The sequel to 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer' remains one of the greatest creations in American fiction. 'Huckleberry Finn' is a picaresque tale, told in Huck's own voice, of his adventures on a raft on the Mississippi River. It begins with Huck's escape from his drunken, brutal father to the river, where he meets up with Jim, a runaway slave. The story of their journey downstream, with occasional forays into the society along the banks, is an American classic that captures the smells, rhythms, and sounds, the variety of ...
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The sequel to 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer' remains one of the greatest creations in American fiction. 'Huckleberry Finn' is a picaresque tale, told in Huck's own voice, of his adventures on a raft on the Mississippi River. It begins with Huck's escape from his drunken, brutal father to the river, where he meets up with Jim, a runaway slave. The story of their journey downstream, with occasional forays into the society along the banks, is an American classic that captures the smells, rhythms, and sounds, the variety of dialects and the human activity of life on the great river. The novel is also a penetrating social commentary that reveals corruption and moral decay through Huck and Jim's encounters with traveling actors and con men, lynch mobs, thieves and southern gentility. Through Jim, and through his own observations and experiences, Huck learns about the dignity and worth of human life.
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Add this copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to cart. $16.30, new condition, Sold by Ingram Customer Returns Center rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from NV, USA, published 2015 by Lulu.com.
Add this copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to cart. $29.34, new condition, Sold by Ria Christie Books rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Uxbridge, MIDDLESEX, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2015 by Lulu.com.
I give classic books to my kids as gifts. This was perfect. Age. quality. it was everything I hoped to gift for my families future generations to read and enjoy. Even made a box cover for the book. Can't hide the past from ignorance.
FanOfTimeLifeBooks
Aug 21, 2013
A Sophisticated Sequel to Tom Sawyer
Published in the United States in 1885, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn portrays the continuing story of one of the main characters first introduced in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Wanting to escape his abusive father, Huck runs away. Huck is joined with Jim, a runaway slave who fears being sold. Huck and Jim encounter all sorts of adventures and unique people on their way down the Mississippi River. The book also serves as a commentary on slavery and race relations in the nineteenth century. Thus, there is much more to this book than a boy simply narrating his adventures as he runs away with an escaped slave. True, the book uses words which would be considered offensive by present standards; moreover, some would say that this is a racist book. However, the book must be interpreted and analyzed in the time in which it was written. With this book, Mark Twain capably presents a social issue from the perspective of a boy seeking a better situation. I found Huck Finn more enjoyable as I read it right after I finished Tom Sawyer; while one does not have to read Tom Sawyer to understand Huck Finn, one will get a lot more out this book if the prequel is read first.
LorieC49
Mar 3, 2011
Huck Finn
Book in very good shape. Was sent out and arrived in great shape and promptly. Would recommend to anyone
Maggie1
Dec 29, 2009
read it for a reason
I call this an onion (or parfait!) book, best understood by recognizing its layers. While many people "enjoy" Huck when they are children, it's best read by adults or teens with their eyes and ears open. Twain gives us harsh criticism of all American society, disguised as an adventure. The only decent human being in the book is Jim, and that was Twain's point. Twain wrote in reaction to how he saw people treating each other, but he knew no one would read it if it began "You all need to be nicer!" At every turn we get a semi-humorous event with a terribly dark underbelly. If you don't pay attention, you'll miss the very serious nature of this novel.
dekesolomon
Sep 27, 2009
Huck & Jim's Serendipitous Salvation
Of all the endings possible for 'Huckleberry Finn,' only one would have made any sense. My own, uneducated guess is that Mark Twain didn't want (or didn't have the courage) to go that way, so he tacked on a resolution clapped together from maudlin slop and preposterous coincidence. When I put my mean eye on 'Huck Finn,' I can literally see where the fix was thrown in. It couldn't be clearer had the author drawn a line across the bottom of chapter 31.
Thus what might have been one of the world's great tragedies became what is yet one of the world's great pieces of kiddie lit. The world declares it so and so it will remain, which is some consolation because the book remains a tragedy of a sort.
The world needs kiddie lit, whether adults enjoy it or not. That's why 'Huckleberry Finn' will outlast ten thousand writers like me. It will survive all attempts to pry it out of its place in the canon and future generations will have to suffer that awful resolution just as I did. Most people don't notice anything wrong with it, anyway.
The upshot is that 'Huck Finn' is immortal: it is a thing like warfare or venereal disease. And if (unlike most Americans) you've read all of Mark Twain, you know the old geezer would have chortled at and cherished that thought.
When I was a lad of nine years, I'd have rated "Huckleberry Finn" at six stars, my logic then being that five were not enough. Today, 61 years old, getting on toward the end of a hard life, I give it three stars for the three fourths of the book that are truly superb. The rest of it is goo.