Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

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Huckleberry Finn

There may never be another novel written quite like Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. It combines adventure, suspense and comedy to create a most accurate account of the times. Huckleberry Finn warms the heart of the reader by placing an ignorant white boy by the name of Huckleberry Finn in some strange situations, having him tell his remarkable story the way it streams into his own eyes. Huckleberry Finn is nearly always confused on account of so many different kinds of people having such different impressions upon him; he turns to his own heart and intelligence for guidance. Huckleberry Finn has a heart of gold, and grows as a person throughout the story.

Huckleberry Finn's setting jumps around to a number of different places. The beginning takes place in St. Petersburg, Missouri in around the 1840s, before the Civil War. Huckleberry lived in a very "sivilized" household; a rather prosperous one as well, with the Widow Douglas. It was a time of slavery, though throughout the entire novel there was very little said to put down African Americans. The characters in the book, as many as there were, were all created by Twain to respect and acknowledge the decency in their slaves.

There are two main characters in Huckleberry Finn: Huckleberry Finn, and Jim, a runaway slave. Huckleberry Finn finds himself torn between his own judgement of helping Jim escape, and the people around him who support slavery in it's entirety. He is in a bad and dangerous situation while with Jim, because anyone might possibly think Jim a runaway "nigger" and turn him back in for the reward of cash, as well as clout for being honest. But Huck is a very bright and creative young man, and uses his intelligence to both his and Jim's advantages in order to save their lives, on more than one occasion. He is quite brilliant under pressure, as when encountered by two men looking for runaway "niggers". The men inquired about who else was with Huck. The men threatened to come closer and see, and Huck replied, "I wish you would, because it's pap that's there, and maybe you'd help me tow the raft ashore...He's sick..." and Huck let on that he needed the men's help, and that his "pap" was awful ill, and soon enough the men hollered, "Keep away, boy. Confound it, I just expected the wind has blown it to us.

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