n  "I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest because Aunt Sally says she's going to adopt me and sivilise me, and I can't stand it. I been there before."n

I thought I should start the year with another classic and what better book to choose than Huckleberry Finn which the author, "Mark Twain", had vowed to "pigeon hole, or burn", prior to its publication!

I located the audio which is in the public domain: Huckleberry Finn Chapter 1. I hadn't realised it was 43 CHAPTERS, though, and that listening to the audio would end up being a painfully slow way of getting through this book. Although the first few chapters were entertaining, I found myself drifting off and thinking about other things. Forcing myself to PAY ATTENTION TO THIS VERY IMPORTANT CLASSIC, I managed to make it to around chapter 20 before I gave up. The lazy voice of the narrator fits the book and its pace, but unfortunately there wasn't much hope of me getting anywhere near the end of this....as I was lulled to sleep by the monotony. (Note to self: this would be a good book to listen to on a long lone car journey when there aren't many distractions.)

I was curious about why this is a classic and as I only made it less than halfway through the book and can't say that I was paying that much attention when I was listening, I went searching for a simpler way of learning about it.

I was pleased to find this crash course: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Part 1: and The Raft, the River, and The Weird Ending of Huckleberry Finn:  This explains everything you need to know in less than thirty minutes! The most interesting comment the guy makes, after saying that Huck sees the river as a god, is that we all worship something and if it hadn't been the river, it would've been something else. That's because God created us to worship Him if only more people would realise it!

For those that can't cope with that level of academia or the frantic pace of the speaker, try this alternative: Huck and Tom's Mississippi Adventure Full Movie . (I thought you'd appreciate this.)

I'm not going to summarise the plot as I'm sure most readers know it. It was amusing to note that most of the people commenting on the Youtube Crash Course were students desperately trying to complete essays on the book prior to deadlines. They were all very grateful for the summary. I'm not sure how many people would choose to read this book from cover to cover.

I wouldn't read this again and won't probably be bothering with the prequel Tom Sawyer.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is a classic American novel, published in 1884, the novel is known for its themes such as racism, friendship, and moral growth. I read James previously. August we read it and discussed in one of my book clubs. I had family in Northern Missouri when I was a young child. I visited Hannibal multiple times. I loved that small town and learning about Mark Twain aka Samuel Clemons. In high school I had the opportunity to take a semester dedicated exclusively to Mark Twains writings. He will always be a favorite author. Huckleberry Finn remains an exploration of human nature, freedom, and moral courage. This is a an important piece of classic American literature.

This new audiobook version of Mark Twain's classic American novel, narrated by the wonderful Robin Miles, was an entertaining listen and presents an alternative avenue for new readers (listeners) to access a great work.
The plot follows 13 or 14 year-old Huck Finn's adventures traversing the Mississippi River from (fictional) St. Petersburg to (fictional) Pikesville, having escaped first the civilising efforts of the Widow Douglas, then from his abusive father. He's accompanied on his journey by escaped slave, Jim, who's hoping to reach the free state of Illinois, whence he'll purchase the freedom of his family members who remain in slavery in the South.

Miles's narration is clear and may assist modern readers to comprehend the Southern vernacular language used throughout the novel. She's a talented voice artist, using a variety of pitch, tones and accents to define the wide cast of characters.
It's a rollicking good tale, cleverly satirical and ultimately heartwarming. Appropriate to the context, racial epithets and racist attitudes appear liberally throughout, which will be confronting to a modern audience. However, the central character and the tone of the work are sympathetic to the plight of Jim, and decidedly anti-slavery, exposing the hypocrisy and repugnance of the views of many in the Antebellum South. Younger readers (listeners) may require some guidance in this regard.
I have no hesitation in recommending this audiobook edition, both to established fans of Twain's writing (like myself), and new reader-listeners.
My thanks to the publisher Thomas Nelson and Netgalley for the opportunity to listen to and review this audiobook edition.

