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The adventures of a boy and a runaway slave as they travel down the Mississippi River on a raft.Tags
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pechmerle Tremendously enlightening study of the N.E. Missouri social context from which Twain developed the character of Jim.
20
CGlanovsky Orphaned kid with plenty of street-smarts embarks on a dangerous journey interwoven with high-stakes matters from the adult world (Slavery/Russo-British Espionage).
20
themulhern Twain and Dickens writing historical novels set in their past, but using that history as a fairly direct commentary on their present. Both books continue to be well-known and well-regarded. Of course, Dickens's past is more distant than Twain's, by a factor of about two.
CGlanovsky Disillusioned youth takes off. A liar himself, he despises frauds.
Also recommended by caflores
78
themulhern Two historical novels. "Waverly" was published something like 70 years after the events it recounts, 1815 - 1745, while "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" was published a little closer to the events it recounts, 1885 - c.1845. Both were intended, as far as I can tell, to influence thinking about now.
Member Reviews
"I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide,
forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it."
Mark Twain was a genius and this his magnum opus. He wrote this story with his ear pressed to the breast of a living America. The American heart that is still alive and still ailing from the same diseases today.
Twain starts his yarn off as do most good ol' yarns, with an innocent, a boy, the "ignorant" Huck Finn. Through Huck's many misadventures, Twain is slowly peeling back curtains. Without flinching, he has slowly put the real world on stage. Like his English counterpart, Charles Dickens, he made it so comical that a whole country would eagerly read it.
And read it they did.
But now some don't think you should read it.
America is rejoicing show more in banning books by our nation's geniuses like Mark Twain, and Toni Morrison, and many others (sheesh, the self-appointed gatekeepers will even ban a book about freckles, Freckleface Strawberry). Books especially about the history and indignity of slavery are their big political targets. Those books, they say, will hurt your feelings, hurt the nation's self-image, and not advance the population's enlightened sensibilities. That's a government out of touch with reality and in touch with totalitarianism.
Banning means one thing: someone "smarter than you" thinks you should not think about something.
I say be like Huck Finn! Don't let a committee of scared grownups deny your intelligence, treat you as if they were kings and dukes, brutal fathers, and spinsters who make right only after they are dead. Take your own trip down the Mississippi River. What do you think of this book, exactly as it was written? Read it here:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76
After you are done, feel your own trembling. That's a sign you understood Twain's genius and have intelligence and strength in you. Trust yourself. show less
forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it."
Mark Twain was a genius and this his magnum opus. He wrote this story with his ear pressed to the breast of a living America. The American heart that is still alive and still ailing from the same diseases today.
Twain starts his yarn off as do most good ol' yarns, with an innocent, a boy, the "ignorant" Huck Finn. Through Huck's many misadventures, Twain is slowly peeling back curtains. Without flinching, he has slowly put the real world on stage. Like his English counterpart, Charles Dickens, he made it so comical that a whole country would eagerly read it.
And read it they did.
But now some don't think you should read it.
America is rejoicing show more in banning books by our nation's geniuses like Mark Twain, and Toni Morrison, and many others (sheesh, the self-appointed gatekeepers will even ban a book about freckles, Freckleface Strawberry). Books especially about the history and indignity of slavery are their big political targets. Those books, they say, will hurt your feelings, hurt the nation's self-image, and not advance the population's enlightened sensibilities. That's a government out of touch with reality and in touch with totalitarianism.
Banning means one thing: someone "smarter than you" thinks you should not think about something.
I say be like Huck Finn! Don't let a committee of scared grownups deny your intelligence, treat you as if they were kings and dukes, brutal fathers, and spinsters who make right only after they are dead. Take your own trip down the Mississippi River. What do you think of this book, exactly as it was written? Read it here:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76
After you are done, feel your own trembling. That's a sign you understood Twain's genius and have intelligence and strength in you. Trust yourself. show less
Huck Finn is our charmingly naive narrator, a boy who seems to attract trouble like mosquitoes to a swamp. His escapades, from faking his own death to outsmarting a couple of crooks, are as entertaining as they are eyebrow-raising. Seriously, who knew a kid could get into so much mischief just trying to avoid being civilized?
And then there's Jim, the runaway slave with a heart of gold. He and Huck team up for a rafting adventure that's part buddy comedy, part social commentary. Jim's quest for freedom and Huck's coming-of-age journey provide a
Speaking of humor, Twain's wit is as sharp as a cat's claw. He pokes fun at everything from feuding families to self-righteous townsfolk with a sarcasm so dry you could mistake it for jerky. The satire is on point, but sometimes you can't help but wonder if Twain is laughing with us or at us.
