Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Great book! When addressing controversy think of context.   November 13, 2008
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.

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Finn & Sawyer Part 2   November 2, 2008
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.

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Exceptional edition   October 27, 2008
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.

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Huckleberry Finn   October 8, 2008
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!

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Huck Finn   September 21, 2008
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!

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