I never had plans to read this novel. I knew it was a great American classic, I heard about controversies, and I thought it was a childish story. And then I saw that Percival Everett is retelling this story from Jim’s point of view, so this was my impetus to finally read it. What a frustrating book.


While it started out as childish exploits of a bunch of kids, the tone shifts considerably with the arrival of Huck’s daddy, meeting Jim and morphing into a sad heartbreaking story of loneliness and being an outcast. Huck and Jim are a fantastic duo and their relationship has many beautiful scenes. The scene where Huck was messing with Jim when Jim was so worried that the boy disappeared and then him realizing that Huck was making fun of him and the hurt of it, I felt Jim’s fatherly love for the boy. And at the same time Jim and his love for Huck and his own child is juxtaposed with Huck’s real father, that abusive maniac who only sees Huck as a tool to get money for drink and abuse him for fun. Did I wish Twain went further in writing Jim, not falling to some unfortunate stereotyping, did I wish he would’ve written a father son relationship? I very much did. Can there be even a father-son relationship considering how unequal they were because of the race in those times? I don’t think it can be, they are no equals in the eyes of society and in their own eyes that internalized racism of the day. God, how angry I was when Jim had to prove he was one of “the good ones” staying with stupid Tom and forfeiting his freedom, while I was mentally shouting “run you fool”. I wish Tom died to be honest.


I know it’s a cliche to say, but the Mississippi river is a third main character, I loved the beauty and dangers of it, the freedom it promised.
This is a book with a beautiful first part, about the loss of innocence and love, the only time Huck felt peaceful and happy was sailing that river with Jim.

I never felt easy till the raft was two mile below there and out in the middle of the Mississippi. Then we hung up our signal lantern, and judged that we was free and safe once more. I hadn’t had a bite to eat since yesterday, so Jim he got out some corn-dodgers and buttermilk, and pork and cabbage and greens—there ain’t nothing in the world so good when it’s cooked right—and whilst I eat my supper we talked and had a good time. I was powerful glad to get away from the feuds, and so was Jim to get away from the swamp. We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.

And then the things I didn’t like at all: I think I developed an allergy for duke/king shenanigans pretty quickly, damn those chapters lasted eternity. And then there’s the ending with Tom Sawyer that I would argue is very important, that makes me so annoyed, frustrated and tired that I wanted to leave this god forsaken society by the end of it and move west, and never be civilized by these disgusting adults. The revelation that both Huck and Jim were both unknowingly free for the most of the book just adds to my confusion. Twain keeps throwing the hypocrisies of the white "civilized" southern society right back at them, right till the end, I loved that part. And now I can't wait to read James

I had mixed feelings about this book.

On the one hand, it's clear that Mark Twain was progressive for his day, satirizing the topsy-turvy morals of the slavery-era south. His heroes are two people at the bottom rung of the social ladder - a runaway slave, and the son of the town drunk. Though they're not valued by society, they turn out to be the two most honorable characters of the book. And I appreciated the questions it raised, about how we construct our own sense of morality in the context of broader social morals, and how we deal with potential conflicts between those two. I loved Huck for choosing to go to hell rather than turn in his friend.

On the other hand, it's such a far-fetched farce, with so many over-the-top scenes, one crazy situation after another, so many coincidences, such silliness, that I had a hard time enjoying it. At the end, Tom keeps adding all kinds of superfluous details into the escape plan, just to satisfy his sense of drama. The author seems to think this will be amusing - see how it's a funny game to Tom, see how he's influenced by all the adventure books he's ever read... And I just wanted to smack the kid, and say, "A man's life is in danger! How dare you treat this like a game of make-believe! Just get him out of there, you idiot!"

The humor reminded me a lot of Candide. That style (social satire, ironic farce, fable, whatever you want to call it) can be a great way to make a point. But it's not the same as a novel with well-developed characters and a realistic plot.

Sometimes I enjoy satire, but yesterday, I just wasn't in the mood. I felt like the atrocities committed in our country against African-Americans were just too horrific to laugh at.

