Mark Twains The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel about a young boys coming of age in Missouri of the mid

Mark Twains The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel about a young boys coming of age in Missouri of the mid-1800s Essay Mark Twains The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel about a young boys coming of age in Missouri of the mid-1800s. The main character, Huckleberry Finn, spends much time in the novel floating down the Mississippi River on a raft with a runaway slave named Jim. Before he does so, however, Huck spends some time in the fictional town of St. Petersburg where a number of people attempt to influence him. Before the novel begins, Huck Finn has led a life of absolute freedom. His drunken and often missing father has never paid much attention to him; his mother is dead and so, when the novel begins, Huck is not used to following any rules. The books opening finds Huck living with the Widow Douglas and her sister, Miss Watson. Both women are fairly old and are really somewhat incapable of raising a rebellious boy like Huck Finn. Nevertheless, they attempt to make Huck into what they believe will be a better boy. Specifically, they attempt, as Huck says, to civilize him. This process includes making Huck go to school, teaching him various religious facts, and making him act in a way that the women find socially acceptable. Huck, who has never had to follow many rules in his life, finds the demands the women place upon him constraining and the life with them lonely. As a result, soon after he first moves in with them, he runs away. He soon comes back, but, even though he becomes somewhat comfortable with his new life as the months go by, Huck never really enjoys the life of manners, religion, and education that the Widow and her sister impose upon him. Huck believes he will find some freedom with Tom Sawyer. Tom is a boy of Hucks age who promises Huck and other boys of the town a life of adventure. Huck is eager to join Tom Sawyers Gang because he feels that doing so will allow him to escape the somewhat boring life he leads with the Widow Douglas. Unfortunately, such an escape does not occur. Tom Sawyer promises much but none of his promises comes to pass. Huck finds out too late that Toms adventures are imaginary, that raiding a caravan of A-rabs really means terrorizing young children on a Sunday school picnic, that stolen joolry is nothing more than turnips or rocks. Huck is disappointed that the adventures Tom promises are not real and so, along with the other members, he resigns from the gang. Another person who tries to get Huckleberry Finn to change is Pap, Hucks father. Pap is one of the most astonishing figures in all of American literature. He is completely antisocial and wishes to undo all of the civilizing effects that the Widow and Miss Watson have attempted to instill in Huck. Pap is a mess: he is unshaven; his hair is uncut and hangs like vines in front of his face; his skin, Huck says, Is white like a fishs belly or like a tree toads. Paps savage appearance reflects his feelings as he demands that Huck quit school, stop reading, and avoid church. Huck is able to stay away from Pap for a while, but Pap kidnaps Huck three or four months after Huck starts to live with the Widow and takes him to a lonely cabin deep in the Missouri woods. Here, Huck enjoys, once again, the freedom that he had prior to the beginning of the book. He can smoke, laze around, swear, and, in general, do what he wants to do. However, as he did with the Widow and with Tom, Huck begins to become dissatisfied with this life. Pap is too handy with the hickory and Huck soon realizes that he will have to escape from the cabin if he wishes to remain alive. As a result of his concern, Huck makes it appear as if he is killed in the cabin while Pap is away, and leaves to go to Jackson Island a remote island in the Mississippi River. It is after he leaves his fathers cabin that Huck joins yet another important influence in his life: Miss Watsons slave, Jim. Prior to Hucks leaving, Jim has been a minor character in the novel he has been shown being fooled by Tom Sawyer and telling Hucks fortune. Huck finds Jim on Jacksons Island because the slave has run away. He has overheard a conversation that he will soon be sold to a slave owner New Orleans. Soon, after joining Jim on Jacksons Island, Huck begins to realize that Jim has more talents and intelligence than Huck has been aware of. Jim knows all kinds of signs about the future, peoples personalities, and weather forecasting. Huck finds this kind of information necessary as he and Jim drift down the Mississippi on a raft. Huck feels a comfort with Jim that he has not felt with the other major characters in the novel. With Jim, Huck can enjoy the best aspects of his earlier influences. As does the Widow, Jim allows Huck security, but Jim is not as confining as the Widow. Like Tom Sawyer, Jim is intelligent but his intelligence is not as intimidating or as imaginary as is Toms. Similar to Pap, Jim allows Huck freedom, but he does it in a loving, rather than an uncaring, fashion. Thus, early, in their relationship on Jacksons Island, Huck says to Jim, This is nice. I wouldnt want to be nowhere else but here. This feeling is in marked contrast with Hucks feelings concerning other people in the early part of the novel where he always is uncomfortable and wishes to leave them. At the conclusion of chapter 11 in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck and Jim are forced to leave Jacksons Island because Huck discovers that people are looking for the runaway slave. Prior to leaving, Huck tells Jim, Theyre after us. Clearly, the people are after Jim, but Huck has already identified with Jim and has begun to care for him. This stated empathy shows that the two outcasts will have a successful and rewarding friendship as they drift down the river as the novel continues. Twain, Mark Mark Twain and racism almost always appear together in critics articles yet is racism really the problem? There is a major argument among literary critics whether Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, is or is not a racist novel. The question boils down to the depiction of Jim, the black slave, and the way Huck and other characters treat him. The use of the word nigger is also a point raised by some critics, who feel that Twain uses the word too much and too loosely. Mark Twain never presents Jim in a negative light. He does not show Jim as a drunkard, as a mean person, or as a cheat. This is in contrast to the way Hucks white father is depicted, whom Twain describes using all of the above characterizations and more. We see Jim as a good friend, a man devoted to his family and loyal to his companions. The Red Tree analysis essayIn his subtle