1. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain

2. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Background
Realism
Reaction against romanticism
Realist authors opted for depictions of everyday and banal activities and experiences, instead of a
romanticized or
similarly stylized
presentation.

3. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Background
Realism
Realism is the faithful representation of reality (verisimilitude).
Although strictly speaking, realism is a technique, it also denotes a particular kind of subject matter, especially the representation of middle-class life.

4. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Background
Realism
According to William Harmon and Hugh Holman, “Where romanticists transcend the immediate to find the ideal, and naturalists plumb the actual or superficial to find the scientific laws that control its actions, realists center their attention to a remarkable degree on the immediate, the here and now, the specific action, and the verifiable consequence.”
(Handbook to Literature 428)

5. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Background
Genre
American Authors
Perceived the individual as...
Puritanism
Anne Bradstreet Edward Taylor
glorifying god
Romantics
Ralph Waldo Emerson Henry David Thoreau
valuable, imaginative
Realists
Henry James William Dean Howells Mark Twain
simply a person
Naturalists
Stephen Crane Frank Norris
a helpless object

6. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Background
Mark Twain, the pen name of Samuel Clemens, is one of the United States’ best-known authors.
In novels such as Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain vividly depicts the lives and dialects of Southern people from long ago.

7. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Introduction

8. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Background
Twain also uses humor and satire both to entertain and to comment on society.

9. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Background
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn takes place in the years before the Civil War.
In the South at that time, a slave was considered property.
Stealing a hunted slave was seen as a great crime—and morally wrong.

10. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Background
When Twain wrote the novel, in the 1880s, the Civil War had been fought and the slaves had been freed.
However, conditions for African Americans were still very difficult in many parts of the United States.

11. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Background
When Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published, critics hated the novel, accusing it of “coarse fun” and “gutter realism.”
Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women, wrote “If Mr. Clemens cannot think of something better to tell our pure-minded lads and lasses, he had best stop writing for them.”

12. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Background
Twain welcomed the controversy, however, hoping that it would bring more sales.
The book sold fifty thousand copies in the first few months.

13. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Background
Today, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remains controversial.
Although it’s accepted as a classic of American literature, some critics still accuse it of being racist, and its use in schools has been challenged.

14. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Introduction
"All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn."
- Ernest Hemingway, Green Hills of Africa
Hemingway dubbed Huck Finn the great American novel because beyond landscape, beyond concept, it captured the feel, through use of over 25 dialects, of the American people.
Unique Characteristics of the Novel:
Huck’s Narration
Twain’s Use of Dialect and Voice

15. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Introduction
“…the difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter- ‘tis the difference between the lightening-bug and the lightening” (Twain).

16. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Introduction
Huck Finn was written over approximately eight years and went through extensive revisions.
Some changes were simple, just to capture accurate flow of voice:
1st Draft “You will not know about me…”
2nd Draft “You do not know about me…”
3rd Draft “You don’t know about me…”

17. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Introduction
Other revisions eliminated his natural complexities to fit Huck more accurately:
1st Draft “Not the kind of laugh you hear at the circus, but the kind that’s fitten for a funeral- the kind that makes you feel crawly”
Revision “Not the pleasant kind, but the kind that makes you feel like when you are eating bread that’s got sand in it.”

18. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Introduction
Revisions in spelling/word choice used to accurately capture sound of particular dialect
“day” becomes “dey”
“was” becomes “wuz” or “’uz”