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Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Review
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain’s sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, became an instant success in the year of its publication, 1884, but was seen by some as unfit for children to read because of its language, grammar, and "uncivilized hero." The book has sparked controversy ever since, but most scholars continue to praise it as a modern masterpiece, an essential read, and one of the greatest novels in all of American literature. Twain’s satiric treatment of racism, religious excess, and rural simplicity and his accuracy in presenting dialects mark Huck Finn as a classic. His unswerving confidence in Huck’s wisdom and maturity, along with the well-rounded and sympathetic portrayal of Jim draw readers into the book, holding them until Huck’s last words rejecting all attempts to "sivilize" him. User Submitted Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ReviewsDecember 16, 2008 ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by Mark Twain, originally published in 1884. It is the sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Ernest Hemingway (and many others) called it the greatest American novel ever. Huck Finn picks up right where Tom Sawyer left off - Huck's abusive father appears to lay claim to Huck's fortune, so Huck fakes his own death and goes down the Mississippi River with Jim, the escaped slave. Much like Tom Sawyer, there's not a lot of plot going on here most of the time, and that's okay, because Twain's writing is extremely entertaining. Twain has a good old time mocking social conventions, and the novel is gripping almost all the way through. Hemingway was right: the end of Huck Finn is poor. After Jim is abducted and Tom Sawyer reappears, things just get silly, not to mention highly convenient (And Tom Sawyer here is just as immature as he ever was, reinforcing that no real maturation occurred in Tom Sawyer, and that that book really isn't a coming-of-age story in the truest sense). Twain has made Huck the narrator. On the whole, this works, although it gets tiresome to read Huck's dialect sometimes. Twain-as-narrator is definitely missed here. Nobody could write a clever sentence like Twain, and most of that is lost here, although occasionally Huck will turn one (and by doing so break character, but that's the price you pay). Huck Finn has been exceedingly controversial because of the extensive use of the n-word. So is the novel racist? Certainly the characters have the racism of the day ingrained in them - in that sense, it is racist. But more important to most people is whether Twain was racist; that is, whether he put his own personal racism in the book. That is harder to determine, especially since Twain has made Huck the narrator. Perhaps the fairest thing to say is that Twain was genuinely criticizing racism, but the way in which he portrayed Jim and the other characters contains some residual racism of its own. So is Huck Finn America's greatest novel? Well, maybe not. But it's definitely up there. December 12, 2008 Well it made me a happy boy I was down in the dumps I was. Wonderin' when my Huck Finn would come, and wonderin' if it would be righ' on time. But it was, I tell you, it was. December 9, 2008 Twain: From Great to Just Good "Ambivalence" is the word that comes to mind when discussing this, Twain's supposed masterpiece, and the term that also comes to mind when considering the state of race relations among the leading thinkers in our nation during most of its history. Twain published "Huckleberry Finn" past the halfway point in this time line, and it stands as a fascinating monument to how even "enlightened" leaders viewed the race question at the cusp of the 20th Century. Twain's work continues to be heralded for its descriptive prose and rendering of river life, for its spot-on use of dialect and its clever plot and dialogue; but in the end, all that matters is the author's treatment of the race question. Like Huck, Twain began life in a lower-middle class, slaveowning family, and like Huck, the author slowly grew less tolerant of overt racism. That sort of almost grudging transformation is on full display in this epic work, and for most of it, we take our own grudging, yet sympathetic view of Huck and Twain. After all, we ask, would it be fair to judge 19th Century morality through the prism of 21st Century democracy? That laissez-faire approach by the reader comes to a crashing halt, however, when we realize that we have been led "down the river" by Twain through his boyhood alter ego, Tom Sawyer, who - like so many of his time (and even like some of us today) - find a million rationales as to why the black man must undergo additional inconvenience to suit the white man's whims. Tom is the 19th Century Everyman who finds every excuse in the book not to release Jim until he is forced to admit publicly that this former piece of property has already been set free legally. And so, for the final one-fifth of the book, we are