Research paper on Mark Twain: Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

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Research paper on Mark Twain: Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twains Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel about a young boys

coming of age in the Missouri of the mid-1800s. It is the story of Hucks

struggle to win freedom for himself and Jim, a Negro slave. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was Mark Twains greatest book, and a delighted world named it his masterpiece. To

nations knowing it well - Huck riding his raft in every language men could print - it

was Americas masterpiece (Allen 259). It is considered one of the greatest novels

because it conceals so well Twains opinions within what is seemingly a childs book. Though initially condemned as inappropriate material for young readers, it soon became prized for its recreation of the Antebellum South, its insights into slavery, and its

depiction of adolescent life. The novel resumes Hucks tale from the Adventures of Tom

Sawyer, which ended with Hucks adoption by Widow Douglas. But it is so much more.

Into this book the world called his masterpiece, Mark Twain put his prime purpose,

one that branched in all his writing: a plea for humanity, for the end of caste, and

of its cruelties (Allen 260).

Twain, whose real name is Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was born in Florida, Missouri, in 1835. During his childhood he lived in Hannibal, Missouri, a Mississippi river port that was to become a large influence on his future writing. It was Twains nature to

write about where he lived, and his nature to criticize it if he felt it necessary. As far his structure, Kaplan said, In plotting a book his structural sense was weak; intoxicated by a hunch, he seldom saw far ahead, and too many of his stories peter out from the authors fatigue or surfeit. His wayward techniques came close to free

association. This method served him best after he had conjured up characters from lon ago, who on coming to life wrote the narrative for him, passing from incident to incident with a grace their creator could never achieve in manipulating an artificial plot (Kaplan 16).

His best friend of forty years William D. Howells, has this to say about

Twains writing.

So far as I know, Mr. Clemens is the first writer to use in extended writing the fashion we all use in thinking, and to set down the thing that comes into his mind without fear or favor of the thing that went before or the thing that may be about to follow (Howells 186).

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