On this day in 1885, Mark Twain publishes his famous–and famously controversial–novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Twain (the pen name of Samuel Clemens) first introduced Huck Finn as the best friend of Tom Sawyer, hero of his tremendously successful novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). Though Twain saw Huck’s story as a kind of sequel to his earlier book, the new novel was far more serious, focusing on the institution of slavery and other aspects of life in the antebellum South.
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At the book’s heart is the journey of Huck and his friend Jim, a runaway slave, down the Mississippi River on a raft. Jim runs away because he is about to be sold and separated from his wife and children, and Huck goes with him to help him get to Ohio and freedom. Huck narrates the story in his distinctive voice, offering colorful descriptions of the people and places they encounter along the way. The most striking part of the book is its satirical look at racism, religion and other social attitudes of the time. While Jim is strong, brave, generous and wise, many of the white characters are portrayed as violent, stupid or simply selfish, and the naive Huck ends up questioning the hypocritical, unjust nature of society in general.
Even in 1885, two decades after the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the Civil War, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn landed with a splash. A month after its publication, a Concord, Massachusetts, library banned the book, calling its subject matter “tawdry” and its narrative voice “coarse” and “ignorant.” Other libraries followed suit, beginning a controversy that continued long after Twain’s death in 1910. In the 1950s, the book came under fire from African-American groups for being racist in its portrayal of black characters, despite the fact that it was seen by many as a strong criticism of racism and slavery. As recently as 1998, an Arizona parent sued her school district, claiming that making Twain’s novel required high school reading made already existing racial tensions even worse.
Aside from its controversial nature and its continuing popularity with young readers, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been hailed by many serious literary critics as a masterpiece. No less a judge than Ernest Hemingway famously declared that the book marked the beginning of American literature: “There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.”
A few years back I wrote a review of Huckleberry Finn called “The Most Overrated Book Everybody Has Read.” Here’s the link should anyone care to read it:
Colonel Sherburn made me chuckle
That, in my opinion, is the best scene in the book.
Robert I read your review of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and there is nothing in it that I can argue with. Tom Sawyer is a more well thought out and well written novel, but I still like Huck Finn better. Probably because I was seven or eight years old when I first read it and it just captured my imagination like nothing else.
To me it was all about freedom. The way Huck lived his life even as a boy had everything to do with freedom. Escaping from the cages that the widow Douglas and his Pap put him in. Being able to recognize the traps other people set for you and that enslave you and being able to avoid them. Ever since reading this as a wee lad I’ve had the goal of living in river country out in the woods trying to be self sufficient as possible living by my wits and not being a slave to the system. I’m still working on that dream, and I’m really close. I have a small off-grid cabin, do some gardening, some hunting and some fishing, spend a lot of time out in the woods and down at the river just goofing around. I’m debt free and don’t need much money to take care of my simple needs. Life is good. I have Mark Twain’s Huck Finn to thank for the inspiration and the avatar.
Another book I read as a wee young lad that had an enormous influence on my life choices was Possum Living by Dolly Freed. I highly recommend it.
P.S. I’ve NEVER been bored down at the river.
Good for you! The more I see of so-called civilization, the better your option looks. I’ll put Possum Living on the reading list.
And I have read The War Prayer this morning for the first time. A very short, very astute masterpiece.
As long as I’m on the subject of books I read as a boy that inspired my life choices I have to give much credit to Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. Particularly the chapter on Economy.
For me the most striking thing about the novel was that it was written after the Civil War, not before. I don’t think the novel is overrated on an absolute basis necessarily, but there are works that should be held in higher relative regard simply because those other works predated the Civil War, even if I don’t think they are quite as well written.
In that vein, I also wrote a review of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, “The Best Novel Nobody Has Read.” Here’s the link should anyone care to read it: