The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Barnes & Noble Signature Editions)

By Mark Twain and Eric Carl Link

It seems like an idyllic scene from the antebellum South: A carefree young country boy and his happy companion glide down the Mississippi on a raft, smoking pipes and chattering amiably­—but nothing in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is what it seems.

     Fresh from his escapades with Tom Sawyer, with six-thousand dollars in the bank and the Widow Douglas as his guardian, Huck Finn faces unforeseen challenges. He bridles under the Widow’s and Miss Watson’s attempts to “sivilize” him­, as even Tom insists he become respectable. Then, Huck’s father, Pap, shows up, determined to lay hands on Huck’s fortune. When things don’t go Pap’s way, he kidnaps Huck.  

     Escaping from Pap, Huck meets Miss Watson’s slave, Jim, who has run away after learning that Miss Watson may sell him. Jim plans to head north, find work, and buy his wife and children out of slavery. Huck joins him on a salvaged raft, but due to fog, they pass the mouth of the Ohio River and drift into a world more perilous for Jim than the one they’ve left behind, where disguise and duplicity are as essential as air.

     Telling his story in an innocent, sometimes crude vernacular, Huck struggles to understand the bizarre characters and events he and Jim encounter. The result is a spirited satire, not just of the old South, but of human frailty in all its self-deluding forms.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Nov 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781435140998

Mark Twain

Mark Twain (1835-1910) was an American humorist, novelist, and lecturer. Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, he was raised in Hannibal, Missouri, a setting which would serve as inspiration for some of his most famous works. After an apprenticeship at a local printer’s shop, he worked as a typesetter and contributor for a newspaper run by his brother Orion. Before embarking on a career as a professional writer, Twain spent time as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi and as a miner in Nevada. In 1865, inspired by a story he heard at Angels Camp, California, he published “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” earning him international acclaim for his abundant wit and mastery of American English. He spent the next decade publishing works of travel literature, satirical stories and essays, and his first novel, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873). In 1876, he published The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a novel about a mischievous young boy growing up on the banks of the Mississippi River. In 1884 he released a direct sequel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which follows one of Tom’s friends on an epic adventure through the heart of the American South. Addressing themes of race, class, history, and politics, Twain captures the joys and sorrows of boyhood while exposing and condemning American racism. Despite his immense success as a writer and popular lecturer, Twain struggled with debt and bankruptcy toward the end of his life, but managed to repay his creditors in full by the time of his passing at age 74. Curiously, Twain’s birth and death coincided with the appearance of Halley’s Comet, a fitting tribute to a visionary writer whose steady sense of morality survived some of the darkest periods of American history.

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Introduction, Annotations, and Further Reading

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CONTENTS

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MARK TWAIN

INTRODUCTION

THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN

A BRIEF HISTORICAL AFTERWORD

ENDNOTES

FURTHER READING

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MARK TWAIN

INTRODUCTION

THERE IS A SCIENCE IN THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN —FOUND AT the beginning of chapter nineteen—in which Huck Finn describes a day and a night on the Mississippi River. The fog lifts at dawn to reveal the very picture of peace on the wide river. Their raft enclosed in reeds and brush at the water’s edge, Huck, with the fugitive slave Jim by his side, watches the steamboats pass by as he smokes and fishes and sleeps. When night falls, Huck and Jim push back out into the middle of the river and allow the currents to gently carry the raft downstream as they lie on their backs, staring up at the clear, black sky, and wonder if the stars were made, or just happened. This scene—a masterpiece of description and one of the most memorable and remarkable passages in the novel—is a small island of tranquility in the midst of a muddy, churning, relentless river of narrative. Never before—and never afterward—would Huck find time to smoke, dream, think, and breathe deeply the rich river air, free from the worries of the shore and the pressures of so-called civilization.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens took the pen name Mark Twain from the call of rivermen taking the measure of the depth of water below the shallow-running steamboats. A call from the leadsman to the pilot of mark twain would indicate two fathoms—or twelve feet—of navigable water ahead. To a Mississippi River steamboat pilot, a leadsman’s measure (made with either a long rod or a rope with depth markers on it) of mark twain would generally signal safe passage ahead. But with what rod or rope does one take the measure of an American classic? There are, to be sure, few safe passages in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Although most readers encounter the novel in their adolescence—often reading the novel, or parts of the novel, at an age when Huck Finn seems more peer than protagonist—this is no kid’s book. This is a novel about murder, child abuse, broken families, animal cruelty, bloody feuds, deception, ignorance, racism, slavery, economic degradation, and hypocrisy. It is a virtual tour through the evils that humans inflict on others in the absence of a social conscience. It is a novel in which the antics of juvenile delinquents are far outstripped by the inexplicable, twisted, and immoral behaviors of adults. And yet, it is one of the funniest books ever written, with one of the most charming and decent first-person narrators ever to grace the printed page. It is, in some ways, a book whose depth cannot be measured, and it is the measurelessness of the novel that has led many to claim it to be the single greatest novel in all of American literature.

