Choose your quotation carefully—make sure it is thought-provoking, or you won’t have enough material to write about. Write down the quotation and the page number. When you reflect on the quotation, you may write almost anything intelligent that the quotation inspires. You may write about what it shows about a character, how it connects to another place in the book, what the tone is, what it makes you predict, what it makes you imagine, how you react to it, what your opinion is of it, how it connects to the real world, how it connects or differs from another piece of literature, what it reveals about the author’s perspective, how it effectively uses metaphor, personification, irony, foreshadowing, etc., how it creates suspense, tone, voice, etc., how it connects to you and your life, how it develops a theme in the novel, or how it provokes another idea. Make sure that you connect your ideas and write in paragraph form. See the model below, based on a quotation from Huck in the novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, to see an example of what I expect.
p. 116“We said there warnt no home like a raft, afterall. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.”
For the first time in his life, Huck has a home. Free of his drunken father and the oppressive Miss Watson, Huck feels his first real comfort and makes his first real friend. Already, Jim and Huck are starting to think alike, “we said,” despite their differences that most in the novel would believe insurmountable. Away from the racism along the edges of the river, Jim and Huck begin to understand each other as people, not as slave and master. Ironically, Huck feels all the comforts of home and the true love of family, as he escapes down the river on a pile of logs with a slave that he wouldn’t have considered fully human just a few weeks before. Away from the “smothery” rules of society, they learn to respect each other and begin to develop a deeper moral sense than Miss Watson's misunderstanding of the Bible.
Throughout the novel, the Mississippi River functions as a symbol of freedom. On the raft, Huck and Jim don't have to mind slave masters or tyrannical aunts and have the freedom to do what they want. Likewise, the river literally carries them to freedom--to the free states or away from an violent drunk of a father. Away from the stifling confines of society, Huck and Jim are free to question their beliefs, to really decide what is right or wrong based on real life experiences rather than prejudice. Nevertheless, the river is stuck between two banks that hold the horrors of racism, cruelty, and ignorance. Early in the novel, Twain shows the superior wisdom and morality of both Huck and Jim compared to any characters on the banks despite the limited education of a slave and a homeless boy.
By the end of the novel, Huck and Jim will have to reconcile their freedom, friendship, and true moral sense developed together on a river bounded by the harsh cruelty and twisted morality of the real world in Southern America.