Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain's the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)

Today, an author might be hard pressed to portray an adolescent boy with a penchant for mischief and adventure as being the most important, insightful and objective spokesman for an entire generation, but in his masterpiece, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Samuel Clemens, writing under the name, Mark Twain, accomplished just that. Transcending Twain's colorful descriptions of the scenery and lifestyles along the Mississippi River were his philosophical and poignant (and funny!) observations concerning man's inhumanity and cruelty toward his fellow man. Enjoyed by young people and adults alike for generations, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was written during a period in American history when the industrial revolution was still getting started and slavery was still practiced and regarded as socially acceptable in many parts of the country. In this book, the narrator, Huckleberry ("Huck") Finn, manages to encounter virtually every social stratum that lives along the Mississippi River in the Old South. Even in his youth, though, Huck manages to capture the essence of the cruel aspects of human nature by zeroing in on the racial stereotypes and social ignorance that characterized early and mid-19th century America. This paper provides an overview of Twain's the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, followed by an analysis of the book's philosophical message and why Twain was influenced to communicate this as his message. A summary of the research and important findings will be provided in the conclusion.

Review and Analysis

Background and Overview.

Today, it is reasonable to assert that almost all Americans know who Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are, and Mark Twain remains an enormously popular author. According to Durway (2005), "In Mark Twain's famous novel, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, young Huck Finn and his friend Jim, a runaway slave, travel down the Mississippi River on a homemade raft. Widely regarded as Twain's finest work, Huckleberry Finn is an outstanding American novel by any measure (Mark Twain, 2007). Likewise, Bercovitch (1999) reports that, "What's funny about Huckleberry Finn is that it's a humorous story. This sounds like a tautology and it is, but in a special sense. The story is humorous because it's told by the quintessential American Boy, Huck Finn, and according to the American humorist, Mark Twain, the humorous story is quintessentially American" (p. 8). According to Champion (1991), "Mark Twain began Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1876 and completed it in 1883 the book's narrator is "Huck," a young man that Twain provides with the innate ability to ster whose carelessly recorded vernacular speech is admirably adapted to detailed and poetic descriptions of scenes, vivid representations of characters, and narrative renditions that are both broadly comic and subtly ironic (Twain, 2007).

Huck is the unfortunate but stalwart offspring of the town drunk; although Huck remains uneducated, superstitious, and sometimes credulous, he also has some street smarts that help him overcome adversity, a natural amiability and a degree of compassionate tolerance that was clearly the exception rather than the rule during this period in American history. These worthy qualities help him intuitively discern the right decisions concerning the important issues of the day that tended to elude even his adult counterparts (Twain, 2007). Following a series of increasingly violent encounters with his drunken father and being locked up in their log cabin, Huck decides that life on his own had to be better (or at least not as bad) and, together with his companion, the runaway slave "Jim," takes a long and frequently interrupted voyage floating on a raft down the Mississippi River (Mark Twain, 2007).

During the course of their adventures, Huck encounters and learns a great deal about different people from varied groups of people; consequently, these accounts provide a snapshot of almost every class of humanity that lived on or along the Mississippi River during this period in American history. Despite the preponderance of social thought in the Old South at this time concerning the status of black slaves and his own initial prejudices against blacks, Huck manages to recognize that the practice itself is inherently wrong and becomes fast friends with the escaped slave, Jim, and emphasizes that Jim and other enslaved blacks are just as much humans as himself, entitled to the same dignity, consideration and respect that everyone is allowed by virtue of the human condition. Through his discussions with Jim on the raft, Huck is forced to think about some deep issues that everyone considers at some point during their lives, but Huck seems to possess the ability to arrive at some deeply philosophical conclusions that tend to elude others during this era. In fact, Twain makes this point to his readers time and again, but many younger readers may not recognize the sometimes-subtle and biting satire that Twain uses to communicate these concepts. According to one authority, "The book's pages are dotted with idyllic descriptions of the great river and the surrounding forests, and Huck's exuberance and unconscious humor permeate the whole. But a thread that runs through adventure after adventure is the theme of man's inhumanity to man -- of human cruelty" (Mark Twain, 2007, p. 7). Although younger readers may not understand these commentaries, careful older readers of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn "cannot fail to be impressed by an attitude that was to become a reiterated theme of the author during his later years" (Mark Twain, 2007, p. 7). Even young readers, though, will be compelled to think hard about some harsh facts of life that they may not have considered before. Huck and Jim's dialogue concerning how slaves did, in fact, have feelings and emotions - "just like white folk," make it clear that Twain did not agree with the prevailing attitudes towards blacks in America at the time. In fact, Huck and his new friend, Jim, even engage in some early evolution vs. intelligent design debates. For instance, Twain writes that Huck thought, "It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made, or only just happened. Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to make so many" (cited in Durway, 2005 at p. 24). Huck's encounters with other ne'er do wells, vagrants and assorted rascals ensures that young readers will enjoy the book, but these episodes are also valuable empirical observations about life as it really was in America, and these issues are discussed further below.

Historical and Biographical Factors.

Certainly, the "peculiar institution" of slavery had a profound effect on Twain and his repulsion to the practice is evident throughout this work. The use of a well-known racial epitaph throughout the book has been a source of unending controversy. According to Mensh and Mensch (2000):

Huckleberry Finn has a peculiar visibility. The novel remains the only one in the common 'canon' to treat slavery, to represent a black dialect, and to have a significant role for an African-American character. Add to this the presence in the novel of the most powerful racial epithet in English -- the word appears 213 times -- and it is evident why Huckleberry Finn legitimately concerns African-American parents sending their children into racially mixed classrooms. (p. 12)