'ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN' BY MARK TWAIN

Mark Twain

Today, The Grandma has gone out to visit her doctor. She is almost totally recovered of her flu. To celebrate it, The Grandma has decided to go to the library and borrow a wonderful Mark Twain's masterpiece, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a novel that was published in the USA on a day like today in 1885.

Before going to the library, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Grammar 7).

More information: Future I

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by Mark Twain, first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885. Commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written throughout in vernacular English, characterized by local color regionalism. It is told in the first person by Huckleberry "Huck" Finn, the narrator of two other Twain novels (Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective) and a friend of Tom Sawyer. It is a direct sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. Set in a Southern antebellum society that had ceased to exist about 20 years before the work was published, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an often scathing satire on entrenched attitudes, particularly racism.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Perennially popular with readers, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has also been the continued object of study by literary critics since its publication. The book was widely criticized upon release because of its extensive use of coarse language. Throughout the 20th century, and despite arguments that the protagonist and the tenor of the book are anti-racist, criticism of the book continued due to both its perceived use of racial stereotypes and its frequent use of the racial slur nigger. 

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn explores themes of race and identity. A complexity exists concerning Jim's character. While some scholars point out that Jim is good-hearted, moral, and he is not unintelligent, in contrast to several of the more negatively depicted white characters, others have criticized the novel as racist, citing the use of the word nigger and emphasizing the stereotypically comic treatment of Jim's lack of education, superstition and ignorance.

Throughout the story, Huck is in moral conflict with the received values of the society in which he lives, and while he is unable to consciously refute those values even in his thoughts, he makes a moral choice based on his own valuation of Jim's friendship and Jim's human worth, a decision in direct opposition to the things he has been taught.

More information: The Official Licensing Website of Mark Twain

Mark Twain, in his lecture notes, proposes that a sound heart is a surer guide than an ill-trained conscience and goes on to describe the novel as ...a book of mine where a sound heart and a deformed conscience come into collision and conscience suffers defeat.

To highlight the hypocrisy required to condone slavery within an ostensibly moral system, Twain has Huck's father enslave his son, isolate him, and beat him. When Huck escapes, he then immediately encounters Jim illegally doing the same thing. The treatments both of them receive are radically different, especially with an encounter with Mrs. Judith Loftus who takes pity on who she presumes to be a runaway apprentice, Huck, yet boasts about her husband sending the hounds after a runaway slave, Jim.

Mark Twain

Some scholars discuss Huck's own character, and the novel itself, in the context of its relation to African-American culture as a whole. It is suggested that the character of Huckleberry Finn illustrates the correlation, and even interrelatedness, between white and black culture in the United States.

Twain initially conceived of the work as a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer that would follow Huckleberry Finn through adulthood. Beginning with a few pages he had removed from the earlier novel, Twain began work on a manuscript he originally titled Huckleberry Finn's Autobiography.

More information: Mental Floss

Twain worked on the manuscript off and on for the next several years, ultimately abandoning his original plan of following Huck's development into adulthood. He appeared to have lost interest in the manuscript while it was in progress, and set it aside for several years. After making a trip down the Hudson River, Twain returned to his work on the novel. Upon completion, the novel's title closely paralleled its predecessor's: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer's Comrade).

Mark Twain composed the story in pen on notepaper between 1876 and 1883.  The revisions also show how Twain reworked his material to strengthen the characters of Huck and Jim, as well as his sensitivity to the then-current debate over literacy and voting.

Download The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Words are only painted fire; 

a look is the fire itself.

Mark Twain