Now, let's address the elephant in the room: Tom Sawyer. What is that kid's deal? Every time he shows up, things go from mildly absurd to downright ludicrous. His elaborate schemes and insistence on turning every situation into a grand adventure make you want to shake him and ask if he's ever heard of common sense.
On a more serious note, Twain tackles the issue of race head-on through Jim's character. He portrays Jim not as a caricature but as a fully realized person with hopes, dreams, and fears. The novel's exploration of slavery and racism is as uncomfortable as it is necessary, forcing readers to confront America's troubled past.
Critically speaking, sure, there are moments where you might roll your eyes at Huck's blind trust in Tom or Twain's heavy-handed social commentary. But hey, it's all part of the journey down that muddy ol' river.
In conclusion, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is a classic for a reason. It's a blend of humor, satire, and social critique that still resonates today. So grab your straw hat and jump on the raft—it's time to float downstream with Huck and Jim, and maybe even learn a thing or two about life, liberty, and the pursuit of a good fish fry.
Mark Twain, you old riverboat rogue, you've given us a story that's as twisted and meandering as the Mississippi itself.
verrrrrrry uneven. parts were enjoyable -- and then it just dragged on and on. This is the sort of thinf i expect from a novel in the 1700s, not two centuries later. And Huck is sensible but when Tom showed up ... he is the stupidest, most irritating boy.
but lord, there is an undercurrent of sadness all through -- sadness and desperation. Twain doesn't give into it, he's one-foot-then-the-other about things, but there's still that sense of inevitable loss, inevitable cruelty, waiting a step away, and while it has a happy, just-so ending, like so many fairy tales, it's only a pause; they're still waiting for the evil to come.
but lord, there is an undercurrent of sadness all through -- sadness and desperation. Twain doesn't give into it, he's one-foot-then-the-other about things, but there's still that sense of inevitable loss, inevitable cruelty, waiting a step away, and while it has a happy, just-so ending, like so many fairy tales, it's only a pause; they're still waiting for the evil to come.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a nice-enough book but I think I'm just too old for it. Essentially, it's a book absent a plot: a story about a boy bumming around the Deep South and getting into mischief. I imagine it would have been a story to capture my imagination when I was younger. The sense of adventure is tangible, but not the sort I go for nowadays – it is more the sort of 'lazy summer days, boys will be boys' nostalgia stuff that gets a bit stale as you get older.
Unfortunately, the reputation of the book is overshadowed by the 'n-word' controversy. Yes, it is said a lot, in keeping with the time in which the story was set (pre-Civil War Deep South). But Mark Twain is clearly satirising the racism of the time, not show more condoning it. When Huck Finn admonishes himself for helping Jim, a runaway slave, escape his captors, Twain clearly doesn't want the reader to believe Huck shouldn't be helping Jim. Consider this (the novel is told from the first-person perspective of Huck):
… he [Jim] was most free – and who was to blame for it? Why, me. I couldn't get that out of my conscience, no how nor no way… Conscience says to me, 'What had poor Miss Watson [Jim's owner] done to you, that you could see her nigger go off right under your eyes and never say one single word? What did that poor old woman do to you, that you could treat her so mean?" (pp117-18)
It seems clear to me that Twain is shining a light on how skewed and perverted the morals of impressionable young Huck's environment are, that he thinks he is going to Hell for helping and befriending Jim (pg. 283)! We should be uncomfortable about hearing that word used so often, but we should also try to understand the novel, not retreat into our hysterically politically-correct shells at the mere presence of the word.
On another note, I sometimes found the dialects hard to decipher but overall the book flowed very easily. On average in my reading, I try for about 100 pages a day, but I found myself easily going for 200 in Huck Finn. On a more personal note, I enjoyed reading the book because it was clearly a big influence on one of my favourite books and authors: the Flashman series by George MacDonald Fraser. All told, Huckleberry Finn wasn't a great fit for me, but was nevertheless an enjoyable read." show less
Unfortunately, the reputation of the book is overshadowed by the 'n-word' controversy. Yes, it is said a lot, in keeping with the time in which the story was set (pre-Civil War Deep South). But Mark Twain is clearly satirising the racism of the time, not show more condoning it. When Huck Finn admonishes himself for helping Jim, a runaway slave, escape his captors, Twain clearly doesn't want the reader to believe Huck shouldn't be helping Jim. Consider this (the novel is told from the first-person perspective of Huck):
… he [Jim] was most free – and who was to blame for it? Why, me. I couldn't get that out of my conscience, no how nor no way… Conscience says to me, 'What had poor Miss Watson [Jim's owner] done to you, that you could see her nigger go off right under your eyes and never say one single word? What did that poor old woman do to you, that you could treat her so mean?" (pp117-18)
It seems clear to me that Twain is shining a light on how skewed and perverted the morals of impressionable young Huck's environment are, that he thinks he is going to Hell for helping and befriending Jim (pg. 283)! We should be uncomfortable about hearing that word used so often, but we should also try to understand the novel, not retreat into our hysterically politically-correct shells at the mere presence of the word.