Mark Twain was born in the small town of Florida, Missouri, in 1835. Four years later his family moved to the small but growing town of Hannibal, Missouri, located on the Mississippi River north of St. Louis. Hannibal would later serve Mark Twain well as the basis for the fictional town of St. Petersburg in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Growing up in Hannibal provided the young Samuel Clemens opportunity to witness slavery, death, disease, river commerce, and most important, the myriad triumphs and failures of hardworking American families struggling to build a life in an area of the country far away from the polite manners and refined social graces of coastal New England intellectual culture. Literature in America during Clemens’ youth and adolescence was very much dominated by New England intellectuals and long-bearded poets such as William Cullen Bryant, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Prose writing in America was diverse, with the delicately tuned short fiction of Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne gracing the pages of leading literary magazines alongside immensely popular sentimental and domestic fiction, historical fiction, and tales of sea and frontier adventure. Politics was always big business in American culture, and one could get his or her fill of political opinions within the pages of the numerous newspapers and magazines that seemed to spring from the soil overnight and die just as quickly. Clemens lived in a slave-holding state just a short raft ride across the Mississippi River from the free state of Illinois, so discussions of America’s peculiar institution were quick to the lips of the citizens of Hannibal, and it would not be uncommon for the young Clemens to hear tales of fugitive slaves and see pamphlets posted around town for their return. In Hannibal, Clemens watched his family’s means gradually diminish as debts took their toll, and when his father died of pneumonia in 1847, the Clemens family made ends meet as best they could, living off the wages of Samuel’s older brother, Orion, and whatever odd jobs the rest of the family could secure. Eventually, in his late teens, Clemens left Hannibal and began to find his way in the world—as a printer, as a riverboat pilot, as a newspaper correspondent, and eventually, as America’s greatest living humorist and one of its greatest novelists.

In this journey toward literary success, Clemens’ boyhood adventures in Hannibal provided a wealth of texture and material for some of his greatest works. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) are rooted in Mark Twain’s Hannibal upbringing. But their humor—a humor one finds throughout Twain’s canon, from his first great work, The Innocents Abroad (1869), to Roughing It (1872), to Life on the Mississippi (1883), and beyond—is not the humor of the great novelists and poets of the mid-nineteenth century. Certainly, Hawthorne, Poe, Longfellow, Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lydia Maria Child, Fanny Fern and the other renowned and popular writers of Twain’s youth and young adulthood were not humorless (Poe even fancied himself a great comic writer at times), but Twain’s brand of deadpan, unapologetic, unsubtle satire and burlesque could not be found among this older generation. With regard to his peers in the 1870s and 1880s, such as the noted American realist writers William Dean Howells and Henry James, Mark Twain was clearly cut from different cloth. Howells and James could pass muster among the great novelists of Europe, but Mark Twain was truly an American original, and works like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn radiate American life and culture like few others before or since. Mark Twain did have some antecedents, most notably in the southwest humorists of the 1840s and 1850s, but Twain’s writing takes a quantum leap forward from the comic standouts of a prior generation of writers.

Huck Finn’s status as an American masterpiece does not come without controversy, however. Few novels have been more argued over, at once loved and despised, praised and derided. From the time the novel was first published to the present, it has been one of the most banned books in all of American literature, and there seems to be no end in sight to the debates over the relative merits and flaws of the novel. At first, the novel was derided for its use of the vernacular: How can we expect children to learn how to read and write proper English when Mark Twain violates the rules of grammar with such reckless abandon? This criticism seems quite comical to our contemporary sensibilities—as it should. But it is not grammar that concerns us today; it is racism. Because of its privileged status as a literary masterpiece, Huck Finn has been a crucible in which the chemicals of civil discord have been poured in America’s ongoing quest for civility and equality. Twain is a racist. Or, Twain is not a racist. The language—especially the repeated use of the word nigger—is deplorable and harmful. Or, the language is a realistic depiction of a less enlightened age, and to remove the word nigger from the novel would destroy the authenticity of the book and weaken its message. The characterization of blacks in the novel is belittling and degrading. Or, the characterization of blacks in the novel is complicated and nuanced, and close analysis of the novel reveals the care with which blacks in the novel illustrate what W. E. B. Dubois would later call the double-consciousness of black Americans in The Souls of Black Folk (1903). Today, counties across America that consider banning The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from use in the classroom generally don’t debate the grammar of the novel; they debate these complex claims about the alleged racism of the book. So heated have these debates grown at times that editions in which the word nigger has been removed have even been published, so that those who wish may read a more culturally and racially sanitized version of Twain’s book.

The question is not whether or not a word such as nigger is offensive. It is. The question is what to make of the inclusion of such a word in a novel generally thought to be one of the greatest literary achievements in American history. The answer to this question cannot simply be that the word was, unfortunately, in vogue at the time and place of the novel’s setting—although that is certainly true. The answer to this question must go beyond such an explanation in order to help us understand the significance, in our own day and age, of continuing to consider The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn one of the finest novels ever written—a novel that retains its relevance and importance, its cultural resonance, more than a century later, particularly for a society attempting to move past the civil injustice of prior eras.

