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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

List Price: $15.98
Your Price: $10.87
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: The mediocre adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Review: This is another deemed classic book that should've never made it as far as it is today. The basic scheme of the book is Huck runs away with a slave and they pretty much do nothing exciting the entire book with a dumb ending. It reminds me of most classics. I don't see why the book is called racist (it was written long before the Civil Rights movement), but I do see why many people think this book sucks.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: love it!!!!!
Review: I enjoyed the book, it was a really good book.I love adventures and this book was truly something to sit and read, if you like suspense and drama. It was about a boy who is looking for freedom and has a companion with him. Looking wherever he could travel without being caught. I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking for adventure and for those who have a very good imagination.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great American Classic
Review: This is one of the most enjoyable books I've read for years. It is packed to the gills with fast-paced action whilst still being informative and historically interesting.

To judge this book as being "racist" for using the word nigger is ridiculous - that is the word people used.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Review: THE ADVENTURE'S OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN, by Mark Twain is an exciting classic about a boy and his strange ambition for never-ending adventure. His only companion, a run-away slave named Jim has been his partner in "crime" as they both run away from society. This novel took place in the crucial times of the late 18 century where slavery was an unjust method of deception. Jim's struggle for freedom and Huck's struggle for adventure take both of them through non-stop ventures.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: huckleberry finn review from 18 year old eyes
Review: A very exciting edge of your seat novel filled with adventures that really touch home. imangine being a run-away slave trying to get to freedom and your only companion is a white boy that could turn you in at any time. you are sold for $40 to live in a small prison shack until you are claimed. try being a small white boy is who hidding a slave and knowing all the time that at any minute you could be hung for keeping your secrets. these are just some of the amazing adventures you will find in this book!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Huck Finn as a litmus test?
Review: The negative reviews below provide a good argument that Huck Finn (and perhaps all Twain) should be removed from the High Schools of America and taught at the College level. Most sixteen-year-olds don't care what happened last week...to them, the nineteenth century never happened. I only hope their reviews didn't earn them school credit as "book reports". Good luck kids...hey, isn't "Friends" on?

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Review: dventures of Huckleberry Finn By Mark Twain 352 Pages

This book was very well-writen. It is about a boy named Huckleberry Finn (Huck for short), who runs away with his slave named Jim, who doesn't speak English very well. They run into a lot of trouble along the way which makes the book very exciting and suspenseful. Like one time they run into a bunch of pirates. That part kept me turning the pages. I think that the setting makes the story more exciting and it is an important part of the story. The setting is a very long time ago, when slaves were still legal. At times the book can be confusing, but it is worth it, because Mark Twain is a great author.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A book not meant for everyone, but everyone should READ it.
Review: When I first read this book, I was so taken with it, that I read from chapter 18 through the end of the book in one night. I was up until 3:30 in the morning, reading ahead of my 11th grade assignment, and loving every minute along the way. later in college, when I studied the book more, closer, and with a more educated eye (whatever that means) my love for the book increased. Now, as a teacher myself, I look forward to having my students read this book and discussing it in class.

But now as for the title of my review:

I can't help feeling bad for people who think that this is not a good novel because "we don't talk like that anymore." Are we to abandon books that are no longer contemporary to ourselves? I also take issue with people who claim that this book is a racist tirade based upon the use of the word "nigger," or because the escape route Jim took was down the Mississippi instead of up river. While currently offensive, Mark Twain used the term as a literary fact that most, if not all young boys of the south spoke in such a manner. Once more, Jim explained why he was going South before he headed north. the simple fact is that if you are going to criticize a book, then you should read it. mark Twain said as much in his essay, "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses."

From reading a number of the reviews of this book, I have come to the opinion that while many read the book, more than a few are refusing to give Twain credit for subtext and the use of allegory. One reviewer down the line says that the book is racist because Twain makes a young boy to be twice as smart as Jim. Upon closer reading, Twain is showing what Huck feels to be true. Huck only thinks that he is smarter. The reader should pick up on the fact that Twain writes Jim as an intuitive father figure for Huck, one who teaches a true morality as opposed to the morality of the South.

Simply put, you get what you put in to the reading of this book. If you think is is going to be a boring read because you "have to" read it for a summer reading list or school assignment, then that's what it will be. If you think it will be a difficult read because you don't want to try and read in dialects other than your own, it will be a hard read. If you are looking to justify the book as racist because of a single word that presentism doesn't excuse, then have at it. This book can be all of those things. However, this book also has the potential to enlighten the reader, give something wonderful to the reader, and teach about the human condition.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I'm no Easy Huck
Review: Mark Twain's classic novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, tells the story of a teenaged misfit who finds himself floating on a raft down the Mississippi River with an escaping slave, Jim. In the course of their perilous journey, Huck and Jim meet adventure, danger, and a cast of characters who are sometimes menacing and often hilarious.

Though some of the situations in Huckleberry Finn are funny in themselves (the cockeyed Shakespeare production in Chapter 21 leaps instantly to mind), this book's humor is found mostly in Huck's unique worldview and his way of expressing himself. Describing his brief sojourn with the Widow Douglas after she adopts him, Huck says: "After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by and by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn't care no more about him, because I don't take no stock in dead people." Underlying Twain's good humor is a dark subcurrent of Antebellum cruelty and injustice that makes The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn a frequently funny book with a serious message.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: indeed, a classic--and never boring
Review: Maybe this book should not, as one reviewer noted, be assigned in high school. But then maybe no books should be assigned to people who are quicker to judge than to understand. Stupid, boring, difficult...hardly.

Well--of course it's difficult (like everything that's good), for some good reasons. First of all, it's an illiterate white boy from the deep South--of course he speaks dialect (which is not the same as "he cain't spell"). Second, it's tough subject matter Twain tackles. What would you do in this situation? The right thing, which is what you've been told to do--turn Jim in? Or should you follow your heart, as Huck finally does, thinking it'll send him straight to hell? What would Jesus do?

I find this book a rollercoaster ride, one adventure after another. Like many other readers, I am disturbed by the last couple of chapters, but given how Huck is under the influence of Tom Sawyer, it's not unintelligible.

However, I have a bone to pick with this particular edition, by the Oxford UP. The introduction by Emory Elliot is less than satifying. For instance, he claims Twain was highly original in making this illiterate character the narrator of his novel, when of course there was a plethora of for instance slave narratives, often told by semi-literate narrators. He goes on to state that Twain was the first American author to explore "divorce, social strife, and violence"--seemingly forgetting all about, for instance, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," written well before "Huck," where all these issues are discussed.

That said, I am happy to see that this edition features as an appendix the infamous "Raftmen's Passage," essential to the plot but excised by Twain (really, by his editor), and this restores the "original" structure of the novel, making the turn downstream, down South, acceptable. Also, the explanatory notes are quite good. Finally, this OUP edition is worth buying for the cover alone, which has a detail from a gorgeous Homer-painting.


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