I have heard that people often protest this book when it appears on school curricula, because of the repeated use of the n-word. I think I had an easier time accepting that word, because it reflected the common usage of the time, and it felt like part of the natural, authentic voice of the narrator. I had a harder time with the portrayal of Jim as a naive, superstitious, gullible, person, who seems completely dependent on a young white boy to figure out what to do. Jim is good, but he doesn’t come across as particularly smart. He's more an archetype - the noble savage - than a real person.

I think the main value of this book is as a historical artifact. You can see the important role it played if you look at what it was for the time it was written in, and how it influenced other books written in America. But I don’t think it could get published today. I'm glad to say, we've come a long way.

Pretty good, kinda silly - but I think that is what Twain was going for - 3.5 stars.

Twain is the king of the Yarn. Huckleberry Finn is a collection of outlandish tales all with lies and trickery at their heart. At the time of its release I am sure it became a bible for scoundrels and mischevious teens.

This book is controversial, and even frequently banned, because of its portrayal of black slaves and the use of the N-word. I venture into shaky ground here by offering my opinion as I am white, but I don't think I will cause too much trouble. I can accept that at the time of writing the words and language were fairly normal so as a time period piece it is true. However, I can't say I have read a book that takes place in that time period that so flippantly tosses the n-word around. Regarding banning of this book - I can definitely tell why some parents might be concerned about their kids reading this book. I think a lot of it depends on how it is being taught - I would hope the teacher would put an emphasis on explaining the language being used.

Summary:

- A good book
- Kind of silly
- A handbook for deception
- An understandably controversial reflection of the prejudices at the time it was written
- Some may need guidance regarding the the way racial differences are portrayed in this book.

The ugly face of slavery and racism

Described in detail by one of the big storytellers
Twain just had the intuition and talent to create a milestone of enlightening literature, showing humankind its worst flaws by not moralizing, proselytizing, and thereby boring the audience. Instead, all the atrocities are shown in the actions, mentalities, and especially dialogues of the

Bigoted and primitive people of that time
That deem themselves superior, smart, and just sheer Übermensch. Many works against slavery, fascism, extremism, and faith use that storytelling trick of making the hatemongering trolls, the stupid, uneducated antagonistic people of that time, ridiculous in contrast to the progressive, sophisticated protagonists. In the case of Huckleberry Finn

Everyone except the protagonist is evil
Because the norms, rules, and laws of the time allow them to be. That´s the subject Twain isn´t directly pointing his finger at, but the underlying core of the tale, that opportunity makes thieves. And a society based on exploitation and brutality creates inhuman, full citizen status subjects with all democratic human rights that treat anyone inferior like an animal and worse than their dogs. That´s

A scheme as old as history
And Twain digs deeper into it in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
He goes above the average evil citizen and describes the ones, kings, god emperors, and faith fueled fanatics, who want this mess to better rule the mad masses. One of the, subjective, main reasons why Huckleberry is so much more successful than the Yankee is that it´s easier to read about bad people doing unfriendly things without directly attacking the system itself. The Yankee does this in a satiric way and is even today just too uncomfortable for people who believe that everything is fine. This

Humor and irony are the final ingredients
Other great works against slavery are mind opening and well written too, but come with a depressing and hopeless undertone. Twain doesn´t just deliver the important messages, but he does it in combination with creating hilarious dialogues, motivations, and character evolutions that combine deep thoughts and giggles. When first reading Twain as a teenager I didn´t get that, I didn´t see the ingenuity of the whole plot that permanently delivers deep and cynical, postmodern social satire with tons of dark comedy elements.

Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...

-احدى امتع القصص التي قرأتها ابدا. تصلح لكل الأعمار، فكلما نضج القارئ نضجت الرواية معه واستقى معان جديدة منها.

- القصة على لسان صبي مراهق؛ تنطلق ببطئ في الفصول الأولى لكن سحرها يبدأ في الكوخ المنعزل مع الفكرة المجنونة للفتى، وتنطلق الرحلة الساحرة.

