Remember that the data are the data: nothing more, nothing less. MacCoun, Robert J. Don't Write Two Results Sections! One of the most common mistakes that you can make when discussing the results of your study is to present a superficial interpretation of the findings that more or less re-states the results section of your paper.
Obviously, you must refer to your results when discussing them, but focus on the interpretation of those results and their significance in relation to the research problem, not the data itself. Azar, Beth. Avoid Unwarranted Speculation! The discussion section should remain focused on the findings of your study. For example, if the purpose of your research was to measure the impact of foreign aid on increasing access to education among disadvantaged children in Bangladesh, it would not be appropriate to speculate about how your findings might apply to populations in other countries without drawing from existing studies to support your claim or if analysis of other countries was not a part of your original research design.
If you feel compelled to speculate, do so in the form of describing possible implications or explaining possible impacts. Be certain that you clearly identify your comments as speculation or as a suggestion for where further research is needed. The Discussion. Search this Guide Search. Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper Offers detailed guidance on how to develop, organize, and write a college-level research paper in the social and behavioral sciences.
The Abstract Executive Summary 4. I hopped up, and went and looked out at a hole in the leaves, and I see a bunch of smoke laying on the water a long ways up—about abreast the ferry.
And there was the ferryboat full of people floating along down. I knowed what was the matter now. You see, they was firing cannon over the water, trying to make my carcass come to the top. So I set there and watched the cannon-smoke and listened to the boom. The river was a mile wide there, and it always looks pretty on a summer morning—so I was having a good enough time seeing them hunt for my remainders if I only had a bite to eat. Well, then I happened to think how they always put quicksilver in loaves of bread and float them off, because they always go right to the drownded carcass and stop there.
A big double loaf come along, and I most got it with a long stick, but my foot slipped and she floated out further. Of course I was where the current set in the closest to the shore—I knowed enough for that.
But by and by along comes another one, and this time I won. I took out the plug and shook out the little dab of quicksilver, and set my teeth in. I got a good place amongst the leaves, and set there on a log, munching the bread and watching the ferry-boat, and very well satisfied. And then something struck me. I says, now I reckon the widow or the parson or somebody prayed that this bread would find me, and here it has gone and done it. I lit a pipe and had a good long smoke, and went on watching.
Where the log forked I could peep through. By and by she come along, and she drifted in so close that they could a run out a plank and walked ashore.
Most everybody was on the boat. Everybody was talking about the murder, but the captain broke in and says:. I hope so, anyway. They all crowded up and leaned over the rails, nearly in my face, and kept still, watching with all their might.
Then the captain sung out:. The boat floated on and went out of sight around the shoulder of the island. The island was three mile long. I judged they had got to the foot, and was giving it up. They turned around the foot of the island and started up the channel on the Missouri side, under steam, and booming once in a while as they went.
I crossed over to that side and watched them. When they got abreast the head of the island they quit shooting and dropped over to the Missouri shore and went home to the town. I knowed I was all right now. Nobody else would come a-hunting after me. I got my traps out of the canoe and made me a nice camp in the thick woods. I catched a catfish and haggled him open with my saw, and towards sundown I started my camp fire and had supper.
Then I set out a line to catch some fish for breakfast. And so for three days and nights. No difference—just the same thing. But the next day I went exploring around down through the island. I was boss of it; it all belonged to me, so to say, and I wanted to know all about it; but mainly I wanted to put in the time.
I found plenty strawberries, ripe and prime; and green summer grapes, and green razberries; and the green blackberries was just beginning to show. They would all come handy by and by, I judged. About this time I mighty near stepped on a good-sized snake, and it went sliding off through the grass and flowers, and I after it, trying to get a shot at it. I clipped along, and all of a sudden I bounded right on to the ashes of a camp fire that was still smoking.
My heart jumped up amongst my lungs. I never waited for to look further, but uncocked my gun and went sneaking back on my tiptoes as fast as ever I could. I slunk along another piece further, then listened again; and so on, and so on. If I see a stump, I took it for a man; if I trod on a stick and broke it, it made me feel like a person had cut one of my breaths in two and I only got half, and the short half, too. All I could get to eat was berries and what was left over from breakfast.
