Huckleberry Finn Literary Analysis Essay

Literary Analysis of Huckleberry Finn

The brilliant author Mark Twain, published The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn on February, 1885 (Ulin). According to book critic David Ulin, Ernest Hemingway declared that Huckleberry Finn has been one of the best books in American Literature and that all of American writing comes from that novel (Ulin). Being a businessman, Mark Twain was very involved in marketing and publishing his own books (Mulder). Twain’s involvement made the publishing process for the book Huckleberry Finn a difficult one (Mulder). Twain began to feel displeased with his first publisher James R. Oswood in 1884, which caused the publishing process to extend (Mulder). Twain ended up forming his own publishing company with his nephew

Each work has to have at least one type of Rhetorical Device, for devices are what make a book or story come to life. In chapter one from Huckleberry Finn the main character starts a conversation with the reader, in which the character introduces himself to the lectors. The opening statement to the novel is, “You don’t know about me, without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer…” (Twain 1). This phrase used is an allusion to a previous novel by Mark Twain. The reference to the other novel is what gives the reader a small background on how Huck met his friend, Tom Sawyer. Allusions are mostly used by authors to provide some background knowledge to previous works of literature that probably were a factor that influenced the author to write a certain piece of his or her work. The reader would probably want to consider reading the reference made to have a more clear understanding about the character; however, they are not forced to. The allusion is present in the first two paragraphs of the novel. Twain provides the main character with little explanation, in which Huck explains more or less what happened to him and his friend in the other story. Allusion is not the only rhetorical device present in the first chapter of The Adventures of Huckleberry

As the reader reads along he or she gets to see how the character is. The widow appeared to be Christian, yet her actions seemed a bit hypocritical for her. For example, Huck mentions in paragraph three that the widow would call him names. In paragraph five, Huck says that the lady would not let him smoke because she would say that “it was a mean practice and wasn’t clean…” (2). However, there was times where she would smoke and did not say anything about it. The widow could be the figure of satire present in the novel. In paragraph four, Huck says that after supper the widow would teach him about Moses and the Bulrushers. He says, “I was in sweat to find out all about him…she let out that Moses had been dead a considerable long; so then I didn’t care no more about him…”(2). The comment Huck says is religious satire. He is in a way making fun of religion saying that he no longer cares about Moses since he has been dead for a while. The interesting thing about satire is that it can somewhat be a way for an author to trespass his or her own views or opinions through his or her characters. The satire used by Twain could be a form to express his views on