Without attempting to parse the many arguments critics have made one way or another on this question over the past sixty years, what should be observed here is that to read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is to look at the world through the eyes of Huck Finn. Everything he sees, we see. What we are told about the world, we are told by him. But, because Huck Finn is a mere boy—an adolescent—and not a particularly enlightened one—there is a built-in distance between him and the adult reader. The education, wisdom, maturity, and historical perspective that we bring to the novel mean that we frequently have the ability to understand the events of the novel better than Huck himself. Mark Twain knew this. It is the very effect he wished for, and part of the mastery of the novel can be found in just how carefully Twain manipulated this built-in distance between the first-person narrator and the reader. To cite just one example, consider the scene in chapter six in which Huck’s drunken father, Pap, chases Huck around a small riverside cabin at night with a knife, clearly intending to kill the boy. Eventually Pap grows weary, and Huck takes up a defensive position behind a turnip barrel with a loaded gun pointed toward his own father—a bit of uneasy insurance against a resumption of the desperate chase. This scene as related to us through the eyes of Huck is a wild blend of comedy and terror. There is something darkly and wildly comical in Pap’s claim, toward the end of the chase, that he will rest a minute, and then kill Huck. For Huck—who accepts it all with a strange stoicism—the episode amounts to just another night with Pap. A bad night, for sure, and one that solidifies his decision to flee down the river, but nothing one would not expect with Pap as a father. But the reader recognizes the sheer horror below the comic facade. The level of abuse and terror inflicted by a father on his boy defies easy characterization. There are elements of darkness and social injustice at work here that simply cannot be appreciated by Huck.

Understanding that there is this lacuna between Huck and the reader provides a necessary context for understanding not only the language of the novel and its depictions of human depravity, but also the characterization of Jim in the novel. Jim is a grown man, a slave, a fugitive, a father—and his only chance for survival is to place trust and faith in an uneducated, racially unenlightened, white-trash boy—the son of Pap, no less. We see Jim as Huck sees Jim. But, we also see Jim through our own eyes—and we cannot help but recognize the nearly impossible position in which he is placed. There are depths to Jim’s character that are invisible to Huck, but which give depth and complexity to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and make it as relevant and important to the contemporary reader as it was for its earliest audience in the mid-1880s. Is Jim superstitious? Is he ignorant? Yes—to be otherwise would violate the social realities of the 1840s, and Mark Twain took great pains to accurately capture these realities in his novel. But Jim is also a man placed in outrageous circumstances by an uncivil society. Is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn the story of the development of a great friendship between a black man and a white boy? Yes, but it is far more than that. It is a masterfully crafted narrative that depicts the impossible circumstances blacks were forced to negotiate during one of the darkest eras in American history. Huck doesn’t realize he is telling us this particular—and peculiarly American—story, but the contemporary reader does.

Peeling back the comic adventures that make up the surface of the novel, we find, within, the complex machinery of social critique and cultural philosophy. We find disturbing portraits—often in the form of satire—of self-righteous religiosity, community conflict, popular culture, and class divisions. We find characters like Huck and Jim searching—each in his own way, yet on a common course down the Mississippi River—for freedoms that America dangles just out of reach. We find, in scene after scene, graphic illustrations of the many ways in which humans are incomprehensibly cruel—they enslave one another, they set fire to animals, they hate one another, they lie and cheat and steal from one another, they murder in cold blood, they abuse children. In the midst of this parade of horror stands Huck, a compulsive liar who just might be the most honest character in the novel. Never does Huck speak truer words than when he quips at the end of chapter thirty-three, Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.

In the last third of the novel, this honest liar sets out to free his friend, Jim, from captivity on the Phelps farm. The key to the ending—indeed, one of the keys to the entire novel—rests squarely in the concept of sacrifice. The modern mind is often cynical, and many contemporary readers have lost the capacity to take religious concepts such as hell and damnation seriously. Even when we do believe in such things, our belief is rarely pure, but is frequently clouded in the jaded mockery of our times. Twain was one of us in this regard—for him, as for us, the absurdity and vulgarity of mankind were so overwhelming that abstract threats of hellfire and demons with horns lost their capacity to terrify. Twain’s damned human race needed no mocking devils to tempt it into violating itself: humans were, and remain, willing participants in an endless narrative of victimization and abuse. The only thing Twain could do at times was sit back and laugh, amused at that most ridiculous of all phenomena: human behavior.

Huck lives in a different time, however. There is a certain innocence in Huck, but this innocence must have welled up from within, for Huck’s America was not an innocent America. In fact, in the 1840s, the decade in which Huck’s adventures take place, America was growing increasingly aware of its own internal corruption. Slavery had always been the crack in the foundation of the republic, and as the nation grew and expanded westward in the early nineteenth century, this crack—literally inscribed upon the surface of the nation in the Mason-Dixon Line and in the thirty-sixth parallel of the Missouri Compromise—began to widen.

