The Adventures of Huckleberry Finnby Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

“All American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn… it’s the best book we’ve had.”

- Ernest Hemingway“Watermelon Boys” by Winslow Homer

Illustrations from http://dig.lib.niu.edu/twain/index.htmlTwain images from Library of Congress http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query

Mark Twain• Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens

– b. 1835 d. 1910– Moved to Hannibal, MO at 4 and lived

along the river until he was 18

• Man of many professions– Printer’s apprentice– Riverboat crewman (mark twain = 2

fathoms or 12 feet)– Riverboat pilot– Confederate Irregular– Newspaper writer– Western traveler– World traveler

• First and foremost he was a story teller- writing about tall-tales, folk lore, childhood memories.

• Considered one of America’s greatest writers

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/h?pp/PPALL:@field%28NUMBER+@1%28cph+3a08820%29%29

Clemens’ Legacy• First widely read American author

to:– Use American vernacular speech– Address difficult and important

contemporary themes– Promote these themes on an

international scale• Detested hypocrisy of “civilized life”• Conscience should preempt society• We are most noble as children

The Context of Huck Finn• 1830s or 1840s – Setting

– “Scene: The Mississippi Valley.”– “Time: Forty to Fifty Years Ago.”

• 1861-1865 - Civil War– Southern Confederacy wanted to form their own

United States– Northern Union fought to keep the country unified

• 1863 - Emancipation Proclamation– The forcing function– Pres. Abraham Lincoln declared all slaves to be

free• 1866 - 13th Amendment

– Amendment to U.S. Constitution abolishes slavery• 1876 - Tom Sawyer• 1884 – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

A Banned Book• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has

been banned at one time or another since its publication for any or all of the following reasons: – Use of the epithet “nigger”– The African-American slave dialect of Jim – The way in which Jim is treated by those

around him – Huck's disobedience of authority – The mockery of social customs and

conventions – The lack of any clear (didactic) moral message

“Notice. Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be persecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished…”

“Explanatory. In this book a number of dialects are used, to wit…”

Samuel Clemens’ Remarkably Uncomplicated Feelings about Race

• Born into a slaveholding family

• Vocal activist against racism of all kinds

• Relationships with Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom’s Cabin) and Frederick Douglass

• Used his power in the newspapers to represent those who were not represented– African-Americans in the antebellum North– African-Americans in the post-war South– Persecution of Chinese laborers in San Francisco

• Believed the United States’ treatment of people was a moral barrier to our place as a nation of the world

“(Considering his audience) Huck is Clemens’ Trojan Horse”–Dr. Shelley Fisher Fishkin

Not only had we, as a nation, been wrong, but we needed to make up for it.

– 1885 letter to Dean of the Yale Law School

– Paid the tuition of Warner McGuinn, one of the first African Americans admitted to Yale Law School

“We have ground the manhood out of them and the shame is ours, not theirs, and we should pay for it.”

-Letter to Dean Wayland of Yale Law

Speaking about Huck Finn, Ralph Ellison, author of Invisible Man, called America’s irony the fact that we live in the shadow of racism, but are committed, on paper, to the principles of equality.

The Genius of a First Person Narrative

"Part of Twain's genius in this book is letting the reader see things that Huck doesn't see, making Huck an endearing and engaging but ultimately unreliable narrator… The fact that Huck has a more limited view of Jim should not lead us to mistake that view for the author's.“

–Dr. Shelley Fisher Fishkin

A Few Terms We Need to Understand to Appreciate Clemens’ Masterpiece…

• Irony – the recognition of a reality different from appearance– Emotionally detached, and often grimly humorous– More easily detected in speech than writing due to intonation– Many in the South loved the book

• Satire – use of sarcasm to denounce or expose something foolish but accepted in the public’s collective conscience

– Satire is emotionally charged irony– Satire carries an implied moral– Think The Simpsons, Family Guy, Saturday Night Live, Colbert Report– Watch out for Huck’s compliments!

•Twain creates an apparently racist protagonist to prove the point that racism is wrong and threatens our stability

•Consider the hypocrisy of “civilized” society which values morality, but condones slavery

Twain delivered an assessment and a warning to those who were smart enough to understand, while simultaneously mocking those who did not.

A Few Terms We Need to Understand to Appreciate Clemens’ Masterpiece…

• Episodic structure – a story that appears to be little more than a collection of incidents or episodes

• Colloquial language – the use of regional dialect– Includes idioms, slang, contractions, and conversational rhythms– Non-standard English– Develop due to geographic or social barries– “Pahk the cah in Hahvahd yahd.”– “Y’all need ta sit a spell and chew the fat.”

• Piquaseque novel – novel that relates the adventures of a rogue or low-born adventurer

– Usually a first-person narrative– Picaro (main character) drifts from physical place to place– Picaro drifts from social circle to social circle– Picaro trying to find his place to survive– Episodic structure is loosely connected

• Bildungsroman – novel that deals with the development of a young person– Adolescence to maturity– A coming of age– A novel of education

A Few Terms We Need to Understand to Appreciate Clemens’ Masterpiece…

Two Movements in Literature

• American Realism – a reflection of America as it actually is– 1865-1900– Reflected growing cynicism and skepticism of post-Civil War America– Pragmatic response to the idealism of the Romantics and Transcendentalists– Addresses the here and now, to reflect the relationship between action and

consequence– Whitman and Dickinson begin the movement in poetry– Samuel Clemens is one of the authors who sees the movement to maturity

• Naturalism – understood the world as actions, objects and forces that can only be understood through scientific inquiry

– ~1900-1930– Human beings are animals responding to environmental forces and internal stresses– Human beings cannot understand or control these forces– A more abstract outlook than Realism– Darwin’s ideas greatly influenced Naturalism– Naturalism is typically amoral

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The Mighty Mississippi• 2,320 miles long from

Minnesota headwaters to the Gulf of Mexico

• Native American for “Big River”

• 20 feet wide at headwaters in Lake Itasca, MN

• 4 miles wide near LaCrosse, WI

• 3 feet to 200 feet deep

The other main character in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

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12 3

St. Petersburg = Hannibal, MO

Cairo, Ill

~ 350 miles on the Mississippi

Journey Down the River• St. Petersburg in the

novel is Clemens’ Hannibal, MO

• Novel travels from St. Petersburg, south past St. Louis, to Cairo, Ill

• Ohio River meets the Mississippi in Cairo

In the bildungsroman is the real significance of the physical journey – the journey is a metaphorical one for more than just Huck and Jim

A Novel in Three Sections (sort of)• Huck’s Introduction – Chapters 1 – 9• Huck and Jim run away – Chapters 9 – 33• Huck on Uncle Silas’ farm – Chapters 33 – 41

• After writing about half of the book, Clemens returned to Hannibal and traveled down the river of his youth.

• Second half of the book takes a darker tone. “Huckleberry Finn is a book of mine where a sound heart and a deformed conscience come into a collision and the conscience suffers defeat.”

-Samuel Clemens

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