Critical Reading and Interpretation

Critical Reading and Interpretation

Critical Reading and Interpretation

Introduction

Little could Mark Twain have visualized in 1876 when he began a sequel to capitalize on the success of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) that Adventures of Huckleberry Finn would come to be regarded as his masterpiece and one of the most significant works in the American novel tradition. His greatest contribution to the tradition occurred when, with an unerring instinct for American regional dialects, he elected to tell the story in Huck's own words. The skill with which Mark Twain elevates the dialect of an illiterate village boy to the highest levels of poetry established the spoken American idiom as a literary language and earned for Mark Twain the reputation, proclaimed for him by Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and many others, as the father of the modern American novel.

The second novel is Emma. The main character in this novel is Emma Woodhouse is the heroine of the novel. She is twenty-one years old and "handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition.

The thirdnovel is My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok. In Chaim Potok's My Name Is Asher Lev we come to know an ordinary boy, with an extraordinary gift.

Thesis Statements:

Huck Finn, from Mark Twain's novel Huck Finn, Is one of Americas best-loved fictional characters. His character went through may changes throughout his adventures with Tom, Jim, and the many people throughout his journey.

Emma Woodhouse, a girl of immense imagination, maintains it by keeping up with her reading and art because, as Young contends, these are the mediums through which imagination is chiefly expressed by manipulating the relationships between the world and the subject at hand.

The only outcome to be had is Asher's forced departure from his home, and in turn, faith.

Discussion

The first character to discuss would obviously be Huck the main character. He can teach many lessons through his adventures on his journey. Huck can also be understood as uneducated but, he is very intelligent is real situations. An example of Huck showing a good lesson would be when Huck takes the money from the King and Dike to give back to the Wilks girls. Another lesson learned from Huck would be respect of racism. Huck learns that racism is wrong and he becomes great friends with a black man, a man of another color. Huck teaches good lessons (Twain 1981).

Mark Twain maintains an almost perfect fidelity to Huck's point of view in order to dramatize the conflict between Huck's innate innocence and natural goodness and the dictates of a corrupt society. As Huck's story, the novel centers around such major themes as death and rebirth, freedom and bondage, the search for a father, the individual versus society, and the all-pervasive theme of brotherhood. Huck's character reflects a stage in Mark Twain's own development when he still believed human beings to be innately good though increasingly corrupted by social influences that replaced their intuitive sense of right and ...