Huck is largely ignorant of this fissure in American society. Uneducated, poor, white, young, raised in a slave state, he views slavery as simply a part of the Southern landscape. Thus, in chapter thirty-one, when Huck decides to attempt to free Jim—imprisoned on a farm in Arkansas at the time—even if it means personal damnation (not to mention the legal and social implications), his act breaks free of the veil of cynicism shrouding the modern man. Quite simply, Huck’s decision to go to hell rather than desert his imprisoned friend is one of the purest single acts in all of American literature—the purest of all, perhaps, because of its simplicity and its genuineness. Huck has nothing to gain from his decision but the satisfaction of having done right by a friend and fellow human. Yet he has everything to lose: his own freedom, his friends, his social standing, as slight as that may have been, even his soul. Psychological freedom, in Huck’s case, comes only at the price of great personal sacrifice. Huck gives up everything, including his own salvation, in order to obey a moral compulsion. Sacrifice—this is the key to the end of the novel, and through Huck’s sacrifice we can measure his moral growth, and take the measure of a classic American novel.

Eric Carl Link is Professor of American Literature and Chair of the Department of English at the University of Memphis. He is the author of The Vast and Terrible Drama: American Literary Naturalism in the Late Nineteenth Century and Understanding Philip K. Dick. He is also the co-author of Neutral Ground: New Traditionalism and the American Romance Controversy.

NOTICE

PERSONS ATTEMPTING TO FIND A MOTIVE IN THIS NARRATIVE WILL BE prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR

PER G.G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE

EXPLANATORY

IN THIS BOOK A NUMBER OF DIALECTS ARE USED, TO WIT: THE MISSOURI negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods South-Western dialect; the ordinary Pike-County dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a hap-hazard fashion, or by guess-work; but pains-takingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech.

I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding.

THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER I

YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT ME WITHOUT YOU HAVE READ A BOOK BY the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied, one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly—Tom’s Aunt Polly, she is—and Mary, and the Widow Douglas, is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book; with some stretchers, as I said before.

Now the way that the book winds up, is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars apiece—all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round—more than a body could tell what to do with. The Widow Douglas, she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when 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. But Tom Sawyer, he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back.

The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she called me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by it. She put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn’t do nothing but sweat and sweat, and feel all cramped up. Well, then, the old thing commenced again. The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come to time. When you got to the table you couldn’t go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals, though there warn’t really anything the matter with them. That is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better.

After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers;¹ and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by-and-by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn’t care no more about him, because I don’t take no stock in dead people.

Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But she wouldn’t. She said it was a mean practice and wasn’t clean, and I must try to not do it any more. That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don’t know nothing about it. Here she was a bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in it. And she took snuff too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself.

Her sister, Miss Watson, a tolerable slim old maid, with goggles on, had just come to live with her, and took a set at me now with a spelling-book. She worked me middling hard for about an hour, and then the widow made her ease up. I couldn’t stood it much longer. Then for an hour it was deadly dull, and I was fidgety. Miss Watson would say, Don’t put your feet up there, Huckleberry; and Don’t scrunch up like that, Huckleberry—set up straight; and pretty soon she would say, Don’t gap and stretch like that, Huckleberry—why don’t you try to behave? Then she told me all about the bad place, and I said I wished I was there. She got mad, then, but I didn’t mean no harm. All I wanted was to go somewheres; all I wanted was a change, I warn’t particular. She said it was wicked to say what I said; said she wouldn’t say it for the whole world; she was going to live so as to go to the good place. Well, I couldn’t see no advantage in going where she was going, so I made up my mind I wouldn’t try for it. But I never said so, because it would only make trouble, and wouldn’t do no good.

Now she had got a start, and she went on and told me all about the good place. She said all a body would have to do there was to go around all day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever. So I didn’t think much of it. But I never said so. I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer would go there, and, she said, not by a considerable sight. I was glad about that, because I wanted him and me to be together.

Miss Watson she kept pecking at me, and it got tiresome and lonesome. By-and-by they fetched the niggers in and had prayers, and then everybody was off to bed. I went up to my room with a piece of candle and put it on the table. Then I set down in a chair by the window and tried to think of something cheerful, but it warn’t no use. I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead. The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die; and the wind was trying to whisper something to me and I couldn’t make out what it was, and so it made the cold shivers run over me. Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that’s on its mind and can’t make itself understood, and so can’t rest easy in its grave and has to go about that way every night grieving. I got so down-hearted and scared, I did wish I had some company. Pretty soon a spider went crawling up my shoulder, and I flipped it off and it lit in the candle; and before I could budge it was all shriveled up. I didn’t need anybody to tell me that that was an awful bad sign and would fetch me some bad luck, so I was scared and most shook the clothes off of me. I got up and turned around in my tracks three times and crossed my breast every time; and then I tied up a little lock of my hair with a thread to keep witches away. But I hadn’t no confidence. You do that when you’ve lost a horseshoe that you’ve found, instead of nailing it up over the door, but I hadn’t ever heard anybody say it was any way to keep off bad luck when you’d killed a spider.

I set down again, a shaking all over, and got out my pipe for a smoke; for the house was all as still as death, now, and so the widow wouldn’t know. Well, after a long time I heard the clock away off in the town go boom—boom—boom—twelve licks—and all still again—stiller than ever. Pretty soon I heard a twig snap down in the dark amongst the trees—something was a-stirring. I set still and listened. Directly I could just barely hear a "me-yow! me-yow! down there. That was good! Says I, me-yow! me-yow!" as soft as I could, and then I put out the light and scrambled out of the window onto the shed. Then I slipped down to the ground and crawled in among the trees, and, sure enough, there was Tom Sawyer waiting for me.

