Webster, was in charge of the book's publication, Twain enjoyed control over its promotion and publication; as a result, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was first published in England in late 1884; however, during the publication of the first American edition of the book, one of the all-important drawings was marred. This error gave the drawing, especially when taken together with the illustration's caption, obscene connotations (Champion, 1991)
8). According to Champion (1991), "Mark Twain began Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1876 and completed it in 1883 the book's narrator is "Huck," a young man that Twain provides with the innate ability to ster whose carelessly recorded vernacular speech is admirably adapted to detailed and poetic descriptions of scenes, vivid representations of characters, and narrative renditions that are both broadly comic and subtly ironic (Twain, 2007)
Again and again Huck reproaches himself for 'stealing' Jim, even though clearly it is society, in Twain's view, that has been stealing Jim's liberty away from him for many years. "Huck's experiences with Jim turn upside down everything he [Huck] has been taught about black people and white, about slavery and freedom, about good and evil" (Burns, Duncan & Ward 2002)
However, while Twain may not be a 'politically correct' author in the contemporary sense, merely because his portrayal of Jim is not entirely commensurate with modern sensibilities does not mean that it is entirely blameworthy, either, nor does it mitigate the irony of his portrayal. True, Huck's desire to liberate Jim is personal, not political -- "his personal affection for the slave governs his overthrow of societal mores" writes Peaches Henry (Henry 1992)
And what do you think? They said he was a p'fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain't the wust (Twain 36)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn continues to be a controversial book to teach in American high schools, because of its racially problematic language and attitudes. The book is required in 70% of public high schools and 76% of parochial high schools (Webb 1993)
As the narrator points out midway through the "pilgrims'" adventures, "the fatigues and annoyances of travel fill one with bitter prejudices sometimes!" (196). Because he is often unaware of his predicament, the narrator routinely allows his attitudes to be informed by those "bitter prejudices" (Kravitz 53)
In his novel Huckleberry Finn, for instance, he has Tom Sawyer foolishly using Sir Walter Scott-type adventure stories as a model for action, while Huck Finn as an American would just do the job as simply as possible. Mordecai Richler makes reference to this competition when he writes, One of the joys of reading The Innocents Abroad is the opportunity it affords us of watching the young Twain liberate himself, and American writing, from the yoke of the European tradition, doing a necessary demolition job on it, and the pilgrims who revere often second-rate pictures, proclaiming them masterpieces (Richler 14-15)
In Genoa, Twain is exposed to the machinations of a guide, and he describes this experience in a way that evokes in the reader memories of other guides who did not serve the needs of their charges: Perdition catch all the guides. This one said he was the most gifted linguist in Genoa, as far as English was concerned, and that only two persons in the city beside himself could talk the language at all (Twain 126)
All of these replicate the irony of the town itself, and the inhabitants. The villagers, exemplified by Aunt Patsy Cooper, Aunt Betsy Hale, and Rowena -- the "lightweight heroine" whom Mark Twain described as stupid, irritating, and "nauseatingly sentimental " -- were to demonstrate the curiosity, the envy, and the jealousy of the village while showing its reaction to foreigners and to freaks (Bellamy 303)
"The deepest iron in the irony of this book is the iron plot in which Mark Twain contains the action. Far from being the slave and fool of a narrative current beyond his control, as he claims in his authorial account, Mark Twain visibly rigs every move" (Cox 18)
It is Wilson's inability to see through the false veneer of tradition and training which envelops the town that is damning. Just as the aristocratic Judge Driscoll, the real Valet de Chambre, the mulatto Roxy, and the real Thomas a Becket Driscoll are trapped by the chivalric code and the institution of slavery that define their existence, so David Wilson is trapped and trained into being a true "pudd'nhead" (Eschholz 131)
In another ironic twist, the gambling debt he owes, $200, is enough to buy his own "nigger," and his mother Roxy is stunned. "Now the irony, indeed the wit, here lies in the fact that the $200 Tom has gambled away are $200 he would fetch, being himself 'a tollable good second-hand nigger' (Jehlen 115)
Ironically, the white man is now a black man not because of the color of his skin, but because of his background and the way he was raised. "The expected, indeed purportedly 'indelible' stamps of race, both black and white -- facial features, hair, skin color -- are unreliable from the beginning" (Morris)
The action all takes place in this small town, where newcomers are not welcome. When the reader is first introduced to the world of Dawson's Landing, everything appears to be in order and everyone is carefully controlled: women are firmly deposited in their "sphere," African-Americans know their "place," and the upper class treats the lower strata of society with benign neglect (Skandera-Trombley)
He has an interest in fingerprinting, and studies that in his off time. Dawson's Landing is an idyllic town, "it was a snug little collection of modest one -- and two-storey frame dwellings whose whitewashed exteriors were almost concealed from sight by climbing tangles of rose-vines, honeysuckles, and morning-glories" (Twain 5), except it is a town that allows slavery
Using the pen name Mark Twain, Clemens published more than thirty works of literature that included satire, historical fiction, short stories, and nonfiction. Quite a few of his books, including Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court have gone on to become classics (Literature 1835-1910, n
Various literary scholars have proposed that Twain's literary opinions have been tied to realism because they seem to be founded on an embedded hostility toward romantic literature. Twain is characteristically classified as a member of the loosely defined school of American Literary Realism, although in recent years certain scholars have questioned the suitability of this classification (Minzesheimer, 2005)
It is of course significant that the Yankee, even as he views himself as a liberator and a reformer, also sees himself as in part the imperial and imperialist conqueror Cortes, the conqueror, as that greatest of all champions of imperial privilege Columbus - and as Crusoe, who even when marooned finds a way to make the only other human present his subject. Hank is, to himself, always a force for goodness (Anderson 21)
It is of course significant that the Yankee, even as he views himself as a liberator and a reformer, also sees himself as in part the imperial and imperialist conqueror Cortes, the conqueror, as that greatest of all champions of imperial privilege Columbus - and as Crusoe, who even when marooned finds a way to make the only other human present his subject. Hank is, to himself, always a force for goodness (Anderson 21)