1. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain

2. What do you do when you’re torn between what people want for you—or from you—and what you want for yourself?

3. Huckleberry Finn lives in Missouri before the Civil War, near the Mississippi River.
Huck is young and uneducated.
With an alcoholic and unreliable father, he has grown up mostly on his own.

4. Not long before the novel begins, however, Huck has been taken to live with the Widow Douglas and her sister.
But Huck thinks life with the two sisters is too civilized.

5. He prefers living in the open and having adventures with his friend Tom Sawyer.

6. Huck and Tom like to plan great adventures and play pranks on people.
On one of their adventures, the two boys found a lot of money in a cave (described in the novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer).

7. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Introduction
One day, Huck’s father returns to town.
He wants Huck’s money—and kidnaps him to get it.

8. After a miserable time with his father, Huck escapes.
While he is running away, he meets Jim—a slave of Widow Douglas’s sister—who has escaped too.

9. The two set off together on a raft on the Mississippi River—and on one of the most famous journeys in American literature.
What adventures will they find on the river?
Will Huck be able to find freedom—or will civilization catch up to him?
Should Huck help Jim or send him back to slavery?

10. When Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published, critics hated the novel, accusing it of “coarse fun” and “gutter realism.”
Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women, wrote “If Mr. Clemens cannot think of something better to tell our pure-minded lads and lasses, he had best stop writing for them.”

11. Today, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remains controversial.
Although it’s accepted as a classic of American literature, some critics still accuse it of being racist, and its use in schools has been challenged.

12. Twain does use terms now considered racist.
However, he creates a powerful argument against slavery as well.
Also, in a way perhaps surprising for the time, he allows Jim to speak for himself, revealing truths that even Twain may have found uncomfortable.