Great American Novel: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

I just finished reading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, an 1884 sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, the world-renowned American writer, humorist, and essayist. I was thrilled to have read both masterpieces of Twain, having read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer last month.

Commonly named among the Great American Novels, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is also one of the first major works of American literature to be written throughout in vernacular English, characterized by regionalism. The book is also known for its vivid description of people and places along the Mississippi River. 

Interestingly, while it is clear that Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was controversial from the outset, its original illustrations by E. W. Kemble were praised. At the time a young artist working for Life magazine, Kemble was hand-picked by Twain, who admired his work. The copy I read does not include these illustrations, but they can easily be found online.

Set in a Southern antebellum society that had ceased to exist over 20 years before the work was published, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an often scathing satire of entrenched attitudes, particularly racism. Perennially popular with readers, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has also continued to be a subject of study by literary critics since its publication. The book was widely criticized upon release because of its extensive use of coarse language and racial epithets. 

There are several themes explored in the novel, among which "racism and slavery" is arguably the best known and the major cause of its controversy. The rest are thought-provoking, too, and I was particularly impressed by "intellectual and moral education." As a poor, uneducated boy, Huck, the protagonist, distrusts the morals and precepts of the society that treats him as an outcast and fails to protect him from abuse. This leads him to question many of the teachings that he has received, not least those about race and slavery. Throughout his adventures, Huck bases his decisions on his experiences, his own sense of logic, and what his developing conscience tells him. By the novel’s end, Huck has learned to “read” the world around him, to distinguish good and bad, right and wrong, friend and enemy, and so on, without formal intellectual and moral education. 

Another theme that equally fascinated me is "the hypocrisy of civilized society." In the novel, Huck encounters individuals who seem good but are prejudiced slave-owners. Twain implies that it is impossible for a society that owns slaves to be just, no matter how “civilized” that society believes and proclaims itself to be. The shaky sense of justice that Huck repeatedly encounters lies at the heart of society’s problems: terrible acts go unpunished, yet frivolous crimes, such as drunkenly shouting insults, lead to executions. Rather than maintain collective welfare, society instead is marked by cowardice, a lack of logic, and profound selfishness.

Jim, Huck’s companion as he travels down the river, is a man of remarkable intelligence and compassion. As one of Miss Watson’s household slaves, Jim is superstitious and occasionally sentimental, but he is also practical, compassionate, and ultimately more mature than anyone else in the novel. Jim’s frequent acts of selflessness, his longing for his family, and his friendship with both Huck and Tom demonstrate to Huck that humanity has nothing to do with race. Because Jim is a black man and a runaway slave, he is at the mercy of almost all the other characters in the novel and is often forced into ridiculous and degrading situations.

One of the minor antagonists in the novel is Pap Finn, Huck's father and an abusive drunkard who channels his anger into violence against his son. Pap is a wreck when he appears at the beginning of the novel, with disgusting, ghostlike white skin and tattered clothes. The illiterate Pap disapproves of Huck’s education and beats him frequently. Pap represents both the general debasement of white society and the failure of family structures in the novel.

Other minor antagonists are the Duke and the Dauphin, a pair of con men whom Huck and Jim rescue while the two are being run out of a river town. The older man, who appears to be about seventy, claims to be the “dauphin,” the son of King Louis XVI and heir to the French throne. The younger man, who is about thirty, claims to be the usurped Duke of Bridgewater. Although Huck quickly realizes the men are frauds, he and Jim remain at their mercy, as Huck is only a child and Jim is a runaway slave. The duke and the dauphin carry out a number of increasingly disturbing swindles as they travel down the river on the raft.

Silas and Sally Phelps, a slave-owning couple with a cotton plantation in the Deep South, are Tom Sawyer’s aunt and uncle, whom Huck coincidentally encounters in his search for Jim after the con men have sold him. Sally is the sister of Tom’s aunt, Polly. Essentially good people, the Phelpses nevertheless hold Jim in custody and try to return him to his rightful owner. Silas and Sally are the unknowing victims of many of Tom and Huck’s “preparations” as they try to free Jim. The Phelpses are the only intact and functional family in this novel, yet they are too much for Huck, who longs to escape their “sivilizing” influence.