CHAPTER II

WE WENT TIPTOEING ALONG A PATH AMONGST THE TREES BACK toward the end of the widow’s garden, stooping down so as the branches wouldn’t scrape our heads. When we was passing by the kitchen I fell over a root and made a noise. We scrouched down and laid still. Miss Watson’s big nigger, named Jim, was setting in the kitchen door; we could see him pretty clear, because there was a light behind him. He got up and stretched his neck out about a minute, listening. Then he says,

Who dah?

He listened some more; then he come tiptoeing down and stood right between us; we could a touched him, nearly. Well, likely it was minutes and minutes that there warn’t a sound, and we all there so close together. There was a place on my ankle that got to itching, but I dasn’t scratch it; and then my ear begun to itch; and next my back, right between my shoulders. Seemed like I’d die if I couldn’t scratch. Well, I’ve noticed that thing plenty times since. If you are with the

Reviews for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Barnes & Noble Signature Editions)

[benkaboo-51322 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Things I liked:

The characters voice and train of thought frequently made me smile. The way his mind came up against big moral issues like slavery and murder and things like that were provocative, making me wonder about my own rational for strongly held beliefs.

Things I thought could be improved:

The section at the end when Tom Sawyer was doing all manner of ridiculous rituals as part of the attempt to free Jim I thought stretched credibility of Huck or Jim going along with him. Even with the reveal at the end that Jim was really free anyway I found it tiresome after a while. While I don't mind the idea of Tom trying to add some romance to the escape, I think it definitely could be have been edited down to about a third of what it was.

Highlight: When Jim finds Huck again after being lost on the raft. Huck plays a trick on him to convince him it was all a dream. Jim falls for it but then catches on and shames Huck for playing with his emotions. That made both the character of Jim and Huck sing for me.

[luminous4path · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Might want to read it again sometime. Took me a while to get into it, but by the last third I was hooked.

[nickduberley · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Very funny, as well as very interesting.

Hard to think of a better book with a teenage main character - Treasure Island, perhaps ?

[et.carole · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Dissected this one for English class. Sometimes, discussion takes all the charm out of a book. So do angry yet subtle attacks at Romanticism.

[profh-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The way the language is portrayed, the stylized dialogues, and the underlying condemnation of slavery makes this Twain classic one that everyone should read. In some ways, Twain reminds me of Charles Dickens...Some scenes, particularly towards the end with Tom seem to stretch on and on, long after the humor is gone. Still this novel is an immovable object in American Lit. You just have to read it.

[wickenden-285487 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wonderful language, wonderful dialog, full of my childhood.

[beauxarts79 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love, love, love this book. The humor, the sincerity, the narrative voice. Exceptional. That being said, I struggled with that fifth star. Something about the word "nigger," no matter how eloquent and well-executed its context, leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. Intellectually, though, I can appreciate some of what Twain is doing, here. He doesn't patronize his reader by creating in Huck Finn an overly sympathetic character infused with the author's own socio-political pathos. Huck isn't the poster-child for abolitionist propaganda, but a still-burgeoning personality trying to define its own moral good. In fact, it is simply brilliant that Twain ironically reverses Huck's ethical conflict, depicting his reluctance to STEAL a slave from slavery because theft is a sin, and his ultimate decision to toss himself entirely into "wickedness." We love Huck precisely because he wants so badly to do the right thing, whatever that might be.

The scene in which Jim laments his estranged wife and children is particularly moving, for Twain takes care to depict his humanity, though Huck himself is ambivalent about his friend's grief; that's very clever writing.

Michiko Kakutani wrote a very interesting piece in the New York Times about some politically correct editions of the text; the word "nigger" has been replaced with something more palatable for contemporary readers, but with all due respect, completely unrealistic for the novel's characters. Kakutani explains that "'Huckleberry Finn' actually stands as a powerful indictment of slavery (with Nigger Jim its most noble character)" and that censoring the original removes the possibility "of using its contested language as an opportunity to explore the painful complexities of race relations in this country. To censor or redact books on school reading lists is a form of denial: shutting the door on harsh historical realities — whitewashing them or pretending they do not exist." I am a fierce opponent of censorship and could not agree more. Hence, that inexorable little fifth star.

[bhiggs-822148 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Eh. It's certainly entertaining. It's undeniably a classic. I'm not sure if I had any major lessons learned from it. Not super high on my list of 'must read' titles.

[charrlygirl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I "reread" this book on audio, narrated by Elijah Wood.

I haven't read this since high school and I thought it would be fun to listen to, and it was. Elijah's voices were true to the story, and brought an additional level to the depth of this tale.

I'm happy to report that this book held up to my memory of it, and then surpassed it.

[nicholasjjordan · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Such a hard book to review. Great storytelling, satire, America, funny, etc. The final saga of Jim escaping just makes me hate Tom Sawyer, though.

