The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain|American Literature
American Literature
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain
A Brief about American Literature
The works prescribed for study of American Literature include poetry, drama, as well as the novel, and have been written in the period from the early nineteenth century, to the sixties in the twentieth century.Though American literature is comparatively new, it is not only prolific, but also has variety in form and genre. American literature is the product of a diversity of peoples, regions, philosophies, and ways of life. Though the works display the trends of their respective times, the artists retain their distinct individuality. The common tendency of American literature is to be focused on politics, economics, and social status. Satire, sarcasm, and cynicism can be also often find their way into the works of American authors. For example, language functions as a vehicle of protest in “The Catcher in the Rye” and “The Great Gatsby.”Also, in American Literature, American writers often described events that took place during the development of the country. For example, the American Civil War is described in “Gone with the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell, and theme of Slavery in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain.There are many globally known US writers like Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Scott Fitzgerald, J. F. Cooper, J.D. Salinger, Jack London,W. Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Ernest Hemingway, and Stephen King, to name a few. Many people are familiar with their works. Many generations enjoy reading their stories.
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Summary of " The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn " by Mark Twain
The novel opens with Huck Finn , the hero of the story , introducing himself as one of the characters who figured in his other book Tom Sawyer. He is practically considered as an orphan, because his mother is dead and his father is a drunkard. As a result of his background, Huck has grown into a kind of vagabond, and is happiest when he has fewest social responsibilities. He is superstitious but is not hypocritical and does not think of religion the way other people do because he is more interested in the comforts of the moment. He wants to be left to his own devices, to sleep in his hogshead, to wear his old rags, and to eat his food all mixed up. Widow Douglas who takes him into her home, makes him wear clean clothes and does not let him smoke because it is crude and dirty. Her old maid sister, Miss Watson, tries to teach Huck to spell, but he cannot stand it. When everyone goes to bed, Huck feels rather lonely and settles down to smoke a pipe. Then he hears twigs snapping and the mewing of a cat which is Tom’s signal for him. Huck goes to meet Tom, and they make their way through the widow’s backyard when Huck trips and makes a noise. Miss Watson’s slave, Jim, hears a noise but falls asleep before he can find the cause. The boys go to a hill overlooking the village where they meet Joe Harper, Ben Rogers and other friends. They take a skiff and travel downstream to a cave in the hillside, where Tom explains the plan for forming a robber gang. Anyone who wants to join the gang has to take an oath, an article of which is that the family of the member who tells the gang’s secrets must be killed. As Huck hasn’t any family, he offers to let the gang kill Miss Watson if he tells any secrets, and the gang accepts his offer. They decide to call themselves highwaymen, and the meeting breaks up with the gang resolving to meet next week to rob and kill some people. But after playing robber for a few months, Huck and most of the boys quit the gang. Although Huck’s drunkard father, known as pap, has not been seen for some time, and the rumours are that he drowned in the river, Huck expects him to show up any day.
Huck starts going to school and tries to learn how to read and write, and seems to be settling down to a new way of life. Then his father appears, and Huck is so frightened of him, that he sells his share of the wealth he and Tom had found. He then goes to Jim for help because Jim has knowledge of spirits, witches and devils. His father forbids Huck to go to school, and threatens to cause trouble for Judge Thatcher unless he gives him Huck’s share of the money. Judge Thatcher and the widow try to get Huck appointed as their ward by the court, but fail in doing so because there is a new judge who does not want to separate the child from its parent. The new judge tries to reform pap, but is disappointed when he gets drunk again and breaks an arm. As soon as he is well again, pap begins chasing Huck and beating him for going to school. One day he catches Huck and locks him up in a log cabin in a thickly wooded area. Huck decides to escape, but does not want to go back to the widow’s house. So he makes things appear as if he has been killed by robbers, loads some supplies into a canoe, and sails down the river to Jackson’s Island. He stays by himself on the island for three days, until he begins to feel bored and lonely, and begins to explore around. He finds Jim, who has run away from Miss Watson because he is afraid that she will sell him to a slave trader. Huck promises not to tell anyone about Jim, though he is aware that it is unlawful to protect a runaway slave. Huck and Jim now start a new partnership which is rewarding to both and begin their adventures on the Mississippi River. One night, they see a two-storey frame house floating down the river and find a dead man in it, who they realize, is Huck’s father. The next morning, Huck goes to the village disguised as a girl, and comes to know that he is believed to have been murdered by Jim and pap, and that there is a reward for the two of them. Huck and Jim load their gear on the raft and sail down the river. They see a steamboat, and board it to find robbers on it. They decide to cut it loose so that the robbers are marooned until they can call the sheriff, but realize that their raft has broken loose. They find the robbers’ skiff and glide away in it. Huck decides to stop ashore and send help to them before the steamboat sinks, but they see the wreck floating down the river, and Huck feels that the robbers are dead. Huck and Jim decide to travel on the raft to Cairo, Illinois, where the Mississippi joins the Ohio River.
