Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Rating:
Summary: The classic rebel
Review: "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", as well as "Tom Sawyer" are a throw back to when life was simpler, when right and wrong were as simple as black and white, and there is no gray. When Huck and Tom are playing at the river or in the woods, reminds me of my own childhood. Also the superstitions are funny, but realistic for that kind of ignorant kids to believe in. Jim's "superstition" is more like watching birds for weathetr patterns, which is real fronieer skills back then. The story is that Huck Finn runs away from his abusive father. Along the way he helps Jim the slave escape. The two form a close friendship and that helps them get through several adventures; some funny and some some what scary. I will always love these books, but "Huckleberry Finn" is the best because it's a road trip, or rather a raft trip down the Mississippi River. This one also is more of a social commentery on the cruelty of Christian civilization, and the nobility and honor of the untamed savage.

Rating:
Summary: Wow thats funny.
Review: I swear i never saw the word nigger so many times in a book. And it was a real hoot to. I Couldnt help but laugh...everytime they made mention of a nigger. somthin about the ignorance of it is funny i guess On a serious note it Is a very good read, and it speaks alot about the ignorance of the times. Somthing that we need to face lest history repeat itself.

I was fascinated with the open and blatant use of racial slurrs which are never heard in our polictically correct society today. And the way the language of the early african americans is depicted like "I laid dah under the shavins all day. I uz hungry warn't afeared bekase I knowed ole missus en de widder was goin to start for de camp meetin."

I like it when these books are rewritten exactly as they are and not edited as so many historical things are so as not to "offend" anyone. A rousing and funny fictional story set in the back drop of actual historical surroundings. Its a fine read for all.

Rating:
Summary: Is this a bunch of short stories or a one big novel??
Review: I didn't like Huck Finn too much because it's difficult to analyze and put together in words. It was more of a pleasure reading novel than a book for an English class.

Rating:
Summary: Not the Great American Novel
Review: Considered by many to be the great American novel, Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is the story of a boy, Huck Finn, and a runaway slave, Jim, as they travel down the Mississippi River on a raft. "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is the sequel to Twain's novel "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer". Where "Tom Sawyer" was more a care-free children's book, "Huck Finn" is a far darker less childlike book.

Judging from my rating you can see that I do not agree that this is in fact the great American novel. Twain seemed far too unsure of what he wanted to accomplish with this book. The pat answer is to expose the continuing racism of American society post-Civil War. By making Jim simultaneously the embodiment of white racist attitudes about blacks and a man of great heart, loyalty, and bravery, Twain presented him as being all too much of what white America at the time was unwilling to acknowledge the black man as: human.

However noble the cause though, Twain's story is disjointed, at times ridiculous, and, worst of all (for Twain anyway), unfunny. The situations that Huck and Jim find themselves in are implausible at best. Twain may not have concerned himself too much with the possibleness of his story; but, it does detract from your enjoyment of a story when you constantly disbelieve the possibility of something happening.

"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is an important book in that it did affect much of the American literature that followed it. However, this is another novel which is more important to read for its historical significance than for its story.

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Summary: Brother Huck, Down The River, Stuck In the Mud
Review: Mark Twain's The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn (1885) is generally agreed to be the greatest American novel of the nineteenth century. In fact, when all American novels are considered together, only F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925) approaches it in stature. Unlike the often artificial, theatrical, and tongue - in - cheek The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn is a driving, rollicking, and robust first - person narrative propelled by both dramatic, often hilarious action and masterful characterization.

First introduced in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) as a coarse bumpkin the town elders find undesirable company for other boys, The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn reintroduces Huck as an introverted young lad of fourteen who is both generally naive and cautiously shrewd, uneducated but clever, deeply human, ingenious, and fully accepting of his tattered form and misfit status. While Apollonian Tom carefully plans, creates, and acts out his fantasies and fantasy personas, the simpler, Dionysian, nudity - loving Huckleberry simply is who he believes himself to be. Lacking the need to imagine a larger transcendental identity for himself, Huck spontaneously and consistently lives the sort of vital, active life Tom craves but only sporadically enjoys.