[headinherbooks_27 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Re-reading since high school. Good classic!

[ainjel-3 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book is quite humourous and satirical, and for the most part, it's quite fun to read. I did zone out for a bit in the middle there, losing interest when it wasn't about Huck's tomfoolery, but I greatly enjoyed the parts with Tom. The relationship between Huck and Tom is quite interesting and captivating, and really elevates the story itself.

[antao-3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

(Original Review, 1981-03-18)I guess “Ulysses” pushes the envelope of “Literature was made for man, not man for literature” but I like to give the benefit of the doubt to books especially if not only do they have a sustained critical reputation, but if people whose opinions I respect think the book is great stuff. When I was venting some of my frustration about “Ulysses” and “Finnegans Wake” to a well-read musician friend, she just gently suggested that if I let myself listen to the music of the language it might change my perception. When it comes to ”Finnegans Wake” I couldn’t do it…I’m still deaf.I guess Huck is a little trying as a voice, especially in the beginning, but I think it is one of the greatest books ever written, or I ever read. Tom Sawyer is OK, but HF is brilliant. In the most direct way possible Huck learns about the absolute humanity of Jim but also Huck feels guilty because Jim is property and in the South, being property trumped being human. In its quiet, folksy way it presents us with something intensely evil face to face with something just as intensely familiar and homey. All those people, many of them, are such fine nice people so vividly portrayed as such, except that the vilest evil that they live with every day, and have created and sustain, is totally invisible to them. As a really human document, a damning one, it has never been done so well and so quietly. Freud drew attention to the uncanny in his short but influential essay, as having just that quality of being so homey and yet being alien, so human but so inhuman.Not totally sure about the ending though; it was contrived in a way, BUT I was very impressed by the late chapter scene where the doctor, clearly a good and fine man, will not go seek help for a sick child because he was afraid that Jim might run off. Again that MONSTRUOUS blindness vs the child. And the scene where the men, the good folks of the town, were talking about what to do with Jim, some wanting to lynch him, not for running away, but because of his ingratitude!!! And then deciding not to kill him because after all he is someone's property and they might be held liable for his dollars’ worth!!! Nevertheless Huck comes of age.I would agree more with the idea that all American fiction is a response to Huck Finn if it hadn't been Hemingway who said it, but I will not accept that anyone else could possibly admire the book more than I do. Still, the ending is the weakest part. I don't know who could have written a better ending but facts are facts and by the time we get to the last few chapters the really astonishing novelties have already been spent where they'd do the most good.

[fredacochran · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

We read it in the great books class. It was a good book. I would read it again.

[liscarey · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One frequently challenged American classic is Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemons.) The reasons for challenging it are various. It uses the "n-word" to refer to African-Americans of the pre-Civil War period. Huck Finn makes an important choice in the course of the book, in which he defies the law and the moral injunctions of his elders, and is shown as being right to do so. America of the pre-Civil War period is portrayed as being less than perfect--a long way less than perfect.

The story of Huckleberry Finn is simple; in fact, the Author's Note at the beginning threatens dire consequences for anyone claiming to identify a plot in the book. Huck, having come into money in an earlier book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, has been placed in the custody of the Widow Douglas, who is attempting to civilize him. He appreciates her efforts, but feels confined. The alternative, living with his abusive father, is even worse. Huck runs away, heads down the Mississippi River--and meets up with the Widow Douglas' slave, Jim, who has also run away. They raft down the Mississippi together, with Huck getting an education about people, relations between black and white, and injustice. In the end they are back in the fictional town of St. Petersburg, MO, with Jim recaptured and set to be sold. Huck has a difficult choice to make.

This is not a grim book; it is lively and entertaining, and filled with adventures that any young or young-at-heart reader will enjoy. Huck learns a lot, though, and grows as a human being. This is an important book; it's also a fun one.

Highly recommended.

[cj82487 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I can see now why this is so often a required read in school. This style of writing is often hard to find and it is rich with descriptions that leap off the page.

My favorite part of this was the dialogue. Say what you wish about the "n-word," but the truth is that it was commonly used in the south. I, personally, don't approve of the word, but I cannot deny it was a part of history, especially during the time of slavery when this novel takes place.

What I loved about the dialogue was I could hear the characters. Huck sounded different from Pap and Jim. The words were thick with Southern accents instead of written in plain English, and it was done well. Writing accents isn't for everyone and can sometimes come across as trying too hard, but you can tell Twain heard these slang terms and thick accents. He wrote the words how they sound not how they should be spelt and it is what makes this "classic" special.

I'm usually remiss about writing reviews for books I am assigned to read, especially if I've had to discuss it at length. Honestly, much of what I'm required to read is not to my personal taste, but Huck Finn is different. Even though I read and discussed this book in class for 3 weeks, I enjoyed reading it. Picking it apart and analyzing it was more fun than an assignment.

There were some really funny moments, like when Huck disguised himself (poorly) as a girl, and the lessons or messages underneath the story are still relevant today.

Slavery is no longer legal, but the relationship between races is still a topic being discussed today with schools named after Confederate soldiers being renamed and historic statues being removed across the country.