manner, he creates not an apology for slavery but a challenge to it. Salwen, Peter The entire plot of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is rooted on intolerance between different social groups. Without prejudice and intolerance The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn would not have any of the antagonism or intercourse that makes the recital interesting. The prejudice and intolerance found in the book are the characteristics that make The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn great. Wagennacht, Edward C. The author of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who is more commonly known by his pen name, Mark Twain. He was born in 1835 with the passing of Haleys comet, and died in1910 with the passing of Haleys comet. Clemens often used prejudice as a building block for the plots of his stories. Clemens even said, The very ink in which history is written is merely fluid prejudice. There are many other instances in which Clemens uses prejudice as a foundation for the entertainment of his writings such as this quote he said about foreigners in The Innocents Abroad, They spell it Vinci and pronounce it Vinchy; foreigners always spell better than they pronounce. Even in the opening paragraph of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Clemens states, Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. Twain, MarkKaplan, Justin The World Book There were many groups that Clemens contrasted in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The interaction of these different social gro ups is what makes up the main plot of the novel. For the objective of discussion they have been broken down into five main sets of antithetic parties: people with high levels of society and people with low levels of society, rednecks and scholarly, children and adults, men and women, and finally, the Sheperdsons and the Grangerfords. Whites and African Americans are the main two groups contrasted in the novel. Throughout the novel Clemens portrays Caucasians as a more educated group that is higher in society compared to the African Americans portrayed in the novel. The cardinal way that Clemens portrays African Americans as obsequious is through the colloquy that he assigns them. Their dialogue is composed of nothing but broken English. One example in the novel is this excerpt from the conversation between Jim the fugitive slave, and Huckleberry about why Jim ran away, where Jim declares, Well you see, it uz dis way. Ole missus-dats Miss Watson-she pecks on me all de time, en treats me pooty rough, but she awluz said she woudn sell me down to Orleans. Although this is the phonetic spelling of how some African Americans from the boondocks used to talk, Clemens only applied the argot to Blacks and not to Whites throughout the novel. There is not one sentence in the treatise spoken by an African American that is not comprised of broken English. But in spite of that, the broken English does add an entraining piece of culture to the milieu. Blair, Walter The second way Clemens differentiates people in the novel of different skin color. Blacks in the book are portrayed as stupid and uneducated. The most blatant example is where the African American character Jim is kept prisoner for weeks while he is a dupe in a childish game that Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn play with him. Clemens spends the last three chapters in the novel to tell the tale of how Tom Sawyer maliciously lets Jim, who known only unto Tom is really a free man, be kept prisoner in a shack while Tom torments Jim with musings about freedom and infests his living space with rats, snakes, and spiders. At the end of this chapter Tom even admits, Why, I wanted the adventure of ità ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ The next two groups Clemens contrasts are the rednecks and the scholarly. In the novel Clemens uses interaction between backwoods and more highly educated people as a vital part of the plot. The main usage of this mixing of two social groups is seen in the development of the two very entertaining characters simply called the duke and the king. These two characters are rednecks that pretend to be of a more scholarly background in order to cheat people along the banks of the Mississippi. In one instance the king and the duke fail miserably in trying to act more studiously when they perform a Shakespearean Revival. The duke totally slaughters the lines of Hamlet saying, To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin. That it makes calamity of so long life. For who farfel bear, till Birnam Wood do come to Dunshire, but that fear of something after death. Blair, Walter Thirdly Clemens contrasts adults and children. Clemens portrays adults as the conventional group in society, and children as the unconventional. In the story adults are not portrayed with much bias, but children are portrayed as more imaginative. The two main examples of this are when Huckleberry fakes his death, and when Tom and Huck help Jim escape from captivity. This extra imaginative aspect Clemens gives to the children of the story adds a lot of humor to the plot. Fourthly in the novel Clemens contrasts women and men. Women in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are portrayed as frail, while men are portrayed as more outgoing. The foremost example of a frail woman character in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is Tom Sawyers Aunt Sally. One example was when Tom and Huck were collecting wildlife to live in the shack that Jim is being held prisoner in they accidentally let loose some snakes in Aunt Sallys house and Aunt Sally, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦would just lay that work down, and light out. The main reason that Clemens portrays women as less outgoing is because there are really only four minor women characters in the novel, while all major characters are men. Lastly Clemens contrasts two families engaged in a feud. The names of the two families are the Sheperdsons and the Grangerfords. The ironic thing is that, other than their names, the two factions are totally similar and even attend the same church. Blair, Walter This intolerance augments a major part to the plot because it serves as the basis for one of the escapades Huck and Jim get involved in on their trip down the Mississippi. In conclusion the entire plot of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is rooted on intolerance between different social groups. Without prejudice and intolerance The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn would not have any of the antagonism and intercourse that makes the novel interesting. Therefore making it not a racist novel, but historically accurate tail of life at that time. Mark Twain is innocent of all wrongdoing.