For Huck, "solid comfort" means enjoying a good pipe while resting under a tree in the woods, free of rules, regulations, "petticoat despotism," parental figures, "social improvement," and scholastic education. But The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn finds its protagonist with little time for blissful rumination. Escaping both his prim, would - be adoptive mother, the Widow Watson, and his abusive, vagabond father by faking his own murder, Huck joins forces with fellow runaway Jim, Miss Watson's black slave and yard hand, upon whom suspicion of the homicide has unfortunately fallen. Setting off down the Mississippi River in whatever vessel is available for the taking, the two embark on a series of calamitous adventures that test their individual strength, resourcefulness, and loyalty to their principles and one another.

A product of its time, The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn honestly reflects the racist attitudes prevalent in post Civil War America. Superstitious, gullible, fearful, and constantly wide - eyed in astonishment, Jim is a stereotypical burlesque negro of the period. But, as in Erskine Caldwell's Georgia Boy (1943), Jim, like Caldwell's Handsome Brown, consistently shows strength of character, moral fortitude, common sense, and an frequent admirable penchant for putting the interests of others ahead of his own. Though Jim is the novel's primary fall guy, buffoon, and figure of fun, even a cursory reading of the novel reveals that almost all of the characters, regardless of gender, race, age, or social position, are fools, dupes, charlatans, and aggressively silly, limited personalities caught in their own narrow, selfish perceptions.

As British and American folk songs from 'Mattie Groves' and 'Henry Martin' to 'Fennario' and 'Follow The Drinking Gourd' attest, life in the 'good old days' was anything but a bucolic idyll. Though rarely less than comic, The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn reflects this reality: degeneracy, murder, senseless bloody feuds, theft, and mercenary lawlessness are the rule of the day. Unlike The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer, which illustrated a single if protracted episode of evil within small town American life, Huck's story takes place in a larger fallen world in which the white picket fence, bread - and - butter chip pickle life of the earlier book has passed away.

Here more than in any other work, Twain proves himself a master of language. Chapter Sixteen, the "Raftsman's Passage" episode, which the author omitted from the first edition, is a spectacular example of Twain at the height of his literary power. When Huck becomes a stowaway aboard an immense raft by night, he witnesses a group of virile roustabouts and scalawags bragging, boasting, and squaring off around a fire in sneering, full - blooded fashion. Two of the rogues, each the baddest of the bad, circle around one another as their fistfighting duel begins. The first states he is "the original iron - jawed, brass - mounted, copper - bellied corpse - maker from the wilds of Arkansas, the man they call Sudden Death and General Desolation...sired by a hurricane, dam'd by an earthquake, half - brother to the cholera, nearly related to the small pox on the mother's side...blood's my natural drink, and the wails of the dying is music to my ears!" Not to be outdone, the second admits "I scratch my head with the lightning and purr myself to sleep with the thunder...I put my hand on the sun's face and make it night on the earth...I bite a piece out of the moon and hurry the seasons - I shake myself and crumble the mountains. The massacre of isolated communities is the pastime of my idle moments, the destruction of nationalities the serious business of my life!" Needless to say, the absurd battle that follows less that justifies their claims of virile dominance and world subjugation.

T. S. Eliot wrote enthusiastically about the dominant role the Mississippi River plays in the novel, a questionable position readers may dispute, for The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, with its emphasis on characterization, action, and down - home folk wisdom, spends little energy on mood or lyrical passages evoking nature at the height of summer. The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn finally succeeds, despite wordiness and occasional lengthy uninspired passages, because Huck is humble, self - reliant everyman who modestly seizes the potential in every situation to turn events to his favor -- and typically towards the good and the humane. Those editions which include the original illustrations by Edward Winsor Kemble and John Harley should be particularly rewarding to readers.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Buy
Review: Want a book with an adventurous twist? Then Huckleberry Finn is the book for you. Not only is Huckleberry Finn an adventurous book, it is also can be comical and light, though the book has a grave meaning, showing the wrongs in society at the time in the late 19th century.
The book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer precedes Huckleberry Finn, where in the beginning of Huckleberry Finn, Huck lives with the widow Douglas, though doesn't like the high class living, and frequently leaves to see his father, who's always drunk, or just hangs out in the woods. While in the woods, Huck meets Jim, a slave who escaped and needs to cross the Mississippi River to the freedom on the other side, in Illinois. Although this book portrays a serious meaning, it can also be funny and witty.
I liked this book because it was witty and comical, though it had an important message at the same time. I really liked this book because of this, though the southern accent complicates the understanding of the book. Overall, I thought this book is definitely a classic and a must read for all age levels.

Rating:
Summary: Best look at morality
Review: I know most people had to read this in school so I wondered why it was so important and I finally read it after college. I know it is suppose to be a kids story but I found it to be one of the best books on morality I have ever read.

