Bold Challenge!

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Bold Challenge!

• Based on what youve read so far, how would you
  explain Huck to someone? Whats he like? What
  qualities define his character thus far?
• Do it.

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Samuel Langhorne Clemens

• 1835-1910
• Mark Twain
• Hannibal, Missouri
• the Mississippi River
• humorist, public speaker, novelist, riverboat
  pilot

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Tom Sawyer

• Published in 1876
• a boys book
• high adventure, mischief, freedom from adult
  world
• the worlds introduction to Huckleberry Finn, the
  semi-homeless son of the town drunk
• Huck and Tom solve a murder-mystery and receive a
  large sum of treasure money they find.

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Huckleberry Finn

• started in 1876 not finished and published until
  1885.
• Written in fits and starts
• set in the 1830s or 1840s -- antebellum South
• written after the end of the Civil War
• another boys book???
• NOTICE

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Realism and Humor

• literary transitional period -- from Romanticism
  to Realism
• local color
• verisimilitude
• dialect
• slapstick
• satire

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The Controversy in 1885

• banned by the Concord, MA. library in 1885 one
  of the most frequently banned books in American
  history.
• absolutely immoral in its tone rough,
  ignorant dialect systematic use of bad grammar
  and an employment of inelegant expressions.
• trash of the veriest sort

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The Controversy Today

• A masterpiece. T.S. Eliot
• One of the worlds great books and one of the
  central documents of American culture. Lionel
  Trilling
• All modern literature comes from one book by
  Mark Twain called The Adventures of Huckleberry
  Finn. Ernest Hemingway

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The Controversy Today

• For the past forty years, black families have
  trekked to schools in numerous districts
  throughout the country to say, This book isnt
  good for our children, only to be turned away by
  insensitive and often unwittingly racist teachers
  and administrators who respond, This book is a
  classic. John H. Wallace
• CBS 60 Minutes on "Huck" Controversy

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The Controversy Today

• Why do many people believe that Huck Finn is a
  racist novel?
• the portrayal of the character Jim
• Jim is a white mans inadequate portrait of a
  slave. Ralph Ellison, author
• the N Word
• appears over 200 times. Why?
• The fine line between satirical and
  offensive.
• the ending
• the original illustrations