By the time it was night I was pretty hungry. So when it was good and dark I slid out from shore before moonrise and paddled over to the Illinois bank—about a quarter of a mile. I got everything into the canoe as quick as I could, and then went creeping through the woods to see what I could find out. I tied up in the old place, and reckoned I would sleep in the canoe. And every time I waked up I thought somebody had me by the neck.
Well, I felt better right off. So I took my paddle and slid out from shore just a step or two, and then let the canoe drop along down amongst the shadows. The moon was shining, and outside of the shadows it made it most as light as day.
I poked along well on to an hour, everything still as rocks and sound asleep. Well, by this time I was most down to the foot of the island. A little ripply, cool breeze begun to blow, and that was as good as saying the night was about done.
I give her a turn with the paddle and brung her nose to shore; then I got my gun and slipped out and into the edge of the woods. I sat down there on a log, and looked out through the leaves. I see the moon go off watch, and the darkness begin to blanket the river.
But in a little while I see a pale streak over the treetops, and knowed the day was coming. So I took my gun and slipped off towards where I had run across that camp fire, stopping every minute or two to listen. But by and by, sure enough, I catched a glimpse of fire away through the trees. I went for it, cautious and slow. By and by I was close enough to have a look, and there laid a man on the ground. It most give me the fan-tods.
He had a blanket around his head, and his head was nearly in the fire. I set there behind a clump of bushes, in about six foot of him, and kept my eyes on him steady.
It was getting gray daylight now. I bet I was glad to see him. I says:. He bounced up and stared at me wild. Then he drops down on his knees, and puts his hands together and says:. I was ever so glad to see Jim. I talked along, but he only set there and looked at me; never said nothing.
Then I says:. Make up your camp fire good. Den we kin git sumfn better den strawbries. I think I could. But you got a gun. Oh, yes, you got a gun. So we went over to where the canoe was, and while he built a fire in a grassy open place amongst the trees, I fetched meal and bacon and coffee, and coffee-pot and frying-pan, and sugar and tin cups, and the nigger was set back considerable, because he reckoned it was all done with witchcraft.
I catched a good big catfish, too, and Jim cleaned him with his knife, and fried him. When breakfast was ready we lolled on the grass and eat it smoking hot. Jim laid it in with all his might, for he was most about starved.
Then when we had got pretty well stuffed, we laid off and lazied. By and by Jim says:. Then I told him the whole thing, and he said it was smart.
Honest injun , I will. I lit out mighty quick, I tell you. Well, I wuz dah all night. Den I swum to de stern uv it en tuck a-holt. So I clumb up en laid down on de planks.
How could a body do it in de night? I knowed dey was arter you. I see um go by heah—watched um thoo de bushes.
Some young birds come along, flying a yard or two at a time and lighting. Jim said it was a sign it was going to rain. He said it was a sign when young chickens flew that way, and so he reckoned it was the same way when young birds done it. He said it was death. He said his father laid mighty sick once, and some of them catched a bird, and his old granny said his father would die, and he did.
The same if you shook the table-cloth after sundown. And he said if a man owned a beehive and that man died, the bees must be told about it before sun-up next morning, or else the bees would all weaken down and quit work and die. I had heard about some of these things before, but not all of them.
Jim knowed all kinds of signs. He said he knowed most everything. Want to keep it off? I put ten dollars in a cow. I sole de hide en taller for a dollar en ten cents. Did you speculate any more? This place was a tolerable long, steep hill or ridge about forty foot high. We had a rough time getting to the top, the sides was so steep and the bushes so thick. We tramped and clumb around all over it, and by and by found a good big cavern in the rock, most up to the top on the side towards Illinois.