On another note, I sometimes found the dialects hard to decipher but overall the book flowed very easily. On average in my reading, I try for about 100 pages a day, but I found myself easily going for 200 in Huck Finn. On a more personal note, I enjoyed reading the book because it was clearly a big influence on one of my favourite books and authors: the Flashman series by George MacDonald Fraser. All told, Huckleberry Finn wasn't a great fit for me, but was nevertheless an enjoyable read." show less
It's curious that Mark Twain is relegated to the "folksy Americana" bucket when his most famous work is actually a scathing satire of the inherent violence of American culture. The story is about a boy escaping horrific abuse from his father accompanied by a Black man, Jim, himself escaping slavery, America's original sin. It's heartbreaking that by doing the morally correct thing - helping Jim escape - Huck has been conditioned by white supremacist to believe he is being sinful. Jim is a wonderful, loving person - really the parent Huck deserves - but even then he has been conditioned to humor Huck as a white person by playing dumb at times.
Huck and Jim's adventures take place on a raft drifting down the Mississippi River. On their show more journey the encounter thieves, feuding families, and the horrors of nature and riverboat traffic. The better part of the second half of the novel deals with two conmen who commandeer the raft, claiming to be a British duke and the French dauphin. As they continue downriver, they involve Huck and Jim in their attempts to scam people in the towns they pass. For a novel set 180 years ago, there's a lot about American people and culture that feels relevant to 2026.
While, in many ways this is a perfect book, I do feel the many cons of the Duke and the Dauphin kind of drag. Also, late in the novel when Tom Sawyer joins Huck and makes elaborate plans to rescue Jim based on romantic novels it gets a bit too absurd. The end of the novel has something of a deus ex machina, where Tom and Jim each have a bit of information that had they revealed earlier could've saved them a lot of trouble. And while the language of the novel is a verisimilitude of how people talked at the time, it was really difficult to hear the "n-word" repeated so often.
As Ernest Hemingway famously noted, this is a novel from which "modern American literature" originated. It was good to revisit this book especially in a time when the character of the American people is being severely tested. We live in a time where children suffer abuse at the hands of the powerful and people are dehumanized, and just like the characters in this novel we are tasked with choosing what we're told is the "Real American" way or doing what is morally good. show less
Huck and Jim's adventures take place on a raft drifting down the Mississippi River. On their show more journey the encounter thieves, feuding families, and the horrors of nature and riverboat traffic. The better part of the second half of the novel deals with two conmen who commandeer the raft, claiming to be a British duke and the French dauphin. As they continue downriver, they involve Huck and Jim in their attempts to scam people in the towns they pass. For a novel set 180 years ago, there's a lot about American people and culture that feels relevant to 2026.
While, in many ways this is a perfect book, I do feel the many cons of the Duke and the Dauphin kind of drag. Also, late in the novel when Tom Sawyer joins Huck and makes elaborate plans to rescue Jim based on romantic novels it gets a bit too absurd. The end of the novel has something of a deus ex machina, where Tom and Jim each have a bit of information that had they revealed earlier could've saved them a lot of trouble. And while the language of the novel is a verisimilitude of how people talked at the time, it was really difficult to hear the "n-word" repeated so often.
As Ernest Hemingway famously noted, this is a novel from which "modern American literature" originated. It was good to revisit this book especially in a time when the character of the American people is being severely tested. We live in a time where children suffer abuse at the hands of the powerful and people are dehumanized, and just like the characters in this novel we are tasked with choosing what we're told is the "Real American" way or doing what is morally good. show less
Do you ever wonder about beluga whales? I mean in tanks in captivity just floating.
No—why?
What do they think about? Floating in there. All night.
Nothing.
That’s impossible.
Why?
You can’t be alive and think about nothing.
You can’t but you’re not a whale.
Why should it be different?
Why should it be the same?
But I look in their eyes and I see them thinking.