The book teaches how even the most dowdy, illiterate knows that it is wrong to have another person as a slave.

Huck goes through lots of experiences on his trip down the river. He learns about the envy of his father, he can't understand why the families are feuding and killing each other year after year for an old arguement. He learns how to be a charlaton and what happens to people who lie.

The best part is when Tom Sawyer meets up with him and makes him and Jim follow all the rules from the pirate story and drives all the adults crazy.

I really enjoyed this book and believe every teenage should read it.

Rating:
Summary: One of the great works in American Literature
Review: Mark Twain called a 'classic' a book that everyone praises but which no one actually reads. This book defies that description, and the result is a classic which is both very readable and very enjoyable. Few American authors have enjoyed such widespread popularity as Twain, and this work is, in my opinion, his best. The story is fairly simple, and the plot such that any average person could read and follow the story, yet the message the novel conveys is so deep and important that one cannot help but be greatly enriched by this book.

This is the story of Huck Finn, the son of the town drunk from 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.' In this novel Huck helps a slave, Jim, escape from slavery, and the two of them float down the Mississippi in search of freedom for both of them. Along the way they have many adventures, and Tom even makes an appearance toward the end of the novel to complicate and romanticize things in true Tom Sawyer style.

This book has much to say about the subject of slavery. The institution is so entrenched in Huck's world that it is preached from the pulpit, that aiding a slave to escape means eternal damnation for the accomplice. Throughout the novel Huck struggles with this issue, as his inner conscience (which knows he should help Jim, and which sees him as an intelligent and worthy friend) battles his knowledge of society's morals and values (which sees Jim as a mindless brute which should be returned to captivity). In many ways Huck is far more perceptive than most people in his time, because he sees Negroes as people too. Huck's final decision in the matter is one of the great moments in American Literature. He knows what it means to help Jim, but he has made up his mind, "All right, then, I'll go to hell!"

I first read this book when I was young, and even then I was impressed by the story. I didn't understand most of the meaning, but the book nevertheless made an impact on me. This is the beauty of Mark Twain--he is readable for all ages.

Rating:
Summary: Required reading if you know how to read
Review: In my school years, I wasn't a very good student. I didn't do my homework or read what I was supposed to read, etc. But growing up, after reading a few of my friends' recommendations, reading just becomes a lot more fun if it isn't work. Taking tests and writing reports sucks the life out of literature, and I have to say this is a big problem with the American public school system.

But anyway, after reading this and that, I decided to catch up on classics. You know, so I don't seem like such an ignoramus about books since absolutely everyone but me has read them. So, I read 1984, Catcher in the Rye, to name a few. Then I come across Huck Finn. My high school junior class read this book, but of course, I hardly paid any attention.

Racist? Sure, it's rampant with the horrid N word, but this is a book about a specific time period with slaves, and Twain captures the right feel and choice of dialogue perfectly, and sadly, it mirrors many of the guests that appear on Jerry Springer. The buzz word is just something you have to get over, it's not important to the story and it's not about hating African slaves and their descendants, but just a minor detail. People that say they should ban this book are just extremely ignorant. How racist is it for someone to help a slave ESCAPE?

The story, overall, is very satisfying and enjoyable all the way through. Once you get to know the characters, you care about them and worry for their well-being. I'm not sure how I can better express what a great and well-written classic this is without quoting half the book, so you'll just have to give it a try.

A word of warning, however, if you must read the Penguin Classics paperback edition of the book, DO NOT READ THE INTRODUCTION BY JOHN SEELYE. Not until you've finished reading the story. This is very important for your enjoyment of the story. While it's well-written and provides a lot of insight into Twain and the story, it's written on the presumption that you've already read the book, meaning, the ending and several important plot points are completely blown. Why would they call it an introduction if it assumes you've already read it? This entire section should've been printed at the end of the book or not at all.

Rating:
Summary: Not what you expect, you ding dongs...
Review: This book is not only the most controversial piece of American Literature ever written, but it is also one of the most spectacular. The ignorant may be offended by the so-called "racist" references, but this book is actually strongly anti-slavery. Twain uses literary device known as satire and color writing to, respectively, make attacks against an unjust system and to bring his story to life. An intelligent person's education is not complete until they have read this book, gotten to know Huck, and fallen in love with Twain's acidic attacks against the injustices of society.