Huckleberry Finn - Critical Essay :: essays research papers

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the noblest, greatest, and most adventuresome novel in the world. Mark Twain definitely has a style of his own that depicts a realism in the novel ab give away the society back in antebellum America. Mark Twain definitely characterizes the protagonist, the intelligent and sympathetic Huckleberry Finn, by the machinate candid manner of writing as though through the actual voice of Huck. Every word, thought, and speech by Huck is so precise it reflects flat the racism and black stereotypes typical of the era. And this has lead to many conflicting battles by various readers since the first print of the novel, though inspiring some. Says John H. Wallace, outraged by Twains constant use of the degrading and white supremacist word spade, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the most grotesque example of racist trash ever compose" (Mark Twain Journal by Thadious Davis, Fall 1984 and Spring 1985). Yet, again to counter that is a quote by t he great American writer Ernest Hemingway, "All advance(a) American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finnits the best book weve hadThere has been nothing as good since" (The commonality Hills of Africa Scribners. 1953 22). The controversy behind the novel has been and will always remain the crux of any readers is still truly racism. Twain surely does use the word nigger often, both as a referral to the slave Jim and any African-American that Huck comes across and as the epitome of insult and inferiority. However, the reader must also not fail to recognize that this style of racism, this malicious treatment of African-Americans, this degrading attitude towards them is all stylized of the pre-Civil War tradition. Racism is only mentioned in the novel as an object of natural course and a precision to the actual views of the setting then. Huckleberry Finn still stands as a powerful portrayal of experience through the new eyes of an innocent boy. Huck only says and treats the African-American culture accordingly with the society that he was raised in. To say anything different would truly be out of place and setting of the era. Twains literary style in capturing the novel, Hucks casual attitude and candid position, and Jims undoubted acceptance of the oppressiveness by the names all signifies this. Twains literary style is that of a natural southern dialect intermingled with other dialects to represent the various attitudes of the Mississippian office he does not intend to outrightly suggest Negro inferiority.