Nonsense. It is yourself you see—it’s guilt.
Guilt? Why would I be guilty about whales? Not my fault they’re in a tank.
Exactly. So why are you guilty—whose tank are you in?
—Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red (1998)
On Swimming Upstream, or Huckleberry Finn with Six Coups
Whether anyone ever made it to Antebellum Heaven, the way Widow Douglas describes it, we're show more fortunate not to be one of them: "all a body would have to do [in heaven] was to go around all day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever" (47). It's funny how "the good place" finds itself a concoction of The Apocalypse and the Sunday Service — and actually closer to the latter. Though on second thought it's rather scary the way it makes death sound so much like life. An afterlife fixed in the eternal-return of man's self-regard could only be constant, albeit divine, toil — singing hymns to the self-righteous "Saved." It's not certain where self-centering slipped in, but it always seems to be there first. Consider how Widow Douglas's learnin' ways, meant to make a full-on citizen of Huck Finn, seem to share a self-justifying narrative with Pap Finn's reactionary screeds. They trace their lineage back to the absolute confidence of the Cogito — 'I thinks, therefore I am, ain't I?' Pap Finn remains a sterling villain of world literature, worse than murderers of Dumas, because, despite his frank myriad flaws he believes with a clear conscience — like you, reader — that he is in the right. "
Call this a govment! why, just look at it and see what it's like [. . .] A man can’t get his rights in a govment like this [. . .] Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here. There was a mulatter from Ohio [. . .] they said he was a p’fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages [. . . ] They said he could vote, when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It was ’lection day, and I was just about to go and vote, myself, if I warn’t too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a State in this country where they’d let that [mulatter] vote, I drawed out. I says I’ll never vote agin [. . .] as long as I live” (75).
Narratives are strategic like this, they let you off. Pap Finn, the villain of the insufficiently self-aware, has his corollary in the zoo patron who, upon seeing the caged animal thinks, "Why should they feel bad. They don't have to work for a living." This patron, who thinks he sees an animal, has already constructed a screen narrative of personal-identification, which he then disavows. Finally he substitutes his vision of a freeloader — incidentally another hated human figure, much like himself perhaps — whom he rebuffs with so-called self-sacrificing hatred of work — and so remains in the right. Anne Carson in Autobiography of Red (1998) (above) is more savvy in her depiction of the chief character's recollection of a beluga whale in its tank, yet he gets no closer to the whale itself than did the reactionary. Both are thinking along the lines of someone who, in the glossy eye of the animal, is only capable of seeing himself reflected — and after all, why shouldn't he feel guilty. (Aside: The failure of these tenuous encounters, short-circuited by narrative's perennial self-interest, has its literary model in Moby Dick (1851), in which chapters always conclude with an allegorical turn making the whole reading, in retrospect, into a schoolbook lesson, "And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too?". We think Huck Finn is at least closer to the inscrutable whale in his ostensible belief that, to get to the Free States of the North, he can float the river Mississippi up-stream, or that, fish-like, the river would reverse its course.)
The Duke is a more complicated case, since his narrative of self-protection seems not quite adequate to the task. Readers think they know better, but the outpouring of contrition with which the Duke begins his modest grift is hardly distinguishable from the real thing. After all, he finds himself a character in a novel, destitute, floating down the Mississippi — and with child.
"To think I should have lived to be leading such a life, and be degraded down into such company." And he begun to wipe the corner of his eye with a rag.
“Dern your skin, ain’t the company good enough for you?” says the baldhead, pretty pert and uppish.
“Yes, it is good enough for me; it’s as good as I deserve; for who fetched me so low, when I was so high? I did myself. I don’t blame you, gentlemen— far from it; I don’t blame anybody. I deserve it all. Let the cold world do its worst; one thing I know—there’s a grave somewhere for me [. . .]” He went on a-wiping.
“Drot your pore broken heart,” says the baldhead; “what are you heaving your pore broken heart at us f’r? We hain’t done nothing.”
“No, I know you haven’t. I ain’t blaming you, gentlemen. I brought myself down—yes, I did it myself. It’s right I should suffer—perfectly right I don’t" (160).
