The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in The Reading For Pleasure Book Club

Feb 19, 2025 Werner rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, general-fiction, books-i-own

A sequel of sorts to Twain's earlier novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, this novel is also set in the 1840s and opens in the same setting, fictional St. Petersburg, Missouri, picking up the thread of events from where the first book left off. But while Tom will play an important part in the tale, here the focus is on his buddy "Huck," who's a bit older at about 13-14 years old (he doesn't know his exact age); and this book actually comes to grips with more serious themes. The greater seriousnes A sequel of sorts to Twain's earlier novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, this novel is also set in the 1840s and opens in the same setting, fictional St. Petersburg, Missouri, picking up the thread of events from where the first book left off. But while Tom will play an important part in the tale, here the focus is on his buddy "Huck," who's a bit older at about 13-14 years old (he doesn't know his exact age); and this book actually comes to grips with more serious themes. The greater seriousness, though, is partly masked by Huck's narrative voice (the previous book was in third person), which is that of an unschooled, dirt-poor white kid, indifferently raised by an abusive, alcoholic father with neither moral nor intellectual cultivation, whose concerns are mostly self-centered and materialistic, who views polite society from the outside and expresses himself with a naive, matter-of fact candor that's brimming with unintentional dry humor, to satiric effect. (That is, it's unintentional on Huck's part --but not on the author's!)

At the conclusion of Tom Sawyer, Tom and Huck had come into some money (long story!). But a few months later, Huck's Pap turns up in town again, wanting to get his hands on Huck's share. Before long, circumstances will force Huck and escaping slave Jim (who's overheard his owner, Miss Watson, avowing an intention to sell him away from his family) to team up in a quest for freedom, journeying down the Mississippi on an abandoned raft. (Their original intention was to turn into the Ohio River at Cairo, Illinois. Parts of the tale are set in Illinois and Arkansas, and possibly Tennessee --the locale isn't always specified.) Along the way, Huck will meet people from all strata of antebellum Southern society, be exposed to many of the permutations of human nature (often at its worst --Twain was something of a pessimist and a misanthrope), and experience titular "adventures" that are sometimes darkly humorous, sometimes ludicrous, and sometimes life-threatening, but never boring.

The author's real purpose, though, isn't to relate adventures for their own sake; he has (despite his obviously tongue-in-cheek prefatory Notice to the contrary!) a motive in writing, which very definitely has to do with imparting a moral, or morals, centering around how humans ought to treat each other, but all too often don't. (I wouldn't exactly describe it as a "coming of age" story; Huck's still pretty immature at the end of it. But he definitely does grow and learn through his experiences.) A big part of his "moral(s) of the story" is critique of slavery and its underlying racism, which remained endemic in both North and South in 1884 America, and too often still does. For modern readers, this critique is ironically often obscured by the frequent use of the n-word, and by Huck's ingrained awareness that in helping Jim escape he's defying what he's been taught is "right" behavior. But defy it he does. Twain doesn't pretend that the 1840s South was a paradise of racial brotherhood; instead, he depicts it the way it really was, and the way its people were taught to think. Glimmerings of light aren't recognizable as light if you aren't aware of the darkness. Slavery/racism isn't the only target of criticism, though. We also get up-close looks at the human propensity for homicidal violence disguised as "honor," for moral and physical cowardice and for mob psychology; for self-serving greed, for pandering to our own baser appetites, for putting on a show of "religion" reduced to formal observances and theological dogmas, but divorced from ethics.

Stylistically, this book is a product of the Realist school. Part of that is reproduction of the actual speaking style of characters in this time and place: black dialect, backwoods Southwestern speech, and different variants of the more conventional "Pike County" Missouri dialect, all of which Twain grew up hearing. The pervasive use of the n-word, even by blacks, is a reflection of that. Modern critics are often offended by the latter, just as many critics and librarians in Twain's own time were offended by the fact that Huck's narrative voice is ungrammatical and often "vulgar." But if we basically accept the idea that literary dialogue or first-person narration should reflect language as the speakers would actually use it, it's hypocritical to then fault the author in particular instances where we don't like it. (For instance, I don't like the f-word any better than I do the n-word; but I don't deduct stars from a book when the author allows characters to use it who realistically would.) The same could be said of "stereotypes;" both Jim and most of the white characters are depicted as ignorant (though he's not stupid --that's a different thing!) and superstitious because, given the conditions under which they lived, most lower-class Southerners in that day actually were ignorant and superstitious.

There are legitimate criticisms that can be made of this novel. The plotting has its drawbacks. (One aspect that isn't often mentioned, but that really struck me, is that Huck and Jim hoped to "go way up the Ohio amongst the free states, and then be out of trouble." Well, DUH --Illinois was a free state, and they were on Illinois soil more than once. Heading for, say, Chicago would have made more sense than floating downstream in a southerly direction with slave states on the west bank; but the latter was what suited Twayne's plot outline. :-( ) Tom Sawyer's role in the book reminds me of why I commented in my review of the previous book that I didn't particularly like him, and I have to agree with at least a couple of reviewers that he'd have benefited from a good spanking. (Some of that content, though, serves to remind us that neither Tom nor Huck are adults, though we want to think of them that way; they're tween or young teen kids, and they can at times display all of the juvenile immaturity that can go with that age.) But in deference to the serious moral decisions that get made here, I can't rate this at anything less than five stars. ...more

42 likes · Like · see review

Feb 02, 2008 Chrissie rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction, classics, usa, 2017-read, audible-us, kids

I chose to reread The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because I like the author's prose and humor. Having recently reread The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, I thought why not reread this too. I found that I prefer Tom Sawyer over this. Huck's story reads more strongly as a plot-oriented, exciting adventure story, even if both are classified as such. Reading this now as an adult, I am not as captivated as I was as a child by adventure stories.

There is also a difference in the humor of the two stories. ...more

18 likes · Like · see review

Feb 13, 2008 Laura rated it really liked it

Shelves: classics, children-ya, 1001-books-you-must-read-before-you, banned-books

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (or, in more recent editions, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) is a novel by Mark Twain, first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885. Commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written throughout in vernacular English, characterized by local color regionalism. It is told in the first person by Huckleberry "Huck" Finn, the narrator of two other ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Jan 18, 2015 Ipeh Alena added it

Dibandingkan dengan petulangannya dengan tom sawyer, dalam petualangan Huck bersama Jim dalam buku ini terkesan lebih serius. Tidak seperti saat bersama dengan Tom yang penuh dengan adegan konyol. Mungkin karena di sini digambarkan mereka sudah beranjak remaja, mungkin.

Tapi petualangan Huck dan Jim dari satu pulau ke pulau lain bukan saja menegangkan tapi juga seru.

Like · see review

Aug 16, 2010 Trisha rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics

I found that I enjoyed this book more than I did Tom Sawyer. Sawyer's story was playful and fun with child hijinks and adventure, while Finn's story had a much darker plot and a greater level of maturity as well as political issues such as child abuse and slavery. Both were excellent books, but their qualities were in differing areas. ...more

Like · see review

Oct 21, 2007 Esther rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: audio, usa, abandoned_unfinished

I have decided to stop torturing myself with this book. I have tried to read it, I have tried to listen to it, I have even tried to watch a TV adaptation but it just bores me out of my mind.

Like · see review