In 1876, the same year as the publication of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain began work on another boy's tale of adventure along the Mississippi. After deciding that Tom was unfit to narrate the book, Twain chose Tom's counterpart, the disreputable Huckleberry Finn. Huck was already well known to an American audience thirsting for more of Twain's brand of humor, and Twain hoped to capitalize on his recent literary successes. Despite the end of the Civil War in 1865, it was a tumultuous time for America. Southern Reconstruction had fallen into disarray, and a new racism of segregation and condoned inequality replaced the slavery that had been abolished with the Emancipation Proclamation.
Twain's original intention, as he stated to William Dean Howells, was to take "a boy of twelve and run him on through life (in the first person)." In the aftermath of the war and the failure of Reconstruction, however, the work quickly bogged down as the book began to address the issue of freedom and slavery; it was not a path that Twain was eager to take. After writing the first few chapters, Twain's inspiration for the tale began to fade, and he set aside the work to pursue other projects such as A Tramp Abroad (1880) and The Prince and the Pauper (1881).
In 1882, Twain again took up the manuscript and began developing the story of the young, white boy named Huck and the enslaved, black man named Jim. He worked sporadically over the next two years and finished the manuscript in July of 1883. Two years later, in February of 1885, Huck Finn reintroduced himself to American readers: "You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter."
Huck's journey down the Mississippi River has been called an odyssey by some and a pilgrimage by others. Indeed, characteristics of each abound. Like Homer's Odyssey, the novel is episodic — that is, it is composed of a series of episodes — and in many ways Huck's adventure is a pilgrimage (a journey of exalted purpose or moral). Some consider the novel to be of the picaresque genre, which originated in Spain and depicts in realistic detail the adventures of a roguish hero, often with satiric or humorous effects. Others contend that Huck does not fit the role of rogue and that, therefore, the novel does not qualify as picaresque.
Twain did not consider the novel his best work, and he was completely unprepared for the reception that would follow. In a caustic review immediately following Huck Finn's publication, Life magazine condemned the book that contained graphic instances of nudity and death. The Concord Public Library followed by declaring the book held little humor and regarded it as the "veriest trash." And popular author Louisa May Alcott echoed the sentiments by saying that perhaps Twain should stop writing for American boys and girls altogether if this was the only work he could offer.
Although several initial reviews were negative, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was also quickly commended as an American classic for its expression of the American imagination. The ability to adapt to any situation, the tranquility and promise of the country's great river, and the colorful and varied characters that inhabited the vanishing frontier are all represented within its pages. These elements prompted one of the most famous observations about Huck Finn in 1935, when Ernest Hemingway remarked that "all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn . . . . It's the best book we've had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since." The novel is, indeed, a masterful display of hoaxes, frauds, and pranks, all elements of American humor that Twain had explored in his own readings and previous writings.
No author before Twain had been able to blend the American condition in such a fascinating and engaging manner. It is not surprising then, that 115 years later, close to 1,000 different editions of Huck Finn have been published since the novel first appeared as Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer's Comrade). The translations number more than 100, and the amount of scholarly articles and books continue to dominate the study of American literature. Critical interpretations run the gamut from expansive social commentary of post-Reconstruction in the South, to linguistic interpretations of the African-American voice, to exploration of dark humor and the mythical trickster character. The book has continued to invite exegesis and ignite controversy, and its position as an American classic appears to be ensured.
Simply put, the book continues to thrive because of its original narrative style, its realistic subject matter, and its depiction of loyalty and sacrifice, regardless of the consequences. Unlike former southwestern humor characters, such as George Washington Harris' Sut Lovingood and Johnson J. Hooper's Simon Suggs, Huck does not rely upon an authoritative, gentleman narrator to introduce the story or help explain its significance. There is no doubt that Twain drew heavily upon his literary predecessors for inspiration, but Huck's story is his own. He tells it from his own boyish point of view, free from any affectation, underlying motive, or purpose. In doing so, Twain created a completely original American voice. As Twain scholar Hamlin Hill noted in his introduction to the centennial facsimile edition: "No major writer before Mark Twain had dared to liberate, without explanation or apology, the common character to tell his own story in his own language, and so to dramatize a realistic version of the average American."