Alas, anon the Duke will disclose his dispossessed dukedom, but this is not a necessary consequence of the dialogue leading up to this moment. We imagine the Duke to be the most (ideologically) "tortured" character in this novel, who is always beginning in earnest, but bows to "necessity" without fail — in contrast to the King, a non-character, the perfect entrepreneur who, without a thought, only does what pays or pleases. One imagines it would be worse to be grifted by the Duke who is ultimately capable of anything — even, especially, remorse. Looking back, he will recall how penitent he was in the moments of false contrition before he wound up his scam. He possesses then the sentimental faculties necessary for the crimes he commits off-stage, "[It] is supremely sentimental: kitsch is the natural aesthetic of an ethnic cleanser. This is like a Verdi opera – killers on both sides pause between ring to recite nostalgic and epic texts [. . .] Being possessed by a love far greater than reason: ‘Such a love assists the belief that it is fate, however tragic, which obliges you to kill.’ This is your destiny.” (Joshua Oppenheimer, Killer Images, 2012) (Aside: Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing (2012) relates a somewhat different narrative, showing the right-wing perpetrators of ethnic cleansing in Indonesia having returned to so-called normal lives, albeit (slightly) more hungry for approbation. The "art" they produce in the film-within-the-film (depicting their role in the mass-killing of so-called Communists) are drag productions with an eye toward popular entertainment complete with comedy and bathos. There is a dance number. One imagines the Duke becoming, in time, one of these figures i.e. producers-slash-consumers of loud television programs. Incidentally, Edward Said notes that, "Perhaps the most obvious component of Verdi’s rhetorical style—to put the matter bluntly—is sheer loudness. He is with Beethoven, among the noisiest of all major composers... Like a political orator, Verdi can’t remain still for long. Drop the needle at random on a recording of a Verdi opera, and you will usually be rewarded with a substantial racket” (Culture and Imperialism, 1993).)
Jim's case represents a disruption of "narrative," as I have developed it so far. When the course of the river separates him from Huck, he subsequently interprets these actually-lived events as if they were a dream, "Then [Jim started] in and 'terpreted it [. . .] He said the first towhead stood for a man that would try to do us some good, but the current was another man that would get us away from him […] The lot of tow-heads was troubles we was going to get into with quarrelsome people and all kinds of mean folks, but if we minded our business and didn't talk back and aggravate them, we would pull through and get out of the fog and into the big clear river, which was the free States, and wouldn't have no more trouble" (126). This event, rarely remarked in criticism of Huckleberry Finn, is troubling for "narrative." Here, Jim is short-circuiting the interpretation of narrative, which, in its standard exploitation of a text (as in a mineral deposit) 'terprets its contents into symbols and allegory, thereby making them safe for consumption. Jim's story "grounds out" the allegoric narrative because he's so close to it. The lesson suggests that Events are only Events (c.f. Robbe-Grillet who states, "Things are things, and man is only man.") (e.g. What, may I ask, does the event of reading this text off a screen symbolize for your life, reader?) (Aside: Once again compare Jim's bricolage to the "wrought ironwork" of allegory in Moby Dick which keeps narrative at a safe distance (pejoratively) "That unsounded ocean you gasp in, is Life; those sharks, your foes; those spades, your friends; and what between sharks and spades you are in a sad pickle and peril, poor lad") Jim's destabilizing interpretation-of-dreams is a clever kind of "signifying" in both senses of the term: weaving symbols and signs and also "[a black person] producing a gap between what words say on the surface and what they really mean" (Was Huck Black, 1993).
(Aside: it's also possible to 'terpret Jim's narrative as an American myth in conversation with the structural anthropology of Claude Lévi-Strauss. Lévi-Strauss remarks that Native stories frequently proceed with an inversion of a natural order to maintain a symbolic-balance or balance-of-symbols: "The one legged hunter is faster than the two legged hunter," (The Raw and the Cooked, 1964); "the river [is made] to flow both ways, equalizing the times of the journey upstream and downstream," (The Origin of Table Manners, 1968). The symbolic equity-slash-balance of Native mythologies appears to be absent here. Jim's narrative, which depicts one towhead (read: bulrush) succeeded by many more, resembles, from a structural perspective, the Biblical narrative. From a single sire, Abraham's children become — after intervening generations — "[innumerable] as the dust of the earth" (Genesis 13:16). Jim then, as teller-of-tales and river-rider, places himself (structurally) in the position of Moses who (reportedly) dictated the Pentateuch. Precisely, he would be that "Moses [among] the Bulrushers," (47), of whom we've heard so much as of late. One imagines that, were Jim able to access the Native mythologies (or Moses's reported powers over water) to reverse the course of the Mississippi, he would be caught between his chance to float upstream toward freedom and the temptation to send baby Moses, sire of innumerable Christian slavers, back up to where the Nile has its unknown source.)