made to watch Jim surrender to Tom and Huck's nonsensical games, thwarting what had been the almost inexorable progression of a moralistic plot line, and disappointing this reader to no end. In twisting what a vast majority of readers expect and are waiting for, Samuel Clemens may be making clear what he felt about some of the tougher, racially-tinged exchanges in his book. Those passages could have been construed as the author's surreptitious way of commenting on the racism of his time, but that argument begins to collapse as the moral imperative of Twain's plot crumbles. In the end, no amount of adoration for Twain's wonderful caricatures of bumpkins and hoboes or for passing moments of hilarity can compensate for the disappointing conclusion to this "beloved" book. Like Jefferson, who said all men are created equal but who, unlike Washington, simply could not bring himself to free his slaves, Twain paints a narrative of gradualism - ultimately, not through Huck Finn, but through his majoritarian stand-in, Tom Sawyer - and Twain seems content with it. A major bonus of this 2001 Modern Library Classics edition is the thought-provoking introductory essay by George Saunders of Syracuse University and the collection of shorter, back-of-the-book commentaries, which in their own way clearly demonstrate the slow evolution of race relations in our country. It is ironic, and indeed somewhat fitting, that the cover testimonial for this edition comes from H.L. Mencken, who hails "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" as "One of the great masterpieces of the world." As someone who derided the "booboisie" and evidenced a streak of intolerance in his own public utterances, perhaps the choice of this particular endorsement is more fitting that one might realize. Read this work by Twain as a compelling historical record first - and if you can stand to, as an "entertainment" second. November 13, 2008 Great book! When addressing controversy think of context. I can't say more on the plot because it's quite obvious what the plot is just from illustrations of the novel. But on the "controversial" aspect of the novel involving the excessive use of the N word, people have to think of the time period that Twain is writing about and when the novel was published. The novel takes place in Missouri (a slave border state) in the 1830s. We use the term African-American or black now. Before that it was Afro-Americans, coloreds, Negr--s. The list goes on and on. The overall attitude was that as the terms changed the previous one was seen as more offensive than the progressive current one. Yes, that meant there was a time when the word "colored" was used by people who considered themselves progressive in terms of racial attitudes. But in the Antebellum South the use of the N word was thrown around quite easily. And persons added positive as well as negative adjectives to it. It's strange to imagine that. We today only think of it in a totally negative way. But even when Twain published the novel in the 1880s the word was unfortunately not yet out of fashion. Also consider the way Twain writes of Jim, the runaway slave. While the knee-jerk reaction is that Jim is a total vaudevillian caricature of what the perception was of blacks in the Antebellum South, his relationship with Huck Finn was something to be viewed as progressive. Remember that a decade before the novel came out; Reconstruction was over and left things a mess in terms of race relations. There was a lot of bitterness in the South over the Civil War (probably the most destructive war at the time until WWI), and a whole generation of southern white men took it personally when they were expected to be on the same level in terms of voting rights and other things with men that was formerly human property. For us today "all men are created equal" is a statement of truth provided we all have a level playing field. But for many southern whites at the time this was hard to swallow. In an aristocratic agrarian society, some men are just superior to others. And in the Antebellum South, just below poor whites were blacks. This was the way things were in their society for over two hundred years and the Civil War didn't suddenly end that sentiment among the many. But for Twain to write of a kind of comradeship between a slave and a young white boy was definitely progressive. Maybe Twain was hoping to reach a young generation raised by their bitter parents and discover that they could have friendships with blacks and not succumb to an entrenching separatist animosity that developed into the Jim Crow Era. Huck and Jim work together in schemes and have fun. This friendship (which is why Huck decides to do what he does on the journey) is what Twain emphasized in the journey down river. This was counter to the way whites were acting with and around blacks at the time (1880s). I think it's clear based on a certain reading of the novel that Twain believed whites and blacks could and should get along. While today it may not be seen as "progressive", it was when it was first published. November 2, 2008 