Twain's message is simple and beautiful: We are all human beings.

In the beginning, Huck views Jim only as a slave. As they travel together, the relationship changes. Jim is no longer looked at or treated differently because of the color of his skin and Jim takes care of Huck in a fatherly way. If you look at it closely, it is a beautiful father-son relationship between two that aren't related. Huck and Jim's connection is more of a highlight than Huck's actual adventure down the Mississippi River on a raft.

I think everyone should read this book at least once during their lifetime to get a glance at life along the Mississippi River before the Civil War.

[abergsman-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

At first I felt the ending was flawed, agreeing with some of Twain's critics. However, after reflection, I believe it is exactly the right ending for this book.

Without the ending, the story would revert to more romantic prose: white boy learns his lesson about slavery and becomes a better person for it. Such an ending, I believe, would have undermined Twain's purpose in writing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In actuality, the ending gives earlier chapters their meaning, showing the difficulty in a person's ability to throw off societal norms. It is his commentary of the influence of society on a person's moral judgment.

[karenvg3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Always love a good classic. Can never go wrong with mark twain.

[mariannem85-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I hated this book when we read it in middle school. Fast forward a dozen years, I'm enrolled in a Mark Twain course and have to read it again. Wow, what difference an adult perspective made for me. If his short stories weren't enough to gain my awe and respect, then this book definitively did just that.

I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking—thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, 'stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he's got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.

It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:

"All right, then, I'll go to hell"—and tore it up.
That's one of the most moving pages of literature I've ever read. Twain cuts right to the heart of social and moral hypocrisy with Huck's character, an outside who struggles to reconcile what his experiences tell him are right and wrong with the civilized folk's definitions.

Oh, how it saddens me to acknowledge that - more than one hundred years after it was first published - Americans could still learn a thing or two about morality from reading this.

**Some people might find the dialogue difficult to manage. I remember this being one of the things I struggled with when I read it as a kid, but it truly is worth the effort. If it becomes too much, I suggest trying one of the audiobook versions. An excellent narration by Elijah Wood is available on Audible.

[vclarke-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Classic read for many high school students. Huck is one of literature's great characters. He is street smart and dishonest, but loyal (to an extent). His relationship with Jim has stood the test of time. Personally, I think it has one of literature's best ending to any book I have ever read. I would recommend this for upper level high school readers. The language is difficult because of the southern accent. I recommend reading many sections aloud or reading along with an audio version to begin with.

[deltaqueen50 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Huckleberry Finn is a young boy whose life hasn’t been easy, with no mother and an abusive drunkard for a father who only has time for Huck when he wants something. After Huck and Tom Sawyer found $6,000.00 in the Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Huck is placed with a widow woman who cleans him up and sends him to school. It isn’t long before his father, with a desire to get his hands on Huck’s money, shows up. He kidnaps Huck and both mistreats him and holds him captive. Huck eventually breaks free by faking his own death. He comes across Jim, a runaway slave and together they journey down the Mississippi River on a raft and forge a lasting friendship. This was a re-read for me, but I do believe that I both enjoyed the story and got more out of it on this second go. Not only does this character have one of the best names in literature, Huckleberry is also a great character to read about. He is a realist and adapts readily to most situations but he seems to be most comfortable when actually on the river. There is a simple decency to the boy, he tries to do the right thing. This trip on the river teaches him many life lessons and the reader is able to see him grow and develop into a conscientious and caring person.I struggled a little at the beginning of the book with the various dialects, but once I picked up the rhythm this was a very fun story. Mark Twain uses straightforward language, humor and a simple story line to show both the hypocrisy of slavery and the ridiculousness of many of society’s rules.

[missbrandysue · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

#2 of the Rory Gilmore ChallengeSo I'm going to go ahead and give this 3 stars because by the last 10 chapters I was pretty ready to be finished with it. I found myself intrigued by the plot by the middle of the book but found it hard to read for long periods. By the time I read 2 chapters I was kind of ready to move on to something else or fell asleep causing my long period in reading.I didn't read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer first, although it was referenced pretty highly in the first 5 chapters or so. If my TBR stack and library stack weren't so tall I'd have considered it. However, when Tom Sawyer appears in the last chapters of the book I'm really grateful I didn't go back. Did anyone else think Tom Sawyer was the MOST ANNOYING character in this book? Being a kid of the 80s I remember the Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Brad Renfro and Elijah Wood renditions of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer that came out all within a few years of each other. So, I was interested in reading the first published stories to see what I remembered and what was actually in the book. I read the Penguins Classics version that had additional notes for background on Twain's writing. I quite liked the intro that talked about Twain's reading history that helped influence pieces of the story. The plot - I liked the plot, except the end with Tom Sawyer. I had no idea it was so gory at parts, but I guess I always read the editions for kids. The King and Duke were quick-paced which I appreciated once I got there. Some of the small river plots were interesting but seemed somewhat far fetched for a novel so acclaimed for giving insight in the Mississippi culture of the 1800s. I definitely want to go back and read Twain's "Life on the Mississippi" novel now while taking a month-long trip (you know, as soon as I save $8000 to do so). The characters - Jim was quite simple and I thought Mark Twain may be more interested in developing the ties of slavery through his character rather than the plot. Huck Finn's morale tests and self-talk were amusing, wish there had been a bit more. Maybe I'm a character-driven reader these days?All-in-all as a historical piece I enjoyed the context of the Mississippi River and the almost short story excerpts of river life. However, the novel dragged a bit for me to really enjoy it more and seemed to be a bit all over the place with Twain's style.