Following Jim's deconstruction signifying, the so-called unfortunate denouement of Huckleberry Finn, i.e. Jim's confinement at the Phelps farm, would seem soured. Tom Sawyer returns, having become bovinized / Bovarized / an Emma-Bovary-like-character — the consequence of having read too much Dumas (read: romantic novels for boys). The use of narrative in Tom's hands is now, quite literally, an obscure form of torture — and ostensibly without purpose. (Aside: Perhaps it wouldn't be incorrect to read this section as an economic maneuver: Mark Twain lampoons the contrived plots of Dumas in an attempt to increase his market-share in the saturated market of adventure-books-for-boys — of course this backfires.) In a reversal of dramatic irony, readers realize that, in retrospect, there is no dramatic tension in scenes of Jim's escape attempt: We later learn he has already been freed off-stage. It seems few readers consider the unrealized alternative outcome. Just as the Duke, in the moment of his penultimate contrition, is theoretically capable of doing otherwise. Tom Sawyer, when he reaches the end of his games, is always capable of turning back and having more fun — that is, he could potentially continue the ruse indefinitely. Jim's bondage is therefore always already overdetermined by the narratives that Tom Sawyer is capable of telling himself. In this function, Tom's narratives seem to echo those narrative shackles which Historical Materialism has always criticized as impediments to revolution,"
Man makes his own history, but he does not make it out of the whole cloth; he does not make it out of conditions chosen by himself, but out of such as he finds close at hand. The tradition of all past generations weighs like an alp upon the brain of the living. At the very time when men appear engaged in revolutionizing things and themselves, in bringing about what never was before, at such very epochs of revolutionary crisis do they anxiously conjure up into their service the spirits of the past, […] Thus did the revolution of 1789-1814 drape itself alternately as Roman Republic and as Roman Empire;
— Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire, 1852
It remains a matter of significant dispute whether the narrative of historical precedence, a crutch that the revolution trips over, is not also its condition of possibility. Speaking as an historical materialist, to clothe the present political movement in the drapes of so-called "bourgeois revolution" is always already to have made a category mistake. Yet the alternative is the equally dispiriting total absence of narrative, given that what-will-be has never been before. So one risks venturing the always-already-deconstructed narrative because, at the present moment, no alternative has presented itself. Tom's problem is the same as that of all white slave owners (and modern-day "first-worlders"): It's not so easy to do what is so obviously right. What's needed is a supplement of narrative even — and especially — for these smallest victories. One might argue that, were it not for the contrived narratives of Dumas, Tom Sawyer may not have been capable of releasing Jim. (Aside: Narrative nonetheless remains no less fraught, even for Tom Sawyer-ing. A very real alternative (and present danger) is the narrative closure some stories provide, as in one of Lévi-Strauss's specimen myths: "These young, sumptuously adorned princesses who were exempt from all except the most refined tasks, appeared so remote that they could only be reached by an excessively long penis. They were [. . .] lunar creatures, corresponding to the Iroquois concept of the spots on the moon: a woman sitting endlessly doing quill-work; should she finish her task, the world would come to an end (The Origin Of Table Manners, 1968).)
What remains, then, is the problem of Jim's silence. i.e. The question of why the savviest speaker in the text chooses to refrain at the crucial moment of "play." We imagine Jim would signifying himself a custodial extradition back to his erstwhile owner without much difficulty. The nature of this mystery is something transpiring outside the narrative we have come to expect from the text. Experience teaches that the hero should have a role in securing his freedom — one at least as great as Tom Sawyer's (mis)guided machinations. (Aside: we are still awaiting a novel capable of re-writing Jim's noumenal silences, which remain unfortunately unaddressed in Everett's James (2024), a text that doesn't deal in quietude. (Everett's metaphor for slavery-slash-capitalism is an imploding steamboat engine-room; about as loud as writing gets. (Louder, even, than Ralph Ellison in Invisible Man (1953), who smashes you over the head with "reality as irresistible as a club." (As he should.)))) The most judicious approach, perhaps, is to propose a series of catachrestic solutions:
One imagines Jim mirroring Tom Sawyer, constructing his own fantastic narratives à la Count of Monte Cristo, a novel in the form of a prisoner's power phantasy, narrativizing the (incorrect) belief that every ordeal you suffer has its reward. The Count's superior night vision, a consequence of his prolonged confinement-in-dungeon, has no physiologic basis in reality. Nor is the phantastic novel useful for freeing subaltern reader. Jim gets freed behind his back while he phantasizes. N.B. the neglected half of our lesson from Tom Sawyer: "Exclusions may apply."
