"All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn"

Ernest Hemingway

Mark Twain & The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

•Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens , on November 30, 1835 in Florida , Missouri , in a slave owning family.

•Family later moved to river town of Hannibal.

•Apprenticed as river boat pilot.

•Began using pseudonym Mark Twain (meaning two fathoms) when writing political reports as journalist for a Virginian newspaper.

ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN First published in 1885

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Historical Context of Huckleberry Finn Commonly named among the Great

American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written in the vernacular

Set in pre-Civil War years 40-50 years before 1885 publication Satirizing a Southern society,

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is, among other things, an often critical look at deep-rooted attitudes, particularly racism.

Hypocrisy of “Civilized” SocietySociety’s laws (Miss Watson and Widow Douglas) vs. higher moral values (Huck and Jim)Rules and precepts that reflect faulty logicCivilized vs. NaturalA “just” society that condones slaveryUnsteady justice is blinded by cowardice, prejudice, and a lack of common senseSeemingly good characters are slave-ownersHypocrisy of “civilized” society which values morality, but condones slavery

MATURATION AND DEVELOPMENT BildungsromanA moral coming of age story. being open-minded is a quality that Huck represents, as a child, which allows for his development and maturation.Huck’s relationship with Jim assists his progression throughout the novelHuck’s experiences and apprehension about society help lead to his maturity

PICARESQUE NOVEL: follows the adventures of a roguish hero episodic: Mississippi River. flight to freedom vs. river flowing toward Deep South (slave territory)

Mockery of Religion A theme Twain focuses on quite

heavily in this novel is the mockery of religion.

Throughout his life, Twain was known for his attacks on organized religion.

Huck Finn's sarcastic character

perfectly situates him to deride religion, representing Twain's personal views. In the first chapter, Huck indicates that

hell sounds far more fun than heaven.

Freedomimportance of individual thinking and ideasescaping an illogical and oppressive societyslavery vs. libertyoutcasts labeled by citizens (mob mentality) are arguably the only truly free characters

Symbols

The Mississippi River a source of

freedom The Land Real vs.

Ideal (the river) Raft:tool for escape safe place As Huck puts it: "Other places seem so cramped and smothery, but a raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft."

Money separates the

civilized from the “outcasts

Literary and Artistic Movements: REALISM and REGIONALISMAttack upon Romantics and

Transcendentalists pragmatic, democratic, and

experimentalgoal was to report the world

with HONESTY

Realism is a style of writing, developed in the 19th century, that attempts to depict life accurately, as it really is, without idealizing or romanticizing. Regionalism is literature that emphasizes a specific geographic setting and that reproduces the speech, behavior, and attitudes of the people who live in the region.

Scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin says Huck Finn is "the greatest anti-racist novel by an American writer." “Something new happened in Huck Finn that had never happened in American literature before. It was a book…that served as a Declaration of Independence from the genteel English novel…

…[It] allowed a different kind of writing to happen: a clean, crisp, no-nonsense, earthly vernacular…it was a book that talked. Huck’s voice, combined with Twain’s satiric genius, changed the shape of fiction in America, and African-American voices had a great deal to do with making it what it was.” - Dr. Shelley Fishkin, 1995

In celebrating the centenary of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , we celebrate not only a book but also our national writer, our American idiom, and ourselves. It was, of course, not always thus.

According to Tom Lowery, Kamiak High School “Up until Twain and Huck, every American author

was simply mimicking British authors…Twain finally says, in effect…screw this…I am going to write about TRUE AMERICAN CHARACTERS…scars and all…with AUTHENTIC American accents…and it’s YOUR problem if YOU can’t understand the dialects. I’m going to put them in authentic settings and believable story lines and tell the REAL story of what happened during that time…not some romanticized crap like The Last of the Mohicans or that other drivel that had been passed off as AMERICAN literature up to that time.”

Is Huck Finn racist? In1957, the NAACP (Nat’l Assoc. for the Advancement of Colored People) charged Huck Finn with containing racist slurs (the “N” word appears over 200 times). Charges of racism have followed the book ever

since. Jim is seen by many as a stereotypical and

demeaning portrayal of African Americans. Very controversial and highly censored because of

the racial implications dealt with in the Novel

John Wallace, 1982

"The reading aloud of Huck Finn in our classrooms is humiliating and insulting to black students. It contributes to their feelings of low self-esteem and to the white student's disrespect for black people. . . . For the past forty years, black families have trekked to schools in numerous districts throughout the country to say, 'This book is not good for our children' only to be turned away by insensitive and often unwittingly racist teachers and administrators who respond, 'This book is a classic.'"

Today, the NAACP’s stance on Huck Finn is “You don't ban Mark Twain-you explain Mark Twain! To study an idea is not necessarily to endorse the idea. Mark Twain's satirical novel, Huckleberry Finn, accurately portrays a time in history-the nineteenth century-and one of its evils, slavery.”

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Idealist

The Adventures Of HuckleB

erry Finn

Realist

Beloved Pessimist

Comparative Analysis

In 1905, New York's Brooklyn Public Library also banned the book due to bad wordsWhen, Twain replied:I am greatly troubled by what you say. I wrote 'Tom Sawyer' & 'Huck Finn' for adults exclusively, & it always distressed me when I find that boys and girls have been allowed access to them. The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean. I know this by my own experience, & to this day I cherish an unappeased bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do that and ever draw a clean sweet breath again on this side of the grave

.

Mark Twain’s reply is I have no race prejudices, and I think I have no color prejudices or caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. Indeed I know it. I can stand any society. All that I care to know is that a man is a human being--that is enough for me; he can't be any worse.

“My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water.”— Mark Twain, Notebook