During the course of their journey, Huck is questioned as to whether he is shielding a slave. Though he feels guilty about it, he does not inform anyone about Tom. Huck lands on the shore to find himself surrounded by a pack of dogs, whose noise wakes up the occupants of the house. They belong to the aristocratic Grangerford family, and living with them, Huck realizes that they are as civilized as they are cruel (as in the case of the elopement of Sophia and Harney). Huck is happy to get back to the river, the raft, and Jim again. After a few idyllic days, they run into two men who call themselves the king and the duke, but who are obviously frauds. They decide to impersonate as the brothers of Peter Wilks, a villager, to take over his estate which they have to administer for Peter’s nieces. The duke will be the deaf-mute and the king will be the preacher. When they get to the home, they are greeted by an enthusiastic throng of villagers and the three nieces. Doctor Robinson, the village doctor, tries to tell the girls not to trust the impostors, but one of the nieces gives the king $ 6,000 without a receipt, asking him to invest it for her. Huck feels guilty about helping the frauds to dupe the girls and tries to help them but does not succeed. Then two men arrive, and claim that they are Peter’s brothers, and Huck and the two frauds escape and go aboard the raft. They sail for some time and then stop by the shore to venture into the villages. At one such time, he realizes that Jim is missing and that the king informed Silas Phelps that Jim was a runaway slave. He resolves to rescue Jim from slavery again. He goes to the Phelps’ farm and is mistaken for Tom Sawyer. Tom really does come back and at first thinks that Huck is a ghost. They decide to look for Jim, finally tracking him down in a hut from where they plan to dig him out. At night they try to do so, and find that it is an impossible task. Tom makes several plans to rescue Jim, but cannot carry them out successfully because they are not practically possible. Once they get Jim out of the hut, but he is caught and re-imprisoned. Then Tom decides that Jim’s escape must be a proper one and writes anonymous letters to the Phelpses telling them that Jim would be stolen by a group of cutthroats and makes them very nervous. Armed farmers come to the farm and surround the hut, but they manage to escape, Tom being the last to leave. They manage to evade the farmers, who shoot at them, and Tom is shot through the leg. Huck tries to get a doctor for Tom, but cannot do so. Tom and Jim are brought to the farm, the former on a stretcher, and the latter in chains. The doctor comes and tells everyone that Jim saved Tom’s life at the expense of his freedom, and was also a good and faithful nurse. Next day, Tom wakes up to find out that Jim is under guard and in chains, and insists that he be unchained immediately. It seems that Miss Watson died two months ago and set him free in her will, and that Tom wanted to set Jim free for the adventure of it. Aunt Polly arrives, identifies Huck, thus motivating Aunt Sally to try to adopt him. Tom, Huck and Jim decide to set out in search of more adventures.
American Literature
Analysis of "The adventures of Huckleberry Finn"
The novel actually consists of a series of short adventures. This is the kind of plot that is known as the episodic plot, because each event is an episode, a self contained little story. Plots like this are characteristic of what is known as the “picaresque” novel. But this is not a picaresque novel because Huck Finn is not the typical “picaro”, who was a rather hard-hearted and selfish rogue. Mark Twain has undoubtedly borrowed from the traditions of the picaresque novel, particularly from Don Quixote, by Cervantes, but changed and shaped it into something entirely different. The first sixteen chapters deal with Jim’s escape from slavery, but after that Jim recedes into the background. He disappears from the story altogether in the Grangerford chapters, and is of no importance to the story until he is sold off. But this is not detrimental to the plot because Jim is neither the central figure, nor his escape the central theme of the story. The central figure of the story is Huck and the story is told from his point of view in the first person. The central theme of the story is the theme set by the first and the last chapters: Huck’s fight against getting “civilized”. There is an obvious contrast between the characters of Huck and Tom. Tom’s ambition is to become famous without counting the cost to himself or others, and he is not bothered by the hurt and anguish of Aunt Sally or the pain and discomfort of Jim. But Huck, who is involved in real adventures, is continuously bothered by his conscience and preoccupied with justice, as is seen when he wonders if he is doing right by Miss Watson and Jim. Huck is the opposite of Tom who is a romantic. He is a realist and is generally level-headed except when he follows Tom’s lead into some adventure. He is not civilizable, because the end of the book makes this clear and he is seen to be exactly where he was in the beginning. In the second part of the story, we are taken on a tour of the Mississippi River valley. The Grangerfords, with their senseless pride and crudity are described as ignorant and arrogant people. The king and the duke are illustrations of those who choose their own comfort at the expense of those around them, and trade on the ignorance, pride and laziness of the residents of the villages. Finally, the third part of the novel brings us back to Tom Sawyer as the focus of the plot. Huck is still the main character in the novel and reports all that goes on. Since Huck Finn tells the story himself, in the first person, Mark Twain has to put himself in the place of this thirteen year old son of the town drunkard and see life as Huck saw it. Huck is more than Twain’s mouthpiece. As a living character, he is capable of shaping the story. Huck’s innocence is reflected through his credulous explanation of what he sees – explanation couched in language characteristic of primitive society.
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