One imagines Jim in his cloister having achieved a spiritual-slash-religious silence. "So, then, following the instruction of the Gospel, let us in earnest look at the lily and the bird as the teachers. [. . . ] and let us learn silence, or learn to be silent. Yes, quite true, in a certain sense it is nothing. In the deepest sense you shall make yourself nothing, become nothing before God, learn to be silent. In this silence is the beginning, which is to seek first God’s kingdom" (Kierkegaard, The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air, 1849). Although one wonders whether this silence is Divine or Demonic. In Kierkegaard's sense, Jim's silent "willing, in despair, to be oneself" (The Sickness Unto Death, 1849), would be the demonic despair of those who repudiate God. Jim, who knows Moses loses life for striking the stone (a crisis of faith), is savvy enough to keep silent in his holy war again God.
One imagines Jim's uncanny silence as the silence of death, having just received a mortal (psychological) blow. Jim's return to enslavement is a trauma that will reverberate for generations. (Future generations are resonating back to him too.) His catatonic expressions unnerve us as if the life has gone out of him. ”By-and-by I was close enough to have a look, and there laid a man on the ground. It most give me the fan-tods” (87).
i am inside of
history, its
hungrier than i
thot
—Ishmael Reed, Dualism In Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1985)
I prefer to imagine Jim, in these scenes, as not in the novel at all. He has penetrated through into history. Jim cannot speak his way out because this is what slavery does. Despite what the plot in a novel-for-boys demands, enslaved Jim is that beam (in your eye), who cannot be moved because he has his feet buried in history, like Loki's Cat, which Thor fails to lift, because he is actually the Midgard Serpent. show less
I first read Huckleberry Finn back in 1984, and I would have thought that would be enough. But just in the last five months I've read two retellings -- the graphic novel Big Jim and the White Boy: An American Classic Reimagined by David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson and the novel James by Percival Everett -- and I found myself wanting to refresh my memory of the original work to see how much the retellings kept and discarded. Indeed, they stray quite a lot, but they also amplify what Twain began.
Twain's version is amusing, ironic, satirical and sardonic. While I never tire of Huck's narration and admire the start of the book, the many digressions do wear on me. The Duke and the King overstay their welcome and Tom Sawyer all but show more ruins the ending. Still, it's easy to see why this has earned its classic status and 140 years of controversy. show less
Twain's version is amusing, ironic, satirical and sardonic. While I never tire of Huck's narration and admire the start of the book, the many digressions do wear on me. The Duke and the King overstay their welcome and Tom Sawyer all but show more ruins the ending. Still, it's easy to see why this has earned its classic status and 140 years of controversy. show less
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ThingScore 100
Mark Twain may be called the Edison of our literature. There is no limit to his inventive genius, and the best proof of its range and originality is found in this book, in which the reader's interest is so strongly enlisted in the fortunes of two boys and a runaway negro that he follows their adventures with keen curiosity, although his common sense tells him that the incidents are as absurd show more and fantastic in many ways as the "Arabian Nights." show less
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Author Information
2,740+ Works 208,060 Members
Mark Twain was born Samuel L. Clemens in Florida, Missouri on November 30, 1835. He worked as a printer, and then became a steamboat pilot. He traveled throughout the West, writing humorous sketches for newspapers. In 1865, he wrote the short story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, which was very well received. He then began a show more career as a humorous travel writer and lecturer, publishing The Innocents Abroad in 1869, Roughing It in 1872, and, Gilded Age in 1873, which was co-authored with Charles Dudley Warner. His best-known works are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mississippi Writing: Life on the Mississippi, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He died of a heart attack on April 21, 1910. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Mark Twain has a Legacy Library. Legacy libraries are the personal libraries of famous readers, entered by LibraryThing members from the Legacy Libraries group.
