1. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
By Mark Twain

2. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
When Mark Twain began The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1876, he probably wasn't setting out to write an American classic, and certainly not, as Ernest Hemingway later proclaimed it, the book from which "all modern American literature" flows. What started out as a simple sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer turned out to be one of the most celebrated and controversial novels in American history.
For some readers, it is simply a boy's adventure tale. For others, it is a story of the choices we must make in order to make ourselves free. For still others, it is an unsettling exploration of one of the most persistent and troubling divides our nation faces, that of race. Each generation, it seems, has its own Huck Finn.

3. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910)
Clemens was born on November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri and spent most of his childhood in Hannibal, Missouri.
His father’s family had once been slaveholding, and his mother’s family had not, being from NY.
After his father's death in 1847, now 12, Twain worked as an apprentice in one of his brother's newspaper. He later became a skilled & licensed Mississippi river-boat pilot.
The Civil War broke out in 1861, and Louisiana seceded. Twain’s steam boat was taken and put in Confederate service. In these days his sympathies were with the South and he enlisted. It rained a lot, so he resigned to be with his brother Orion in Nevada, who was a Union abolitionist and had received an appointment from President Lincoln as Secretary of the New Territory.

4. Twain’s many trades…
There wasn’t much to do with his brother Orion, so he became a miner, and then he went to Carson City to become a reporter. This was where 'Mark Twain' was born when Clemens signed a humorous travel account with that pseudonym.
Thereafter, he used that name and became popular with “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”. He became well known for his stories and lectures and was able to earn a living at it.

5. “Mark Twain”
Clemens maintained that his primary pen name, "Mark Twain," came from his years working on Mississippi riverboats, where two fathoms (12 ft, approximately 3.7 m) or "safe water" was measured on the sounding line. The riverboatman's cry was "mark twain" or, more fully, "by the mark twain" ("twain" is an archaic term for two). "By the mark twain" meant "according to the mark [on the line], [the depth is] two fathoms".

6. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910)
Between 1876 and 1884 Clemens published several masterpieces, Tom Sawyer (1881) and The Prince And The Pauper (1881). Life On The Mississippi appeared in 1883 and Huckleberry Finn in 1884.
In the 1890s Twain lost most of his earnings in financial speculations and in the failure of his own publishing firm. To recover from the bankruptcy, he started a world lecture tour. Twain toured New Zealand, Australia, India, and South Africa.

7. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910)
The death of his wife and his second daughter darkened the author's later years, and Twain died on April 21, 1910.
At the same time of Twain's death, Halley's Comet reappeared in the April skies. The last time the comet had appeared was in November 1835, the time of Twain's birth. Twain often said the he would "go out with the comet." Remarkably, his prediction came true.

8. When and where do the events of the novel take place?
Setting (time) - Before the Civil War, roughly 1835–1845; Twain said the novel was set forty to fifty years before the time of its publication.
Setting (place) – Hannibal (St. Petersburg) is a legendary small riverfront city, popular with tourists internationally, located in Marion and Ralls County, Missouri. Their adventure leads to various locations along the river through Arkansas.

9. Slave vs. Free States 1860

10. The Time and Place
So important to the novel is the great Mississippi River that many readers consider it as much a character as a place. T. S. Eliot, the great twentieth-century poet who grew up in St. Louis, said, “The River makes the book a great book.” It fired the imagination of the young Twain, served as the setting for his beloved riverboats, and became the only real home Huckleberry Finn and Jim were to know.

11. These humorous warnings were the first words that readers of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn saw when they opened Mark Twain’s new novel in At the time, Twain was already well known as a humorist and the author of the nostalgic “boy’s book” The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Therefore, Twain’s readers probably did not expect that Twain would have serious motives for writing Huckleberry Finn or that the novel would teach serious moral lessons. Readers soon found out, however, that Huckleberry Finn is very different from Tom Sawyer. The odd notice at the beginning of the novel is the first warning that things may not be exactly as they seem. The warning is ironic because the novel definitely has a motive, a moral, and a plot; and Twain wanted his readers to be aware of each of them.

12. The Most Essential Questions
Is the novel racist?
Should it be taught or banned?
What is the book really about?
To answer these questions you will consider these themes:
Huck’s search for identity (coming of age)
Social Identity (when & how to conform and what it means to be civilized)
Friendship & Betrayal
Freedom & Enslavement

13. Other Aspects We Will Examine:
What Twain satirized and how he uses irony to make us think!
Huck as narrator- his “voice”, speech, his portrayal of Jim, and his moral dilemmas and conflicts
The relationship between Huck & Jim and how it changes
We’ll also examine slave narratives, illustrations of the novel, and others’ arguments for banning the novel.

14. Reading chapters 1-5
On the right side of your interactive notebook, you’ll want to gather data (take notes!) on:
Theme:
To what and to whom does Huck conform?
When and how does Huck reject conformity?
Notes on characters- Huck, Jim, Widow Douglas, Miss. Watson, and Pap
Quotes you find important when considering whether the book is racist or not

15. On the Left Side
Write any questions you have- “skinny” ones ok. “Fat” ones encouraged!