Twain did more, however, than depict a realistic version of an average American boy, he also presented the squalid and cruel environment of the South in a brutal and raw manner, including its use of the horrid and offensive term, "niggers." The unabashed narrative approach to racism and the American condition prompted American author Langston Hughes to comment that Twain's work "punctured some of the pretenses of the romantic Old South." By allowing Huck to tell his own story, Twain used his realistic fiction to address America's most painful "sacred cow": the contradiction of racism and segregation in a "free" and "equal" society.
It is ironic that Huck Finn is currently banned in several school libraries for its content and language. Twain's original fears were also of censorship, yet his concern was that the novel would be denounced because of its positive portrayal of Jim and its realistic depiction of the South. To mask his content, Twain infused satire and dark humor throughout the novel. Thus Huck's tale is filled with both moments of childish adventure and instances of biting satire.
The rhetorical coupling of childhood fantasies and death is subtle, and yet the technique of providing the dream of the perfect boyhood allows Twain to use subsequent incongruities for the purposes of social satire. Huck's literal attitude is, at the same time, puerile and mature. In the childlike guise, he views his surroundings in a sensory manner; his environment is constructed and solidified by what he sees and hears. In the adult guise, Huck displays an uncanny wisdom that goes beyond his years as he subconsciously conveys to his readers that beneath the illusion of a carefree world is a country filled with self-doubt. Because Huck is literal, he sees through the idealism and brings about a sobering and realistic revelation.
When Huck contemplates his future aboard the raft in Chapter 31, readers contemplate it with him. And when Huck firmly states, "All right, then, I'll go to hell," readers realize that the decision is based on emotion, as well as Huck's normal logic and pragmatism, which he never escapes. This scene in Chapter 31, for example, is reminiscent of Chapter 16, in which Huck saves Jim by deceiving the men looking for runaway slaves by intimating that there was scarlet fever on the raft. There, he felt "bad and low because I knowed very well I had done wrong . . . ." He reasons, however, that he would have felt the same way if he had turned Jim in, and he concludes, " . . . what's the use of learning to do right when it's troublesome to do right and it ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same." In all his previous experiences, Huck retains his indifferent persona, yet, at the defining moment in Chapter 31, Twain empowers Huck with compassion, and, in doing so, establishes the philosophical possibility that both Huck and Jim can gain freedom.
At this point, readers realize that Twain has moved beyond the various pranks and farces into the realm of bitter social satire. The disquieting element in Huck Finn is not death but contradiction. The biting irony is that Huck constantly believes he is evil because he goes against society's tenets. Moreover, while technically Jim is free from the bonds of Southern slavery, he is also infinitely chained to societal constructions in the same manner that Huck, Tom, Aunt Polly, and the rest of Twain's world are enslaved.
Twain's satirical carrot of idealism is the suggestion that one could successfully break misconceived societal norms, just like Reconstruction attempted to cure the racist ills of a divided South. In this manner, the novel explores the important historical and social underbelly of a nation coping with the existence of social incongruities such as equality and racism. The recognition of this reality in the late nineteenth century, and indeed in the new millennium, makes Huck Finn a novel worthy of discussion.
Ultimately, however, it is the recognition of the heroic struggles of both Huck and Jim that makes Huck Finn a classic work of literature. The testament to human perseverance, loyalty, and faith is embodied in the work through Huck and Jim's gestures of sacrifice. This is not to say that Huck and Jim are able to fully overcome the social obstacles that are placed before them. But the fact that the two nineteenth-century characters — an orphaned boy and a runaway slave — establish a bond that overcomes the boundaries set up by society, even for a brief, fleeting moment, is testament to the heroic truth of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