Some Editions
Awards and Honors
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Penguin English Library, 2012 series (2012-04)
Toppers In Strip (8)
Grandes Novelas de Aventuras (XLIX)
Riverside Editions (A15)
Airmont Classics (4)
KOD (13)
Tus libros (8)
Gouden Lijsters (200263)
El País Aventuras (19)
Geração Público (21)
GF Flammarion (700)
detebe-Klassiker (21370)
Penguin Clothbound Classics (2013)
Letras Universales (267)
Zephyr Books (35)
The Pocket Library (PL-42)
Reader's Enrichment Series (RE 306)
Corticelli [Mursia] (43)
Prisma Klassieken (45)
Dean's Classics (50)
Les ales esteses (293)
Amstelboeken (182-183)
Puffin Story Books (80)
Doubleday Dolphin (C98)
insel taschenbuch (0126)
Work Relationships
Is contained in
Mississippi Writings: Tom Sawyer / Life on the Mississippi / Huckleberry Finn / Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain
Four Classic American Novels (The Scarlet Letter / The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn / The Red Badge of Courage / Billy Budd) by Willard Thorp
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Complete Text With Introduction, Historical Contexts, Critical Essays (New Riverside Edi by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn/The Adventures of Tom Sawyer/The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain
90 Masterpieces You Must Read (Vol.1): Novels, Poetry, Plays, Short Stories, Essays, Psychology & Philosophy by Various
Mark Twain : the adventures of Tom Sawyer ; the adventures of Huckleberry Finn ; Mark Twain's sketches ; Mark Twain's (burlesque) autobiography ; the prince and the pauper ; a Connecticut yankee in King Authur's court by Mark Twain
Five Novels: Adventures of Tom Sawyer / Prince and the Pauper / Adventures of Huckleberry Finn / Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court / Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer / The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn / Tom Sawyer Abroad / Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer / The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn / Tom Sawyer Detective by Mark Twain
Is retold in
Has the adaptation
Is abridged in
Is expanded in
Inspired
Finn by Jon Clinch
Has as a reference guide/companion
Has as a study
Has as a commentary on the text
Has as a student's study guide
Has as a teacher's guide
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- Original title
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- Alternate titles
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- Original publication date
- 1884 (United Kingdom) (United Kingdom); 1884; 1885 (United States) (United States)
- People/Characters
- Huckleberry Finn; Tom Sawyer; Jim [Huckleberry Finn]; Miss Watson; The Duke [Huckleberry Finn] (a/k/a the Duke of Bridgewater); The King [Huckleberry Finn] (a/k/a the Dauphin or Louis XVII) (show all 31); Pap Finn (father of Huckleberry Finn); Judge Thatcher; Joe Harper; Ben Rogers; Widow Douglas; Tommy Barnes; Judith Loftus; Jim Turner; Jake Packard; Saul Grangerford (husband of Rachel Grangerford); Rachel Grangerford (wife of Saul Grangerford); Bob Grangerford (son of Saul and Rachel Grangerford); Tom Grangerford (son of Saul and Rachel Grangerford); Buck Grangerford (son of Saul and Rachel Grangerford); Emmaline Grangerford (daughter of Saul and Rachel Grangerford); Charlotte Grangerford (daughter of Saul and Rachel Grangerford); Sofphia Grangerford (daughter of Saul and Rachel Grangerford); Harney Shepherdson; Mary Jane Wilks (daughter of Peter Wilks); Susan Wilks (daughter of Peter Wilks); Joanna Wilks (daughter of Peter Wilks); Peter Wilks; Sally Phelps (wife of Silas Phelps); Silas Phelps (husband of Sally Phelps); Aunt Sally
- Important places
- Mississippi River, USA; Hannibal, Missouri, USA; St. Petersburg, Missouri, USA
- Important events
- 19th century; 1840s
- Related movies
- Huck and the King of Hearts (1994 | IMDb); The Adventures of Huck Finn (1993 | IMDb); The Adventures of Huck Finn (2012 | IMDb)
- Epigraph
- 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... (show all).G., Chief of Ordnance
- First words
- 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.
- Quotations
- To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would fardels bear, till Birnam Wood do come to Dunsinane,
But that the fear of something after death
Murders th... (show all)e innocent sleep,
Great nature's second course,
And makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune
Than fly to others that we know not of.
There's the respect must give us pause:
Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The law's delay, and the quietus which his pangs might take,
In the dead waste and middle of the night, when churchyards yawn
In customary suits of solemn black,
But that the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns,
Breathes forth contagion on the world,
And thus the native hue of resolution, like the poor cat i' the adage,
Is sicklied o'er with care,
And all the clouds that lowered o'er our housetops,
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. But soft you, the fair Ophelia:
Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaw,
But get thee to a nunnery—go!
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, for ever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:<... (show all)br>
"All right, then, I'll go to hell"—and tore it up. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)I been there before. The End. Yours truly, Huck Finn.
- Original language
- English
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, Children's Books, General Fiction
- DDC/MDS
- 813.4 — Literature & rhetoric American literature in English American fiction in English Later 19th Century 1861-1900
- LCC
- PS1305 .A1 — Language and Literature American literature American literature Individual authors 19th century
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
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- Reviews
- 585
- Rating
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- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 1,647
- UPCs
- 32
- ASINs
- 876