Choice Novel Unit

Huck Finn & The Awakening Both are recognized as being among the greatest novels in American literature. Both contain potentially upsetting themes and events. Both are about main characters who question the rules and morals of their society—alienated heroes. Both have been extremely controversial, both in the past, and now.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. –Ernest Hemingway Huckleberry Finn was originally both valued and reviled because it shows the reader that the accepted moral code and social hierarchy is not always correct. –Robert Vaughan

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Huckleberry Finn is such a book as Mark Twain, and Mark Twain only, could have written. It is meant for boys; but there are few men (we should hope) who, once they take it up, will not delight in it. Huckleberry Finn, as everybody knows, is one of Tom Sawyer’s closest friends; and the present volume is a record of the adventures which befell him soon after the event which made him a person of property and brought Tom Sawyer's story to a becoming conclusion. In this book, Huckleberry is stolen by his disreputable father, to escape from whom he contrives an appearance of robbery and murder, goes off in a canoe, watches from afar the townsfolk hunting for his dead body, and encounters a runaway slave -- Miss Watson's Jim -- an old particular friend of Tom Sawyer and himself. With Jim he goes south down the river, and is the hero of such scrapes and experiences as make your mouth water (if you have ever been a boy) to read of them. The book is Mark Twain at his best, and Jim and Huckleberry are real creations, and the worthy peers of the illustrious Tom Sawyer.

Here, finally, readers encounter a woman recognized and accepted as a human being—imperfect, flawed, egocentric, a bad mother, and an irresponsible wife. — Sam Adrita No other American book was so maligned, neglected for so long, and then embraced so quickly and with such enthusiasm as Kate Chopin’s 1899 novel, The Awakening. —Bernard Koloski The Awakening

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: There may be many opinions touching other aspects of Mrs. Chopin's novel The Awakening, but all must concede its flawless art—the delicacy of touch of rare skill in construction, the subtle understanding of motive, the searching vision into the recesses of the heart. In this work, power appears, power born of confidence. There is no uncertainty in the lines, so surely and firmly drawn. Complete mastery is apparent on every page. Nothing is wanting to make a complete artistic whole. In delicious English, quick with life, never a word too much, simple and pure, the story proceeds with classic severity through a labyrinth of doubt and temptation and dumb despair. The Awakening From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: 20 May 1899 by C. L. Deyo