The cavern was as big as two or three rooms bunched together, and Jim could stand up straight in it. It was cool in there. Jim said if we had the canoe hid in a good place, and had all the traps in the cavern, we could rush there if anybody was to come to the island, and they would never find us without dogs. And, besides, he said them little birds had said it was going to rain, and did I want the things to get wet? So we went back and got the canoe, and paddled up abreast the cavern, and lugged all the traps up there.
Then we hunted up a place close by to hide the canoe in, amongst the thick willows. We took some fish off of the lines and set them again, and begun to get ready for dinner. The door of the cavern was big enough to roll a hogshead in, and on one side of the door the floor stuck out a little bit, and was flat and a good place to build a fire on. So we built it there and cooked dinner. We spread the blankets inside for a carpet, and eat our dinner in there. We put all the other things handy at the back of the cavern.
Pretty soon it darkened up, and begun to thunder and lighten; so the birds was right about it. Directly it begun to rain, and it rained like all fury, too, and I never see the wind blow so. It was one of these regular summer storms. It would get so dark that it looked all blue-black outside, and lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spider-webby; and here would come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale underside of the leaves; and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set the branches to tossing their arms as if they was just wild; and next, when it was just about the bluest and blackest— FST!
Pass me along another hunk of fish and some hot corn-bread. The river went on raising and raising for ten or twelve days, till at last it was over the banks. The water was three or four foot deep on the island in the low places and on the Illinois bottom. On that side it was a good many miles wide, but on the Missouri side it was the same old distance across—a half a mile—because the Missouri shore was just a wall of high bluffs.
Daytimes we paddled all over the island in the canoe, It was mighty cool and shady in the deep woods, even if the sun was blazing outside. We went winding in and out amongst the trees, and sometimes the vines hung so thick we had to back away and go some other way. Well, on every old broken-down tree you could see rabbits and snakes and such things; and when the island had been overflowed a day or two they got so tame, on account of being hungry, that you could paddle right up and put your hand on them if you wanted to; but not the snakes and turtles—they would slide off in the water.
The ridge our cavern was in was full of them. One night we catched a little section of a lumber raft—nice pine planks. It was twelve foot wide and about fifteen or sixteen foot long, and the top stood above water six or seven inches—a solid, level floor. Another night when we was up at the head of the island, just before daylight, here comes a frame-house down, on the west side. She was a two-story, and tilted over considerable. We paddled out and got aboard—clumb in at an upstairs window. But it was too dark to see yet, so we made the canoe fast and set in her to wait for daylight.
The light begun to come before we got to the foot of the island. Then we looked in at the window. We could make out a bed, and a table, and two old chairs, and lots of things around about on the floor, and there was clothes hanging against the wall.
There was something laying on the floor in the far corner that looked like a man. So Jim says:. Yes, indeedy; naked, too. There was heaps of old greasy cards scattered around over the floor, and old whisky bottles, and a couple of masks made out of black cloth; and all over the walls was the ignorantest kind of words and pictures made with charcoal.
We put the lot into the canoe—it might come good. And there was a bottle that had had milk in it, and it had a rag stopper for a baby to suck. We would a took the bottle, but it was broke. There was a seedy old chest, and an old hair trunk with the hinges broke.
And so, take it all around, we made a good haul. When we was ready to shove off we was a quarter of a mile below the island, and it was pretty broad day; so I made Jim lay down in the canoe and cover up with the quilt, because if he set up people could tell he was a nigger a good ways off.
I paddled over to the Illinois shore, and drifted down most a half a mile doing it. We got home all safe. You said it was the worst bad luck in the world to touch a snake-skin with my hands. I wish we could have some bad luck like this every day, Jim. It did come, too. It was a Tuesday that we had that talk. Well, after dinner Friday we was laying around in the grass at the upper end of the ridge, and got out of tobacco. I went to the cavern to get some, and found a rattlesnake in there.
He jumped up yelling, and the first thing the light showed was the varmint curled up and ready for another spring. He was barefooted, and the snake bit him right on the heel. That all comes of my being such a fool as to not remember that wherever you leave a dead snake its mate always comes there and curls around it. I done it, and he eat it and said it would help cure him. He made me take off the rattles and tie them around his wrist, too. He said that that would help.
