Huckleberry Finn: A Critical Analysis

Introduction

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' is one of Mark Twain's most appreciated, most powerful, and most contentious books. It was debarred from the Concord Public Library in 1885, the year of its publication, and Huckleberry Finn lines number five in the American Library Association's catalog of the most commonly confronted books of the 1990s. But in 1935, Ernest Hemingway inscribed that "all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since."

Discussion

The story of Huck's and Jim's expedition for independence on a raft on the Mississippi offers a panoramic view of Southern society, which Twain saw as overwhelmed by gluttony, aggression, and pitiless viciousness. At the conclusion, Huck definitively discards the conservative cant that he has been raised to believe in when he makes the judgment to go to hell rather than be disloyal to his friend Jim and sends him back to slavery. “In his latest story, Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, Mr. Clemens has made a very distinct literary advance over Tom Sawyer, as an interpreter of human nature and a contributor to our stock of original pictures of American life (www.twainquotes.com).”

The book may be observed as a follow-up to the earlier 'Adventures of Tom Sawyer'.

Like its forerunner, "Tom Sawyer," it is written to show the authority of the American boy in the way of skillful and successful lying. But where Tom Sawyer was imaginary and elaborate, Huck Finn is merely sensible. The tale has more or less no plot; in fact, the author states in the preface "all persons seeking to find a plot in this book will be shot." Though, it is a much improved book, since it unites adventures with a great tour on a raft on the Mississippi. For

Tom Sawyer there is a (minor) role at the start and at the end of the incident in creating complicated adventures, but the raft tour is the adventure of Huckleberry and of the runaway nigger, Jim. It also shows the straightforward and occasionally brute life along the river (Amare p 206).

The tour initiates at St. Petersburg, someplace along the Mississippi River, where it is the border river among the states of Missouri (west side, hilly) and Illinois (east side, flat, woods). It is a meager little scruffy village where Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn live. St. Petersburg is situated on the Missouri side of the river. In the book, it becomes clear that St. Petersburg is north of St. Louis. It takes Huck and the nigger Jim 5 nights of 7-8 hours on a raft at a pace of 5 miles per hour to reach St. Louis, a city of 20-30,000 people. Their 1100 miles extended tour on the raft ends somewhere in Arkansas.

Novel by Mark Twain, published in 1884. Huckleberry Finn, the young narrator, runs away from his terrible father and, with his friend, the runaway slave Jim, ...