Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) 18351910
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) 18351910
"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."
-Mark Twain, Introductory Note to Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn
“All modern American literature comes from one
book written by Mark Twain called Huckleberry
Finn…it’s the best book we’ve had…There was
nothing before. There has been nothing so good
since.”
-Ernest Hemingway
It deals with a series of adventures of a very low
grade of morality; it is couched in the language of a
rough dialect, and all through its pages there is a
systemic use of bad grammar and an employment
of rough, coarse, inelegant expressions. It is also
very irreverent. . . . The whole book is of a class that
is more profitable for the slums than it is for
respectable people.
-St. Louis Globe-Democrat, March 17, 1885
The Brooklyn Public Library followed suit in
1905, removing it from the children's room
because Huck was a liar who "not only itched,
but scratched," was dirty, used terrible grammar,
and "said 'sweat' when he should have said
'perspiration.'"
Over the years the novel has been declared
"unfit for children" on a number of counts, but
the indictment that has proven most persistent
began in 1957, when the NAACP charged that
Huck Finn contained "racial slurs" and "belittling
racial designations."
Since then, the book has been called "racist" for
both the pervasive use of the word "nigger" and
a portrayal of blacks that some people consider
stereotypical and demeaning.
Although state NAACP organizations have
supported various protests against the book, the
NAACP national headquarters' current position
paper states:
You don't ban Mark Twain-you explain Mark
Twain! To study an idea is not necessarily to
endorse the idea. Mark Twain's satirical novel,
Huckleberry Finn, accurately portrays a time
in history-the nineteenth century-and one of
its evils, slavery.
“I have finished the story & didn’t take the chap
[Tom] beyond boyhood. I believe it would be
fatal to do it in any shape but
autobiographically... By & by I shall take a boy of
twelve & run him on through life (in the first
person) but not Tom Sawyer—he would not be a
good character for it.”
Chap. 1 introduces the major themes
of the novel:
a. the individual versus society
b. the illusions of conventional religion
c. the significance of money and property
d. the ideals of chivalry and of Southern life
e. the power of superstition and of ideas about
death
f. Huck’s “search” for a family
g. Huck’s moral development
Four Distinct Sections
• Section I (Chapters I–XVI) ends with the raft
passing Cairo in the fog.
• In section 2 (Chapters XVII–XVIII) Huck and Jim
leave the river.
• In the third section (Chapters XIX–XXX) Huck and
Jim return to the river, drifting south under the
domination of the Duke and the Dauphin.
• The fourth section (Chapters XXXI–XLIII)
culminates with the incidents at the Phelps’
farm.