Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. Main menu Skip to content. Home About Me Curriculum Vitae. A teachable moment? Like this: Like Loading Please, raise your hand. Thank you. Cancel reply Enter your comment here Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:. When you're not physically reading it, you think about the book so much - it's as if you're missing out on something, somehow when you're not reading they must be having adventures without you.
Huck is my kind of boy. When informed by his aunt that one of the central tenets of Christianity is the 'do as you would be done by' thing, Tom interprets it as: "I must help other people, and do everything I could for other people, and look out for them all the time, and never think about myself.
When we meet him, Huck is in the process of being "sivilized" by his adoptive aunt, and he's beginning to get used to the washing and the lack of cussing. But at this point his drunken, violent father, who everyone had thought and hoped was dead, shows up in town and steals Huck away to a log cabin in the woods.
He locks Huck up alone for days at a time, then comes home toasted, yells at the demons that his DTs produce, and beats Huck mercilessly. One particularly bad night, his significantly uncapitalised "pap" thinks Huck is the Angel of Death and tries to stab him to death.
Huck sits up all night with a rifle pointed at his unconscious father, ready to shoot him if he should wake and try to finish the job. Always the master of understatement, Twain usually has Huck respond to his regular beatings with such lines as "I was used to being where I was, and I liked it, all but the cowhide part.
After this sleepless night of which his father remembers nothing , Huck fakes his own death with the help of a pig carcass and escapes to the river, teaming up with the runaway slave Jim. And the adventures begin. As you might have gathered, they're not quite adventures in the light-hearted Famous Five style - there's rotting bodies in half-submerged brothels, execution plots, unwanted unshakeable passengers, drownings, family feud shoot-outs where young boys pay the ultimate price, and the ever-present threat of Jim being caught and sold, or lynched.
Jim is exceedingly grateful for Huck's clever dodge. That night they hide the raft ashore near a town [? Columbus KY], but a man refuses to tell them where Cairo is. After laying up in the morning, they see the clear water on the east side representing the inflow from the Ohio, and so Huck knows they have already passed Cairo and the Ohio River mouth presumably in the fog 2 nights earlier. Jim is terrified. The canoe has disappeared and a steamboat soon smashes the raft, all bad luck brought on by the snake-skin.
Huck is taken in by the initially suspicious and wealthy Grangerfords, Saul and Rachel, who suspect their enemies, the Shepherdsons. He lies about his identity, saying he is George Jackson and had fallen off a steamboat. Their dead daughter Emmeline had a morbid fascination about death and wrote "Tributes" poetry before she died.
They live in a nice double house. Huck is treated hospitably in the prosperous aristocratic Tennessee home of Colonel Saul Grangerford. Each child has a slave. He had three more sons, but they have been killed, plus Emmeline has died. The family has a long running feud with the Shepherdson clan, lasting 30 years, and no one can recall the inciting reason, though many have died since.
Buck shoots at Harney Shepherdson but only hits his hat--later Saul approves the effort though not the cowardly ambush method. At church, the 2 families pay lip service to brotherly love, faith, and good works, etc.
Sophia arranges with Huck to deliver a note to meet with Harney Shepherdson and run off with him. Slave Jack leads Huck surreptitiously to see Jim, who is in hiding and has restored and reprovisioned the raft. Word gets out that Sophia has run off with Harney. Shooting begins, Buck tells Huck his father and 2 of his brothers have been killed, and later Buck and his cousin Joe are killed. Huck and Jim escape on the repaired raft.
In a famous passage, Huck rhapsodizes about sunrise and the idyllic life and sights along the Mississippi. They have no need for clothes. It's lovely to see the stars--Jim and Huck discuss whether they were created or just happened. Huck finds a canoe and goes ashore [it isn't clear why at this point they do not turn around and paddle north back to Cairo].
Two men fleeing the local town unnamed ask Huck for help and hop in his canoe--they head back to the tow-head. They are carrying carpetbags and do not know each other, but decide they should team up. Huck and Jim are impressed and call him Your Majesty etc. Huck makes up a story to explain Jim's presence. The duke and the king take over their beds on the raft. The duke discusses acting roles, showing off his printed bills, and planning for the two to act out Romeo and Juliet as famous actors from England.