Finn & Sawyer Part 2 Everyone should read or re-read this classic. Most of us read it in school, probabaly not in its entirety. Schools struggled then and now with the use of the N word, although teenage boys in the 1830's clearly would never have heard a synonym. These adventures are a classic. The royals were a hoot, how many failed fraudulent enterprises could they invent before the inevitable tar and feathering. Huck and Jim are on the run from an abusive father and the law, respectively, and Twain shows all people have a great deal in common, in spite of theories prevalent in the antebellum era. I'm not sure why Tom Sawyer needs to show up to conclude this thing. The ending could work without him, maybe Twain not sure that Finn could carry the book or film alone. October 27, 2008 Exceptional edition This Norton Critical Edition is truly the best version of Huck Finn one could find, with the original Kempel drawings, footnotes that fully explain textual issues without being intrusive, and well-chosen criticism. It is invaluable to me as a graduate student, and would be just as useful to the casual but attentive reader. October 8, 2008 Huckleberry Finn Huckleberry Finn is a classic. Simple as that. It provides a look into what life was probably like for a 19th century boy. It was different than the life of children today, because today life centers around education. Back then, it was a regular thing to play hooky, even though they got in trouble for it when they were caught. And when they were punished, usually it was with a beating instead of `You're Grounded!'. The book shows us how badly slaves were treated. They weren't even considered humans! It was like they didn't have feelings, and didn't see things the same way white people did. They way the slaves actually did think was odd. It was sad to see that they could slap a slave for no reason, and the slave would accept it either because they were used to it or they thought that whites were better than them. Huck Finn is rather unrealistic in the aspect of adventure. I'm guessing most boys back then didn't run off with an escaped slave to Cairo. The way that Mark Twain wrote the book was different than other first/second person books I've seen. The dialogue was very much like the 19th century southern Mississippi talk. Sometimes it got hard to decipher what a paragraph in slave-speak meant because it was so obscure. All in all, Mark Twain's writing style is different than the traditional Southern book, but that doesn't detract at all from the story. I liked it! September 21, 2008 Huck Finn This book is required reading for my 16 yr old son....the book arrived quickly & in great shape! Saved me driving all over town to compete w/ other parents also looking!! Thanks! September 15, 2008 Eli Sashihara writes: Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a timeless classic that lives up to its prestigious name. It takes place in an array of locations along the Mississippi river around the time of 1835-45. The story is about Tom, a free-spirited boy, and his numerous adventures with a run-away slave named Jim. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn proceeds Mark Twain's original novel, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but within the first page Huck acknowledges this and says reading the first book isn't that important. However, I personally recommend reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer before this book. While it is not essential, it adds a lot to the book and gives an initial understanding Huck's character. The book starts right where The Adventures of Tom Sawyer ended: Huck is struggling to fit into his new found "civilized" life with the Widow Douglas. Huck is uncomfortably forced to learn to be proper while his fortune is held for him. It wasn't long till Huck's Pap, the village drunk, came to kidnap Huck for his fortune. After living with his abusive father for a while, Huck decides to escape. One night, Huck feigns a robbery on his Pap's cabin and then feigns his own death. Huck escapes to a nearby island and decides to live there. Soon word spreads through town about Huck's death and the town suspects Huck's father, but then suspicions transfer to a runaway slave named Jim who was living on the same island. Jim and Huck set off on a raft before people could find them. They embark on a series of adventures, including boarding the ships of robbers, murder mysteries, gunfights, family feuds, great storms, mobs, con artists, and other extravaganzas. During their voyages they also come to deal with a series of topics and realizations, such as the irony and hypocrisy of "civilized" and adult culture, slavery, racism, morality, human nature, and superstition. September 2, 2008 Required Reading This was a required reading for my son's class at school. Although he enjoyed the story line, the use of the local slang (written out phonetically ) was difficult for him to read and distracting to the story, he felt. For more Adventures of Huckleberry Finn reviews click here.
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