Jim sucked and sucked at the jug, and now and then he got out of his head and pitched around and yelled; but every time he come to himself he went to sucking at the jug again. Jim was laid up for four days and nights.
Then the swelling was all gone and he was around again. Jim said he reckoned I would believe him next time. He said he druther see the new moon over his left shoulder as much as a thousand times than take up a snake-skin in his hand. Pap told me. But anyway it all come of looking at the moon that way, like a fool. Well, the days went along, and the river went down between its banks again; and about the first thing we done was to bait one of the big hooks with a skinned rabbit and set it and catch a catfish that was as big as a man, being six foot two inches long, and weighed over two hundred pounds.
We just set there and watched him rip and tear around till he drownded. We found a brass button in his stomach and a round ball, and lots of rubbage. We split the ball open with the hatchet, and there was a spool in it. It was as big a fish as was ever catched in the Mississippi, I reckon. He would a been worth a good deal over at the village. Next morning I said it was getting slow and dull, and I wanted to get a stirring up some way. I said I reckoned I would slip over the river and find out what was going on.
Jim liked that notion; but he said I must go in the dark and look sharp. That was a good notion, too. So we shortened up one of the calico gowns, and I turned up my trouser-legs to my knees and got into it. Jim hitched it behind with the hooks, and it was a fair fit. I put on the sun-bonnet and tied it under my chin, and then for a body to look in and see my face was like looking down a joint of stove-pipe.
Jim said nobody would know me, even in the daytime, hardly. I took notice, and done better. I started across to the town from a little below the ferry-landing, and the drift of the current fetched me in at the bottom of the town. I tied up and started along the bank. I slipped up and peeped in at the window. There was a woman about forty year old in there knitting by a candle that was on a pine table.
Now this was lucky, because I was weakening; I was getting afraid I had come; people might know my voice and find me out. In Hookerville, seven mile below. He lives at the upper end of the town, she says. Do you know him? You better stay here all night. Take off your bonnet. She told about me and Tom Sawyer finding the six thousand dollars only she got it ten and all about pap and what a hard lot he was, and what a hard lot I was, and at last she got down to where I was murdered.
Some think old Finn done it himself. But before night they changed around and judged it was done by a runaway nigger named Jim. I stopped. I reckoned I better keep still. She run on, and never noticed I had put in at all:.
Before night they wanted to lynch him, but he was gone, you see. So then they put it on him, you see; and while they was full of it, next day, back comes old Finn, and went boo-hooing to Judge Thatcher to get money to hunt for the nigger all over Illinois with. The judge gave him some, and that evening he got drunk, and was around till after midnight with a couple of mighty hard-looking strangers, and then went off with them.
Has everybody quit thinking the nigger done it? A good many thinks he done it. Does three hundred dollars lay around every day for people to pick up?
No, nobody, says they. He was gone up the river; but he got back to-day, and I told him as soon as he got here two hours ago. I had to do something with my hands; so I took up a needle off of the table and went to threading it. My hands shook, and I was making a bad job of it.
When the woman stopped talking I looked up, and she was looking at me pretty curious and smiling a little. I put down the needle and thread, and let on to be interested—and I was, too—and says:. I wish my mother could get it.
Is your husband going over there to-night? He went up-town with the man I was telling you of, to get a boat and see if they could borrow another gun. Pretty soon she says,.
I wished the woman would say something more; the longer she set still the uneasier I was. But now she says:. Sarah Mary Williams. Some calls me Sarah, some calls me Mary. I was feeling better then, but I wished I was out of there, anyway. Well, the woman fell to talking about how hard times was, and how poor they had to live, and how the rats was as free as if they owned the place, and so forth and so on, and then I got easy again. She was right about the rats.
Then she told me to try for the next one. She said that was first-rate, and she reckoned I would hive the next one. She went and got the lump of lead and fetched it back, and brought along a hank of yarn which she wanted me to help her with. But she broke off to say:. You better have the lead in your lap, handy. So she dropped the lump into my lap just at that moment, and I clapped my legs together on it and she went on talking. But only about a minute.
