The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn By Sarah Newport (not the novel, silly)

Let’s start off with the author. The father of American literature himself, Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, April 21, 1910) is better known by the pen name Mark Twain. He was an American writer, humorist, satirist, and lecturer; in fact, many of his quotes and sayings remain popular today. "Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform." "A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read." Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company. “It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.”

More on Mr. Twain Mark Twain was born in Florida, Missouri. When Twain was four, his family moved to Hannibal, a port town on the Mississippi River that would serve as the inspiration for the fictional town of St. Petersburg in both The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain was colorblind, and he often joked of his condition. He worked hard to earn his steamboat pilot license. Twain’s personal life stories helped mold his fictional works, such as traveling in the west, touring Europe and the Middle East, being part of a short-lived confederate militia, and becoming a miner. Clemens claims to have fallen in love at first sight with Olivia Langdon; they had four children together– one boy and three girls. Twain lived in many homes in the United States and abroad. Several schools are named after Twain. One school, Twain Elementary School in Houston, Texas has a statue of Twain sitting on a bench.

Notice and Explanatory “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.” BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR, Per G.G., Chief of Ordnance. “IN this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods Southwestern dialect; the ordinary ‘Pike County’ dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guesswork; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech. I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding.” THE AUTHOR.

A Brief Synopsis Consisting of 43 chapters, the novel begins with Huck Finn introducing himself as someone readers might have heard of in the past. The Widow Douglas and her sister, Miss Watson, have taken Huck into their home in order to try and teach him religion and proper manners. Refusing to be ‘sivilized,’ Huck joins Tom Sawyer’s gang which pretends to be robbers and pirates. Pap Finn returns one day, kidnapping Huck and taking him to a small cabin on the Illinois shore. Beating him one too many times, Huck fakes his own murder and escapes down the Mississippi to Jackson’s island, bumping into Jim, a slave escaping out of fear that Miss Watson will sell him. As fugitives, the two travel down the river on a raft. All the while, Huck worries that he is breaking society’s rules to help Jim escape to the free state of Ohio. Huck’s struggle with the concept of slavery and Jim’s freedom continues throughout the novel. From this point on, all sorts of interesting interactions and shenanigans take place until they reach the Phelps farm, where the Duke and the Dauphin betray Huck and Jim and sell Jim back to slavery. Silas and Sally Phelps are Tom Sawyer’s Aunt and Uncle, coincidentally. Huck pretends to be Tom while Tom pretends to be his brother, Sid; the Phelps do not notice. Tom Sawyer plans out this elaborate scheme to free Jim, and Huck apprehensively follows along. At the height of the escape, Tom gets shot in the calf by another farmer, and he is proud of his wound. Because Jim decides to stay with Tom, he is once again recaptured. At the farm, Tom reveals the entire scheme to Aunt Sally and Uncle Silas. Readers learn that Miss Watson has passed away and freed Jim in her will, and Tom has been aware of Jim’s freedom the entire time. At the end of the novel, Jim is finally set free and Huck ponders his next adventure away from civilization.

Characters Huckleberry Finn - The narrator and main character of the novel. He’s the thirteen-year-old son of the local drunk, and is frequently forced to survive on his own wits. Huck is caring, intelligent (though formally uneducated), and willing to come to his own conclusions about important matters, even if these decisions oppose society’s standards. Nevertheless, Huck is still a boy, and is influenced by others, particularly by his ingenious friend, Tom. Tom Sawyer- Huck’s friend, responsible for the crazy, imaginative antics. Jim- Miss Watson’s runaway slave. He is often superstitious, and he shows a great deal of compassion and selflessness. His characters proves to the reader that humanity has nothing to do with race. Widow Douglas and Miss Watson - Two wealthy sisters who live together in a large house and who adopt Huck. Pap Finn Huck’s abusive, drunken father who plots to steal his son’s reward money. The duke and the dauphin - A pair of con men whom Huck and Jim rescue as they are being run out of a river town. They come equipped with horrible values, deceiving families and large crowds for money. Silas and Sally Phelps- Tom’s Aunt and Uncle. They are essentially good people, yet they are still corrupted through the demanding ways of society.

Picture Break… Clockwise from left, then center: Huck and Jim; Tom Sawyer; Mrs. Watson; Pap Finn; the Phelps.

The Time Period The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was released in 1884, a quarter- century in the past by the time of publication. Even though the thirteenth amendment was already passed, the book immediately became controversial, and has remained so to this day. The book takes place before the Civil War, even though it was written after. Yet, America was going through its own turmoil; after the reconstruction era, race relations drastically declined due to the country’s indifference.

Themes Racism, slavery, humanity, society: they all connect. In Huckleberry Finn, Twain, by exposing the hypocrisy of slavery, demonstrates how racism distorts the afflicters as much as it does those who are afflicted. The result is a world of moral confusion, in which seemingly “good” white people such as Miss Watson and Sally Phelps express no concern about the injustice of slavery or the cruelty of separating Jim from his family.

“ All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn....all American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since. ” -Ernest Hemingway

The end.