At a camp meeting near Pokesville, the king solicits funds to stop piracy in the Indian Ocean, claiming he himself is a reformed pirate. The duke makes money at the printers, and prints a fake poster for a runaway slave from a New Orleans plantation. They will use this to pretend they have captured Jim, tying him up to so they can run during the day. The handbill promotes their acting. In a southern Arkansas one-horse town Bricksville , they learn there is a circus and decide to stage their performance after it.
They tour the town, and encounter hicks with straw hats chawing tobacco, lazy talk and mud streets, and an eroding waterfront. The drunk Boggs rides in and insults Colonel Sherburn, who later shoots the unarmed man in cold blood, and walks off. Boss's daughter weeps over her slain father. The mob decides to lynch Sherburn. The mob arrives at his house, but he defiantly confronts them from his roof, insults their bravery, and stares them down.
He claims any real lynching will be done at night. Huck heads for the circus, watches a man planted in the audience leap up as if drunk and onto a horse in the ring, shed many clothes, and ride about standing on the horse. That night they put on the Shakespeare show, but it is poorly attended--the frauds make plans and a handbill to put on an alternate show about The King's Camelopard [giraffe], or The Royal Nonesuch, with children and ladies not admitted--this ploy will draw the men in.
Later Huck hears Jim groaning--he misses his wife and children 'Lizbeth and Johnny , and recounts 'Lizbeth's deafness after scarlet fever. They dress Jim up as a crazy King Lear as disguise. The frauds go to separate towns on either side of the river, the duke to [? Columbia] Arkansas, and the king to nearby [?
Greenville] Mississippi with Huck. The king and Huck encounter a young boy, who they give a ride to the steamboat. With encouragement, the boy relates the full story of how Mr. Peter Wilks has died the night before. His brother George and George's wife have already died. His remaining brothers Harvey, a preacher from Sheffield England, and William deaf and dumb have not yet arrived, though word has been sent. George has left behind daughters Mary Jane 19, Susan 15, and Joanna 14, who has a harelip.
Peter left a will saying where his money is hidden and instructing his property to be divided between George's girls and the brothers. The king sees a bonanza in the making, and sends Huck to fetch the duke. They hatch their plan. Landing in the village, they seek their brother Peter. The king weeps bitterly on learning his brother has died, puts on a great act of mourning, to Huck's great disgust.
The 2 frauds mourn Peter's death, comfort George's daughters the duke remains in character, mute. The king resorts to false etymology to explain his use of "funeral orgies". A doctor Robinson arrives and claims they are frauds, warning the girls, but the beautiful Mary Jane shows her faith in the uncles by giving them the money back to invest for the sisters.
The doctor walks off in disgust. The men and Huck are hospitably lodged by the sisters. A Twain literary sleuth and an authority on children's literature, he considers all the literary, social, historical, and autobiographical aspects of Twain's classic tale of Huck and Jim's trip down the mighty Mississippi. In lively and fascinating annotations, Hearn's notes draw on everything from letters, manuscripts, and contemporary newspapers to the author's own frequent revisions and notes, various critical responses to the publication, and much previously unpublished material.
The substantial introduction is, in essence, a mini-biography of a book and a man whose real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens , and it recounts the novel's remarkably prickly history, resulting in its being banned perhaps more than any other work in American history. We encounter, among others, the kindhearted Widow Douglas, the dreaded Miss Watson; the enlightened runaway slave Jim, whom Huck meets on Jackson's Island; an endless parade of thieves, slaveowners, and sheer opportunists; as well as Tom Sawyer and Aunt Sally, whose desire to adopt and "sivilize" Huck propels him to flee to the American West.
Likewise, the Mississippi River "emerges as a living force regardless of the vain attempts of men to tame it. Read more Allow this favorite library to be seen by others Keep this favorite library private. Save Cancel. Find a copy in the library Finding libraries that hold this item A sumptuous annotated edition of the great American novel.
The influence of this book on american culture and literature is unsurpassed. Reviews User-contributed reviews Add a review and share your thoughts with other readers. Add a review and share your thoughts with other readers.
View most popular tags as: tag list tag cloud. Finn, Huckleberry -- Fictitious character -- Fiction. Mississippi River -- Fiction. Runaway children -- Fiction.
Male friendship -- Fiction. Fugitive slaves -- Fiction. Race relations -- Fiction.
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