Hucleberry Finn Essay Research Paper The Adventures

Hucleberry Finn Essay, Research Paper

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is a story about a young boy’s coming of age in the mid-1800’s. It uses the ongoing adventures of Huck Finn attempting to gain his freedom as a way of developing the story. The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn has been considered to be Mark Twains greatest book and a delighted world named it his masterpiece. To the many nations that it has been translated in, it was known as America’s masterpiece (Allen 259).

Though initially condemned as inappropriate material for young readers, it soon became prized for its recreation of the antebellum South, its depiction of adolescent life, and its insights into slavery. The book resumes Huck’s life from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which ended with the adoption of Huck by the Widow Douglas. Into this book the world called his masterpiece, Mark Twain put his prime purpose, one that branched into all his writings: a plea for humanity, for the end of castes, and an end to its cruelties (Allen 260).

Mark Twain, whose real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemons, was born in Florida, Missouri, in 1835. During his childhood he lived in Hannibal, Missouri, a Mississippi river port that was to become a large influence on his future writing (McMichael 231). It was Twains nature to write about where he lived and to criticize it if he felt it necessary. In reference to story structure, Kaplan said, “In plotting a book his structural sense is weak; intoxicated by a hunch, he seldom saw far ahead, and too many of his stories peter out from the author’s fatigue or surfeit. His wayward techniques came close to free association. This method served him best after he had conjured up characters from long ago, who on coming to life wrote the narrative for him, passing from incident to incident with a grace their creator could never achieve in manipulating an artificial plot (Kaplan16).”

Mark Twain’s long time friend, William D. Howells, had this to say of the author’s work. “ So far as I know, Mr. Clemons is the first writer to use in extended writing the fashion we all use in thinking, and to set down the things that come into his mind without fear or flavor of the thing that went before or the thing that may be about to follow (Howells 186).”

“Through his work in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain shaped the world’s view of America and had a profound impact on the development of American writing. His presentation of native American material, his use of the vernacular idiom, his departures from the traditions of the nineteenth-century gentility, and his sense of alienation influenced numerous American writers of the twentieth-century, among the Ernest Hemingway, who acknowledged their common debt by writing, “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckle-berry Finn…it’s the best book we’ve had….There was nothing before. There has been nothing so good since.”(McMichael 232).”

Before the book begins, Huck Finn has led a life of absolute freedom. His drunken and often missing father has never paid much attention to him, his mother is dead and therefore, when the book begins Huck is not used to following any rules other then his own. As the story starts Huck is living with the Widow Douglas and her sister, Miss Watson. Both women are older and incapable of raising a rebellious boy like Huck Finn. However, they do attempt to make Huck into what they consider a better boy. “They Widow Douglas, she took me for her son, and allowed she would civilize me: but it rough living in the house all the time considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways (Twain 11).” This process includes making Huck go to school, teaching him various religious facts, and making him act in a manner that the women find socially acceptable.

Since Huck never has followed rules, he finds the demands placed on him by the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson to be constraining and life with them lonely. As a result, soon after he first moves in with them, he runs away. He soon returns and becomes more comfortable living with them as the months go by. He never is able to adapt fully to the life of manners, religion, and education that the sisters have imposed upon him. Huck believes he can regain some freedom from his friend Tom Sawyer.

Tom Sawyer is a boy of Huck’s age who promises Huck and other boys of the town a grand life of adventure. Huck is eager to join Tom’s gang because he feels that doing so will allow him to escape the boring life that he lives with the Widow Douglas. Unfortunately for Huck, such an escape never occurs. Tom Sawyer’s promises of stagecoach robbing, kidnapping beautiful women, murdering and ransoming people never come to pass. Huck finds out to late that all these adventures are imaginary and that raiding a caravan of Arabs really meant terrorizing young children on a Sunday school picnic and that stolen jewelry was nothing more than playing with rocks or turnips (Twain 22). Huck is disappointed that the adventures are not real and resigns from the gang along with several of the other boys.

Another person who influences Huckleberry Finn was his father, Pap. Pap is one of the most interesting characters in the story. He is antisocial and tries to remove from Huck the values that Widow Douglas and her sister had attempted to instill. Pap is unshaven and dirty. Huck i