Huckleberry Finn 1: 9-27

"I couldn't stand it no longer, I lit out. I got into my old rags, and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied" (9).

Huck Finn seems to be a very free and independent person. He doesn't like to be held down and feel restrained. Even though when he lived with his father, his father beat him and he had a very bad life, he still likes to go back to the way he used to be when he did live with his father. The memories of his drunk father don't seem to phase him that much, Huck seems to be the kind of person that doesn't let anyone or anything bother him too much, because if he let things bother him he would have a burden to carry and wouldn't be free, therefore he wouldn't be satisfied.

"She told me to pray every day, and whatever I asked for I would get it. But it warn't so. I tried it. [...] I couldn't make it work. By-and-by, i asked Miss Watson to try for me, but she I was a fool. She never told me why, and I couldn't make it out no way"(19).

Huck thinks that Miss Watson meant that no matter what you asked for when you pray you will get it. Miss Watson calls Huck a fool for asking her to help pray but she doesn't tell him why, she wants him to figure it out on his own. Huck does not understand that Miss Watson meant spiritually. That if you pray for spiritual gifts you will get them. But since Miss Watson wouldn't tell him why, Huck didn't bother trying to figure it out so he just gave up. This shows how young and naive Huck is and maybe him being naive is the reason why something might go bad further on.

ornery - ugly and unpleasant in disposition or temper
"I thought it all out, and I reckoned I would belong to the widow's, if he wanted me, though I couldn't make out how he was agoing to be any better off than what he was before, seeing I was so ignorant and so kind of low-down and ornery" (20)

tanyard - An enclosure where the tanning of leather is carried on; a tannery.
"He used to lay drunk with the hogs in the tanyard, but he hain't been seen in these parts for a year or more" (16).