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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
-Mark Twain-
Mark Twain (real name Samuel Langhorne Clemens) was born on the
Missouri frontier and spent his childhood here. He was forced to quit
school at the age of 12 in order to earn his living. He wrote his first
article at 15, and his first short story was published when he was 16. In
1857 he started down the Mississippi toward New Orleans as an apprentice
steamboat pilot. The people he met and the scenes he viewed during these
four years on the Mississippi furnished characters and situations for his
later writings.
His first successful literary exploit was a short story: The
Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, which brought him national
attention.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a sequel to Tom Sawyer in the
picaresque vein of the latter, being a keener realistic portrayal of
regional character and frontier experience on the Mississippi.
It is the story of a flight down the Mississippi of a white boy
(Huck) and of a runaway slave (Jim). Really astonishing is the variety of
its farce and character.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of the supreme masterpiece
of American literature - a work which reaches out beyond the limitations of
time and touches what is most human in the readers of any age or country.
Huck's character is so morally sensitive that he must undergo a moral
testing and development. And Huck becomes a heroic character when, urged on
by affection, he discards the moral code he has always taken for granted
and resolves to help Jim in his escape from slavery. The intensity of his
struggle over the act suggests how deeply he is involved in the society
which he rejects.
Huck means by "right" for a Negro to be a slave; if a Negro runs
away, every white man has the duty to stop him and take back to his master
to be punished. By "wrong", Huck means helping a Negro to escape slavery.
The theme of the fragment represents Huck's inner struggle between his
prejudices and his humane feelings.
Along the story Huck discovers Negro Jim to be not only a human
being, but also a very admirable one. To his astonishment, he begins to
have feelings of brotherhood towards him. He is, to a certain degree, aware
of the contradiction between these feelings and his prejudices.
He has only to consult his conscience, the conscience of a Southern
boy in the middle of the last century, to know that he ought to return Jim
to slavery. And when at last he finds that he cannot endure his decision
but must change it and help Jim in his escape, it is not because he has
acquired any new ideas about slavery.
Huck's instinct is to help anybody in trouble, no matter how they
have been mistreated. Any display of human cruelty sickens him no matter
what the putative rights and wr |