ADVENTURES OF
HUCKLEBERRY FINN
BY: MARK TWAIN
Background Information
What is satire?
Satire is the use of irony or sarcasm to
denounce or make fun of a specific idea,
object, concept, or person.
 Mark Twain uses satire to:
 make fun of a very serious subject, slavery
 point out flaws in human nature
 to point out social “ills” that Twain saw at the
time.
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Who is Mark Twain?
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Mark Twain's real name was Samuel Langhorne
Clemens.
Before becoming a writer, he held a variety of odd
jobs including piloting a steamboat up and down the
Mississippi River.
He was licensed as a steamboat pilot in 1859 and
worked on the river until fighting there during the Civil
War ended traffic traveling from north to south.
His experiences along the river helped him come up
with his pen name, Mark Twain.
How did Twain get his pseudonym?
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In 1863, when Clemens was 27, he wrote a humorous
travel story and decided to sign his name "Mark
Twain." This name comes from something shouted by
crewmen on a boat.
To test the depth of the water, a crewman shouts
"mark twain!" The crewman is calling for two fathoms,
or a depth of 12 feet, which is barely enough for a
boat to navigate safely.
"Twain" is an old-fashioned way of saying "two" and
a fathom is six feet. "Mark Twain" is a "pen name" in
the same way that many people in show business use a
"stage name."
What is the setting of Huck Finn?
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Time: Before the Civil War; roughly 1835–1845;
Twain said the novel was set forty to fifty years
before the time of its publication
Place: The Mississippi River town of St.
Petersburg, Missouri; various locations along the
river through Arkansas
What is a major focus of Huck Finn?
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Slavery degraded the moral fabric of life
Struggle against societies’ standards and
expectations
Intellectual and moral education
Hypocrisy of “civilized society”
What elements are necessary in an
American Romance (1851-1875)?
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1. No geographic limitations
2. Mingling of Races: immigrants in large numbers
were arriving to the United States
3. Growth of industrialization: division of north and
south; north becomes industrialized, south remains
agricultural.
What was Twain’s original intention in
writing Huck Finn?
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He wanted to share his philosophy of society and
culture at the present time.
Twain makes a social commentary about the
injustices of society, as well as how people were
treating each other unjustly.
Twain is convinced that slavery is filled with shame.
Why does the main character’s name seem
out of place?
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A “huckleberry” is a wild, dark blue berry which
resembles the blueberry.
Huckleberries have hard seeds in the center and a
thicker skin than the blueberry
Usually found in the eastern and northern parts of
the United States
Dialect in Huck Finn
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Representing the living speech of Twain’s day, the following
examples of the seven dialects typify a uniqueness of language
found in the areas along the Mississippi River.
Missouri Negro: Jim “Goodness gracious, is dat you, Huck? En
you ain’ dead-you ain’t drownded-you’s back ag’in? It’s too
good for true, honey, it’s too good for true. Lemme look at you
chile, lemme feel o’ you. No, you ain’ dead! you’s back ag’in,
‘live en soun’, jis de same ole Huck-de same ole Huck, thanks to
goodness!”
Extremist form of the backwoods Southwestern dialect:
Arkansas Gossips (Sister Hotchkiss) “Look at that-air grindstone,
s’I; want to tell me’t any cretur ‘t’s in his right mind’s a-goin’ to
scrabble all them crazy things onto a grindstone? s’I.”
Dialect cont
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Ordinary “Pike County”: Huck “My folks was living in Pike County,
in Missouri, where I was born, and they all died off but me and pa
and my brother Ike.”
Modified “Pike County”: Thief on the Sir Walter Scott, Jake
Packard “I’m unfavorable to killin’ a man as long as you can git
aroun’ it, it ain’t good sense, it ain’t good morals. Ain’t I right?”
Modified “Pike County”: King “Well, I’d ben a-runnin’ a little
temperence revival thar ‘bout a week . . . and business a-growin’
all the time, when somehow or another a little report got around
last night that I had a way of puttin’ in my time with a private jug
on the sly.”
Dialect cont.
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Modified “Pike County”: Bricksville Loafers “Gimme a chaw ‘v
tobacker, Hank.”
“Cain’t; I hain’t got but one chaw left. Ask Bill.”
Modified “Pike County”: Aunt Sally and Uncle Silas Phelps
“Good-ness gracious!” she says, “what in the world can have
become of him?”
“I can’t imagine,” says the old gentleman; “and I must say it
makes me dreadful uneasy.”