The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in Classics Without All the Class

Apr 21, 2024 Beth Diiorio rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, classics, humorous, missouri, cultural-inheritance, bookstagram-review, literary-fiction, friendship, adventure, slavery

My impetus to read this classic was to refresh my memory before reading JAMES, by Percival Everett. Reading this as an adult was so much richer than reading it as a middle- or high-school student. And yes, reading the "N" word felt cringy and uncomfortable. Given the culture and politics of the 1840's in Missouri it is all that more impressive that Mark Twain used his talents as an author to shed light on injustice and ignorance through the perspective of 13-year old rascally Huckleberry Finn.

Hu My impetus to read this classic was to refresh my memory before reading JAMES, by Percival Everett. Reading this as an adult was so much richer than reading it as a middle- or high-school student. And yes, reading the "N" word felt cringy and uncomfortable. Given the culture and politics of the 1840's in Missouri it is all that more impressive that Mark Twain used his talents as an author to shed light on injustice and ignorance through the perspective of 13-year old rascally Huckleberry Finn.

Huck was raised by an outrageously abusive father as a white boy in a racist culture, which limits his beliefs and understanding of black people, yet he knows in his heart that not only does he himself deserve better, but that Jim is a true friend who should never again be a slave and commits to helping Jim achieve freedom. The clever childish antics used to outwit the adults, the creative survival techniques, and the naivete and superstitions provided vivid imagery and food for thought.

"Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it want to tell about something that's on its mind and can't make itself understood, and so can't rest easy on its grave and has to go about that way every night grieving."

"Everybody said it was a real beautiful oath, and asked Tom if he got it out of his own head. He said, some of it, but the rest was out of pirate books, and robber books, and every gang that was high-toned had it."

"I went and told the widow about it, and she said the thing a body could get by praying for it was 'spiritual gifts'...she told me what she meant--I must help other people--and do everything I could for other people, and look out for them all the time, and never think about myself.I went out in the woods and turned it over in my mind a long time, but I couldn't see no advantage about it--except for the other people."

"And Jim said you mustn't count the things you are going to cook for dinner, because that would bring bad luck. The same if you shook the table-cloth after sundown. And he said if a man owned a beehive and that man died, the bees must be told about it before sun-up next morning, or else the bees would all weaken down and quit work and die."

"I've always reckoned that looking at the new moon over your left shoulder is one of the carelessest and foolishest things a body can do. Old Hank Bunker done it once, and bragged about it; and in less than two years he got drunk and fell of of the shot-tower and spread himself out so that he was just a kind of a layer, as you may say; and they slid him edgeways between two barn doors for a coffin, and buried him so, so they say, but I didn't see it."
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Nov 22, 2010 Ben rated it liked it

Shelves: owned-calibre, fiction

Things I liked:

The characters voice and train of thought frequently made me smile. The way his mind came up against big moral issues like slavery and murder and things like that were provocative, making me wonder about my own rational for strongly held beliefs.

Things I thought could be improved:

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Jan 03, 2013 Janice rated it it was amazing

Shelves: middle-grade-young-adult, classic, funny, fiction-worth-re-reading

3rd (possibly 4th) reading:
The story of Huck and Jim is told with humor, pathos, and suspense and is well worth reading. During this reading, I was especially intrigued by the tension between Huck's instinctive moral compass and the external rules he believed himself to be violating. My only quibble with the story is that the Tom Sawyer bit at the end seems gratuitous. As a character, Tom is callous and annoying, and his meddling seemed to dilute the relationship between Huck and Jim.

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