Then she took off the hank and looked me straight in the face, and very pleasant, and says:. Is it Bill, or Tom, or Bob? But I says:. Set down and stay where you are. You just tell me your secret, and trust me. I traveled nights, and hid daytimes and slept, and the bag of bread and meat I carried from home lasted me all the way, and I had a-plenty. I said I believed my uncle Abner Moore would take care of me, and so that was why I struck out for this town of Goshen. This is St.
Who told you this was Goshen? He told me when the roads forked I must take the right hand, and five mile would fetch me to Goshen. I got to be moving along. You might want it. Which end gets up first? I thought maybe you was trying to hocus me again. You do a girl tolerable poor, but you might fool men, maybe. And when you throw at a rat or anything, hitch yourself up a tiptoe and fetch your hand up over your head as awkward as you can, and miss your rat about six or seven foot.
Throw stiff-armed from the shoulder, like there was a pivot there for it to turn on, like a girl; not from the wrist and elbow, with your arm out to one side, like a boy. Why, I spotted you for a boy when you was threading the needle; and I contrived the other things just to make certain. Keep the river road all the way, and next time you tramp take shoes and socks with you.
I went up the bank about fifty yards, and then I doubled on my tracks and slipped back to where my canoe was, a good piece below the house. I jumped in, and was off in a hurry.
I went up-stream far enough to make the head of the island, and then started across. When I was about the middle I heard the clock begin to strike, so I stops and listens; the sound come faint over the water but clear—eleven. When I struck the head of the island I never waited to blow, though I was most winded, but I shoved right into the timber where my old camp used to be, and started a good fire there on a high and dry spot. Then I jumped in the canoe and dug out for our place, a mile and a half below, as hard as I could go.
I landed, and slopped through the timber and up the ridge and into the cavern. There Jim laid, sound asleep on the ground. I roused him out and says:. Jim never asked no questions, he never said a word; but the way he worked for the next half an hour showed about how he was scared.
By that time everything we had in the world was on our raft, and she was ready to be shoved out from the willow cove where she was hid. Then we got out the raft and slipped along down in the shade, past the foot of the island dead still—never saying a word. We was in ruther too much of a sweat to think of so many things.
If the men went to the island I just expect they found the camp fire I built, and watched it all night for Jim to come. I played it as low down on them as I could.
When the first streak of day began to show we tied up to a towhead in a big bend on the Illinois side, and hacked off cottonwood branches with the hatchet, and covered up the raft with them so she looked like there had been a cave-in in the bank there.
A tow-head is a sandbar that has cottonwoods on it as thick as harrow-teeth. We laid there all day, and watched the rafts and steamboats spin down the Missouri shore, and up-bound steamboats fight the big river in the middle. When it was beginning to come on dark we poked our heads out of the cottonwood thicket, and looked up and down and across; nothing in sight; so Jim took up some of the top planks of the raft and built a snug wigwam to get under in blazing weather and rainy, and to keep the things dry.
Jim made a floor for the wigwam, and raised it a foot or more above the level of the raft, so now the blankets and all the traps was out of reach of steamboat waves. Right in the middle of the wigwam we made a layer of dirt about five or six inches deep with a frame around it for to hold it to its place; this was to build a fire on in sloppy weather or chilly; the wigwam would keep it from being seen.
We made an extra steering-oar, too, because one of the others might get broke on a snag or something. This second night we run between seven and eight hours, with a current that was making over four mile an hour. We catched fish and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. We had mighty good weather as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all—that night, nor the next, nor the next.
Every night we passed towns, some of them away up on black hillsides, nothing but just a shiny bed of lights; not a house could you see. The fifth night we passed St. Louis, and it was like the whole world lit up. In St. Petersburg they used to say there was twenty or thirty thousand people in St. Mornings before daylight I slipped into cornfields and borrowed a watermelon, or a mushmelon, or a punkin, or some new corn, or things of that kind.