[overthemoon_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Unable to put up with the "sivilizing" of the Widow Douglas, beaten by his alcoholic father, Huck escapes to an island where he finds his old friend and former slave Jim. Together they set off downriver on a raft, sleeping by day, sailing by night, what seems to Huck the perfect life. With his (and Tom's) hare-brained schemes, very funny and enjoyable, something that passed me by during my childhood (though I did read Tom Sawyer and remember it well), and extremely well written.

[juva_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

After the adventures recounted in Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn takes up the role of narrator in this lively book about racism and social life along the Mississippi river. Huck soon tires of the civilized life and when his father returns he is somewhat relieved to be removed to a remote cabin in the woods. But soon his Father's abuse and controlling ways grow tiresome so Huck fakes his own death and determines to make his living on his own. But shortly thereafter he runs into Jim, a familiar slave who has run away rather than be sold down the river. Huck and Jim soon become fast friends and go on many journeys together hoping to leave Jim in a free territory. The stories are charming, lively and sometimes shocking in their casual cruelty to black people. An important window into the past.

[tgraettinger_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A classic worthy of the name - and you get something new every time you read it.

[lukerik-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Undoubtedly a good book. Some heavy themes: racism and slavery, child and substance abuse. And lots of clever stuff, like the correspondences between Jim and Huck's situations.At times there are extraneous scenes and a resulting lack of narrative drive that left me stalled.

[jlharmon · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I guess this is the summer of reading classic books. People already know the story from all of the various movies and Wishbone episodes. So I won't dwell on the plot too much. There's intrigue and secret pacts and rafts and steamboats and scams. Huck always seems to find the craziest events on the Mississippi.

The best part of this is that it's written in various dialects. Huck's narrator voice is at least easy enough to understand, but lots of times I found myself reading things aloud to even figure out what some other character was saying. It really gives you a feel for the time period, more than any description would. I feel like I have a better understanding of the South now.

I can see why people don't want this to be read in present-day schools, or prefer to read Tom Sawyer's adventures instead. Everyone says the n-word ALL THE TIME. I get it that it was the culture, that it is a historical piece, but it would make reading aloud in class quite difficult. This book has an undercurrent of racism and morality that is definitely more thought-providing my though.

[terribooks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Better than I expected.

[browner56 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Over the years, I have occasionally thought about what qualifies a book to be elevated to the status as “The Great American Novel,” as mythical (and unofficial) as that title may be. Certainly, it seems that such a work should capture the attitudes and beliefs of the particular period in the United States it depicts as well as convey a sense of the cultural values that define those times. Of course, as those values and beliefs change over time, so too should the list of books that qualify as TGAN. Whatever one’s particular definition might be, however, I suspect that somewhere near the front end of a lot of people’s lists will be Mark Twain’s masterpiece Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.The regard for this novel remains considerable more than 130 years after its publication, both for its historical significance and the continuing relevance of its humor and strong anti-racism message. Indeed, Ernest Hemingway said “all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn…there has been nothing as good since” while Eugene O’Neill called the author himself “the true father of all American literature.” Much of that regard must have come from Twain’s remarkable use of multiple ethnic and regional dialects throughout the novel, which helped to distinguish the newly emerging American literary tradition from its European roots. For instance, here is the way Huck describes some of his time on the raft with Jim, the runaway slave:We catched fish and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn't ever feel like talking loud, and it warn't often that we laughed—only a little kind of a low chuckle. 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. For all of that, though, it is hard to discuss Adventures of Huckleberry Finn without addressing the author’s frequent and almost profligate use of a certain expression that has come to be regarded as a highly charged racial epithet (let’s call it the “n-word” and just leave it at that). In the context of the story, it is abundantly clear that this term was used as a synonym for ‘slave’ rather than as a slur with any deeper intended meaning. Still, it is an extremely uncomfortable experience for the modern reader to encounter that word under any circumstance and, quite frankly, it was something I never really got used to. Of course, the irony is that the entire novel is a marvelous satire of the hypocrisy of prevailing racial attitudes and a strong indictment of the institution of slavery. One thing that is easily lost in all of these high-minded considerations is the question of whether this is an enjoyable book to read. For most of the story, it definitely is. Huck Finn is a truly unique character in literature and his adventures, which vacillate between being hilarious or harrowing, are almost always engaging. In particular, the encounters that Huck and Jim have while floating their way south on the Mississippi are memorable and exciting; only the last segment of the book when Tom Sawyer shows up felt like a bit of a false note to me. I have no idea what the current TGAN might be, but after reading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn I know where that list began.

[jennysbookbag.com · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Definitely a classic to read!