The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
by Mark Twain
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Book Summary Information
Author: Mark TwainEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Published)
Published: 2008-08-20
ISBN: 1438245416
Number of pages: 202
Publisher: CreateSpace
Book Reviews of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Book Review: Great book! When addressing controversy think of context.
Summary: 5 Stars
I can't say more on the plot because it's quite obvious what the plot is just from illustrations of the novel. But on the "controversial" aspect of the novel involving the excessive use of the N word, people have to think of the time period that Twain is writing about and when the novel was published.
The novel takes place in Missouri (a slave border state) in the 1830s. We use the term African-American or black now. Before that it was Afro-Americans, coloreds, Negr--s. The list goes on and on. The overall attitude was that as the terms changed the previous one was seen as more offensive than the progressive current one. Yes, that meant there was a time when the word "colored" was used by people who considered themselves progressive in terms of racial attitudes. But in the Antebellum South the use of the N word was thrown around quite easily. And persons added positive as well as negative adjectives to it. It's strange to imagine that. We today only think of it in a totally negative way. But even when Twain published the novel in the 1880s the word was unfortunately not yet out of fashion.
Also consider the way Twain writes of Jim, the runaway slave. While the knee-jerk reaction is that Jim is a total vaudevillian caricature of what the perception was of blacks in the Antebellum South, his relationship with Huck Finn was something to be viewed as progressive. Remember that a decade before the novel came out; Reconstruction was over and left things a mess in terms of race relations. There was a lot of bitterness in the South over the Civil War (probably the most destructive war at the time until WWI), and a whole generation of southern white men took it personally when they were expected to be on the same level in terms of voting rights and other things with men that was formerly human property. For us today "all men are created equal" is a statement of truth provided we all have a level playing field. But for many southern whites at the time this was hard to swallow. In an aristocratic agrarian society, some men are just superior to others. And in the Antebellum South, just below poor whites were blacks. This was the way things were in their society for over two hundred years and the Civil War didn't suddenly end that sentiment among the many. But for Twain to write of a kind of comradeship between a slave and a young white boy was definitely progressive.
Maybe Twain was hoping to reach a young generation raised by their bitter parents and discover that they could have friendships with blacks and not succumb to an entrenching separatist animosity that developed into the Jim Crow Era. Huck and Jim work together in schemes and have fun. This friendship (which is why Huck decides to do what he does on the journey) is what Twain emphasized in the journey down river. This was counter to the way whites were acting with and around blacks at the time (1880s).
I think it's clear based on a certain reading of the novel that Twain believed whites and blacks could and should get along. While today it may not be seen as "progressive", it was when it was first published.
Summary of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
This is a large (6"x9"), top-quality new edition of Mark Twain's masterpiece. Complete and unabridged. "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. It's the best book we've had. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since." -Ernest HemingwayA seminal work of American Literature that still commands deep praise and still elicits controversy, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is essential to the understanding of the American soul. The recent discovery of the first half of Twain's manuscript, long thought lost, made front-page news. And this unprecedented edition, which contains for the first time omitted episodes and other variations present in the first half of the handwritten manuscript, as well as facsimile reproductions of thirty manuscript pages, is indispensable to a full understanding of the novel. The changes, deletions, and additions made in the first half of the manuscript indicate that Mark Twain frequently checked his impulse to write an even darker, more confrontational book than the one he finally published.
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