The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn
 Many
consider it the greatest
American novel.
– Ernest Hemingway wrote, “All modern
American literature comes from one
book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry
Finn.”
 Many
people have also denounced
the book for its usage of racially
charged language.
Controversy


Huckleberry Finn (1885), was met with
outright controversy in Twain’s time but is
now considered one of the first great
American novels.
The use of the vernacular causes the book
to be banned in some schools up to this
day.
– The “N-word” is often used to describe Jim, as
well as other slaves.

If the novel uses this language, what is
the purpose in reading such a book?
Caution

Any students who do not treat the
material (especially the racially charged
material) with respect will be asked to
leave class.
– You will be given an independent study unit.
 This
unit will be more rigorous and will require much
more of your time.

If at any time you feel someone is not
being appropriately respectful or you are
having a problem with the racially charged
language in the novel, please come see
me before or after school.
The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn

Both a satire and an adventure novel.

Uses a backdrop of colorful depictions of Southern
society.


Follows Huck Finn, the son of an abusive alcoholic
father, and Jim, Miss Watson’s slave, who decide to
flee on a raft down the Mississippi river to the free
states.
Their river raft journey has become an oft-used
metaphor of idealistic freedom from:
– oppression
– broken family life
– racial discrimination
– social injustice
The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn

A novel about one boy’s education and
growth.
– Moral (ideas of freedom and slavery)
– Intellectual
– Emotional
 These
3 are not autonomous, rather they influence
each other in various intricate ways.

The formation of the conscience will be
linked to Huck’s growth.

Where is the critical point of Huck’s growth
or transformation?
Biography



Mark Twain [pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne
Clemens] (1835-1910), quintessential American
humorist, lecturer, essayist, and author.
Mark Twain was born in Florida, Missouri on 30
November 1835, the sixth child born to Jane
Lampton (1803-1890) and John Marshall Clemens
(1798-1847).
In 1839 the Twain family moved to their Hill
Street home, now the Mark Twain Boyhood Home
and Museum with its famous whitewashed fence,
in the bustling port city of Hannibal, Missouri.
Biography


An important part of a river pilot’s craft is
knowing the waters and depths, which, for the
mighty Mississippi and her reefs, snags, and mud
are ever changing. To ‘mark twain’ is to sound
the depths and deem them safe for passage, the
term adopted by Clemens as his pen name in
1863.
The second novel in his Tom Sawyer adventure
series, Huckleberry Finn (1885), was met with
outright controversy in Twain’s time but is now
considered one of the first great American novels.
Biography


Missouri was one of the fifteen slave
states when the American Civil War broke
out, so Twain grew up amongst the
racism, lynch mobs, hangings, and
general inhumane oppression of African
Americans.
Mark Twain grew to despise the injustice
of slavery and any form of senseless
violence.
Biography


1.
Though he never renounced his Presbyterianism, he wrote
many pieces seen as irreligious.
2 works of Twain that were seen as irreligious are:
His article “The War Prayer” (1923)
– Example: “in the churches the pastors preached devotion to
flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching
His aid in our good cause”

This was Twain’s condemnation of hypocritical patriotic and
religious motivations for war.
– It was not published until after his death because of his
family’s fear of public outrage, to which it is said Twain
quipped “none but the dead are permitted to tell the truth.”
2.
His satirical short stories Letters From Earth (1909)
– “Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very, very
best he is a sort of low grade nickel-plated angel; at his worst
he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the
time he is a sarcasm.”
Biography
 Twain
was well known for his sense
of humor.
– Twain is a master in crafting humorous
verse with sardonic (mocking; cynical)
wit, and though with biting criticism at
times he disarms with his renderings of
colloquial speech and unpretentious
language.
– He is the source of numerous and oftquoted witticisms and quips
Twain’s Death




A prolific lecturer and writer even into his seventyfourth year, he published more than thirty books,
hundreds of essays, speeches, articles, reviews, and
short stories, many still in print today.
Mark Twain died on 21 April 1910 in Redding,
Connecticut.
Rests in the Woodlawn Cemetery in Livy’s hometown
of Elmira, New York, buried beside her and the
children.
Twain’s Final written statement:
– “Death, the only immortal who treats us all alike,
whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are
for all—the soiled and the pure, the rich and the
poor, the loved and the unloved.”
Twain Quotes






“It is better to keep your mouth closed and let
people think you are a fool than to open it and
remove all doubt.”
“Whenever I feel the urge to exercise I lie down
until it goes away.”
“Never put off until tomorrow what you can do
the day after tomorrow.”
“Don't go around saying the world owes you a
living. The world owes you nothing. It was here
first.”
“Education: that which reveals to the wise, and
conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their
knowledge.”
“I have a higher and grander standard of principle
than George Washington. He could not lie; I can,
but I won't.”