Huckelberry Finn

Posted by celticman on Fri, 06 Sep 2013

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn finishes where it started with poor old Huck getting Mothered to death: ‘I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before.’

It’s been that long since I read this book I can’t remember reading it. Long passages are dialogue thick with the argot of Nigger Jim, Tom Sawyer or the sly old Judge Thatcher. The descriptive passages on the Mississippi river show Twain’s background as captain on a steamboat, trekking up and down, putting into shore and the kind of people he met. Huck sometimes gets lost in the descriptions of these other characters, such as the so-called natural son of Louis IX that insisted upon being called His Highness and having Nigger Jim and Huck serve him on their raft. The river provides the jumping off points for Huck’s different adventure. Each is a mini-drama complete in itself and the absurdity of  adult life and logic is shown again and again. The sudden appearance of Tom Sawyer travelling 1100 miles down the river, Huck being taken for Tom by his Aunt Sally and Tom cottoning on and calling himself his brother Sid so they can free Nigger Jim who has already been freed is just the kind of predicament that you’d expect. To fill the void left by this book, next up, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I’m sure I’ve read it before?   

Comments

Submitted by Steve on

I just can't stand these people who got rid of the word "nigger" from Huck Finn and believe that this will help end racism. You know, when Hitler's writings came to the US, they took out all the anti-semitic rhetoric, does that make Hitler a lover of Jews? From what I understand, they already printed the New Huck Finn and are selling it. Anyway. Huck Finn is one of my favorite books. I've always though of America as very low in culture and this book explained why. I shouldn't complain anyway because the low level of culture makes it easy for an immigrant to acculturate, You can get by with "Hello, Ok, and Bye." I think it was Huck Finn that first made me aware of the deep schism between the leftists and the rightists in America. It's somewhere in that book. I also think that those who have accused Mark Twain of Anti-Semitism are being quite unfair. There are bad things about Jews too. No people are good. All people are both good and bad. Only God is good.

 

Submitted by karl_wiggins on

They're taking the word Nigger out of Huck Finn!!!! You might as well take all the authenticity out of the book. Mark Twain penned just about the gresatest novel in America history from the mind set of an illiterate 13-year-old boy, and while he was at it managed to write all 43 chapters in rural colloquialism. No mean feat in itself, yet Huck Finn reads as though Twain wrote it in a couple of spare weekends. Perhaps it would read better if modernised so we have an eton-educated prince sailing down the River Thames past Windsor in a two-cabin, six-berth boat complete with LCD television and hair dryer in each cabin.  

 

Submitted by Steve on

When I am driving a car and I cut someone off and that person calls me a "chink," I don't really consider that to be racism. In New Hampshire, I see the low-brand type of Anti-Semitism that Saul Bellow was probably aware of, but I don't see any Jews calling New Hampshirites Anti-Semites or rather they don't do it in public. Many Jews helped to publish T.S. Eliot and yet, T.S. Eliot, influenced by Ezra Pound, became a fierce Anti-Semite. But I dearly love the attitude and quotes and poetry of Ezra Pound. Infact, the 3 poets I admire most... Ezra Pound, Yeats, and Rilke were all attracted to Fascism which is troublesome to me, but I was also attracted to Japanese and German Fascism. The funny thing is, most East Asian nations see Germany as more of a role model for the kind of state they want to have than the United States which is by its own admission, a unique, highly differentiated (diverse) state.