-الشخصيات كانت ممتازة، ف "هاكلبري" مغامر ذكي وفطن وطيب، "جيم" العبد وقصة تلاقيهما والصفات المعطاة له من "توين" كانت مذهلة، "الدوق"و "الملك" من افضل الشخصيات التي وجدتها في رواية يوماً لما يمتلكاه من اساليب شيطانية.

- لم يطل توين الأحداث، لكنه جعلها متواترة بطريقة لا تشعرك بالملل وتجعلك تعيش في القصة منتظراً ما الذي سيحصل تالياً، والتنويع الحاصل بين اصناف المغامرات ومواقعها (غابة، نهر، قرية، سيرك، مزرعة...) اتى ليعزز التشويق في هذه الرواية.

-الأسلوب سلس على عادة "مارك توين"، ساخر ومبطن في العديد من الأماكن ومن هنا فمهما كان عمر القارئ سيستقي معنى جديد مبطن بين سطور الرواية.

- "هاكلبري" ليس بطلاً امريكيا كما اعتادت هوليوود تصويره، فهو ليس مع اعطاء الحرية للعبيد، لكنه طيب القلب وكان جميلاً ان نرى وجهة النظر هذه من دون المزايدات المتعارف عليها!!

- "توين" يقوم بالسخرية من "سوير"في نهاية الرواية، ويصوره ككائن جليدي لا يهتم سوى بأفكاره دون اخذ ادنى اعتبار لمشاعر الآخرين.

- الترجمة ممتازة وسلسة، واللغة المستعملة بسيطة.

- أنصح الجميع بقرأتها لأنها ستضحككم من الصميم في العديد من الأماكن (خصوصا مع "الملك"و"الدوق")، وستقرأون فيها العديد من اللمسات الإنسانية، العاطفية وبعض الحبكات المشوقة جداً.

After reading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, I realized that I had absolutely nothing to say about it. And yet here, as you see, I have elected to say it anyway, and at great length.

Reading this novel now, at the age of mumble-mumble, is a bit like arriving at the circus after the tents have been packed, the bearded lady has been depilated, and the funnel cake trailers have been hitched to pick-up trucks and captained, like a formidable vending armada, toward the auburn sunset. All the fun has already been used up, and I’m left behind circumnavigating the islands of elephant dung and getting drunk on Robitussin®. Same story, different day.

How exactly did I make it through eight total years of high school and undergraduate studies in English without having read any Mark Twain but a brief (and forgotten) excerpt from Life on the Mississippi? Isn’t this illegal by now? I mean, isn’t there a clause in the Patriot Act... an eleventh commandment... a dictate from Xenu? Isn’t Huckleberry Finn, like Romeo and Juliet and To Kill a Mockingbird, now an unavoidable teenage road bump between rainbow parties and huffing spray paint? Isn’t it the role of tedious classic literature to add color and texture to the pettiness of an adolescence circumscribed by status updates, muff shaving, and shooting each other? Or am I old-fashioned?

Let’s face it. In the greater social consciousness, there are two stars of this book: (1) the word 'nigger' and (2) the Sherwood Schwartz-style ending in which Tom Sawyer reappears and makes even the most casual reader wonder whether he might not be retarded.

Huckleberry Finn, for all his white trash pedigree, is actually a pretty smart kid -- the kind of dirty-faced boy you see, in his younger years, in a shopping cart at Wal-Mart, being barked at by a monstrously obese mother in wedgied sweatpants and a stalagmite of a father who sweats tobacco juice and thinks the word 'coloreds' is too P.C. Orbiting the cart, filled with generic cigarette cartons, tabloids, and canned meats, are a half-dozen kids, glazed with spittle and howling like Helen Keller over the water pump, but your eyes return to the small, sad boy sitting in the cart. His gaze, imploring, suggestive of a caged intellect, breaks your heart, so you turn and comparison-shop for chewing gum or breath mints. He is condemned to a very dim horizon, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it, so you might as well buy some Altoids and forget about it...