So we talked it over all one night, drifting along down the river, trying to make up our minds whether to drop the watermelons, or the cantelopes, or the mushmelons, or what. Take it all round, we lived pretty high. The fifth night below St. Louis we had a big storm after midnight, with a power of thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in a solid sheet. We stayed in the wigwam and let the raft take care of itself. When the lightning glared out we could see a big straight river ahead, and high, rocky bluffs on both sides.
We was drifting straight down for her. The lightning showed her very distinct. She was leaning over, with part of her upper deck above water, and you could see every little chimbly-guy clean and clear, and a chair by the big bell, with an old slouch hat hanging on the back of it, when the flashes come. Well, it being away in the night and stormy, and all so mysterious-like, I felt just the way any other boy would a felt when I see that wreck laying there so mournful and lonesome in the middle of the river.
I wanted to get aboard of her and slink around a little, and see what there was there. So I says:. Seegars, I bet you—and cost five cents apiece, solid cash. Do you reckon Tom Sawyer would ever go by this thing? I wish Tom Sawyer was here. Jim he grumbled a little, but give in. The lightning showed us the wreck again just in time, and we fetched the stabboard derrick, and made fast there. The deck was high out here.
Jim whispered and said he was feeling powerful sick, and told me to come along. I says, all right, and was going to start for the raft; but just then I heard a voice wail out and say:. By this time Jim was gone for the raft. Then in there I see a man stretched on the floor and tied hand and foot, and two men standing over him, and one of them had a dim lantern in his hand, and the other one had a pistol. And what for? Put up that pistol, Bill.
The man came a-pawing along in the dark, and when Packard got to my stateroom, he says:. And in he come, and Bill after him. But before they got in I was up in the upper berth, cornered, and sorry I come. Then they stood there, with their hands on the ledge of the berth, and talked. I was too scared. They talked low and earnest. Bill wanted to kill Turner. You listen to me. So they started, and I lit out, all in a cold sweat, and scrambled forward. Well, I catched my breath and most fainted.
Shut up on a wreck with such a gang as that! So we went a-quaking and shaking down the stabboard side, and slow work it was, too—seemed a week before we got to the stern. No sign of a boat. But I said, come on, if we get left on this wreck we are in a fix, sure. So on we prowled again. We struck for the stern of the texas, and found it, and then scrabbled along forwards on the skylight, hanging on from shutter to shutter, for the edge of the skylight was in the water.
When we got pretty close to the cross-hall door there was the skiff, sure enough! I could just barely see her. I felt ever so thankful. In another second I would a been aboard of her, but just then the door opened.
One of the men stuck his head out only about a couple of foot from me, and I thought I was gone; but he jerked it in again, and says:.
He flung a bag of something into the boat, and then got in himself and set down. As readers learn about Huck, they also learn about Jim and the admirable character he is. Also introduced in Chapter 2 is the character of Tom Sawyer. Tom is a contrasting character a foil to Huck, despite their obvious bond and friendship. Tom is a romantic, insensitive representative of the society Huck dislikes.
His tendency is to take control, romanticize, and exaggerate all situations. Tom bases his expertise in adventures on the many pirate and robber books he has read. His humorous exaggerations symbolize Twain's dislike of popular and glorified romantic novels.
Later, in Chapter 3, Tom mentions Don Quixote as a model of the romantic novels. Ironically, Cervantes was satirizing romantic adventure stories in this work much the same as Twain does in this work. Obviously, Tom was unaware of the satiric nature of the novel, but Twain was not.
Unlike the playful humor of Tom Sawyer, the humor of Huck Finn is bitter satire using the hypocrisy, violence, and squalor in the society that Twain observed. For example, when Tom decides that the gang will rob and murder people "except some that you bring to the cave here and keep them till they're ransomed," the boys discover that no one, including Tom, knows the meaning of "ransom.
This meaning, of course, is wrong, but, as in the greater society, because the group believes it to be true, it becomes their truth, and the rest of their action is based on this error, a serious subject matter undercut by humor.
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