That boy is the spiritual descendant of Huckleberry Finn.

The 'nigger' controversy -- is there still one? -- is terribly inconsequential. It almost seems too obvious to point out that this is (a) firstly a 'period novel,' meaning it that occurs at a very specific historical moment at a specific location and (b) secondly a first-person narrative, which is therefore saddled with the language, perspective, and nascent ideologies of its narrator. Should we expect a mostly uneducated, abused adolescent son of a racist alcoholic who is living in the South before the Civil War to have a respectful, intellectually-enlightened perspective toward black people? Should the character of Huck Finn, in other words, be ahistorical, anachronistic? Certainly not, if we expect any semblance of honesty from our national literature.

Far more troubling to many critics is the ending of Huckleberry Finn, when -- by a freakishly literary coincidence -- Huck Finn is mistaken for Tom Sawyer by Tom’s relatives, who happen to be holding Jim (the slave on the run) in hopes of collecting a reward from his owners. There are all sorts of contrivances in this scenario -- the likes of which haven’t been seen since the golden age of Three’s Company -- which ends with Tom arriving and devising a ridiculously elaborate scheme for rescuing Jim.

All in all, the ending didn’t bother me as much as it bothered some essayists I’ve read. That is, it didn’t strike me as especially conspicuous in a novel which relies a great deal on narrative implausibility and coincidence. Sure, Tom Sawyer is something of an idiot, as we discover, but in a novel that includes faked deaths and absurd con jobs, his idiocy seems well-placed.

In the end, I suppose the greatest thing I can say about this novel is that it left me wondering what happened to Huck Finn. Would his intellect and compassion escape from his circumstances or would he become yet another bigoted, abusive father squiring another brood of dirty, doomed children around a fluorescently-lit Wal-Mart?

I really quite enjoyed this well-written satire of slavery-era America. I reads a lot like a Dickens novel, very episodic and with a youthful protagonist. I'll put aside the fact that Huck Finn may be the most annoying character in all of literature and say that this is a great American classic for a reason. It's captivating, it's funny, and it's never boring. While it may not have aged very well, it's still an important text that covers a time when America was in its adolescent stage.

THE Greatest American Novel?

Well...

No wonder the Spanish think themselves intellectually/culturally superior with their Quixote, undoubtedly a blueprint for this mischievous Every Boy! Huck Finn is the full embodiment of THE American Fantasy: mainly that dire misconception that the protagonist of the world is you and that everything gravitates around that essential nucleus. Everyone in town thinks Huck dead, and what does he do but follow the tradition of a plot folding unto itself (as Don Q finds his story become medieval pop culture in Part II of that superior novel) as he disguises himself as a little girl and tries to squeeze information out of some lady about his myth-in-the-making trek. It seems everyone cares for this vagrant, a perpetual Sancho P to Tom Sawyer's Quixote, whose redeemable features include (a pre-transcendental) openmindedness and an inclination to live only in the NOW. But the narrator, a very unreliable one at that, surrounds himself with bad bad men, playing the role of accomplice often, always safe and sound under the dragon's wing. Very American in his lemming mentality & in his misconceptions (though about his hometown and wilderness he knows much indeed).

So: disguise used as an integral plot device several times throughout; brawny men taking a boy hostage; nakedness by the riverbed; costume changes, improvised Shakespearean shows, men almost always described as "beautiful" (and women solely as "lovely")....

***GAY!!***

Yeah, it really is hard to discern the allegory behind all of this hype. The humor is obvious, but I have to admit that this picaresque novel about a boy who avoids "sivilization" at all costs is beaten mercilessly by a more modern, therefore more RELEVANT tale of the South, "Confederacy of Dunces." Although it must be admitted that "Huck Finn" does manage to surpass other often-praised classics, like the droll "Wuthering Heights."

High in the running with Moby Dick and it's companion novel Tom Sawyer to be the Great American novel.