huck finn research paper thesis

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Mark Twain's the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as a great American Novel

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Consistency in writing style and narrative structure, as well as accuracy in the development and treatment of characters and themes, lie at the core of any truly remarkable novel. If irregularities or discrepancies surface, controversy ensues and the novel runs the risk of losing popular and critical acclaim. When at the beginning of the writing process the author has already an ending in mind, the task to structure and to expand the story will result in a more uniform text than if the characters are unleashed. By choosing the latter approach, an author may end up with a dead end, from which finding an adequate continuation and conclusion is a challenging task. In such a case only radical action will suffice, such as the introduction of additional characters or unpredictable events to disentangle the conflicts and to achieve an acceptable resolution. Such a dead end occurred during the writing process of one of the most celebrated and controversial novels of 19th-century American literature and a symbol of American culture: Mark Twainûs Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885). On the surface, the final episode, which resolves all conflicts and concludes the story, seems to provide a satisfactory ending. However, a close reading reveals a layer of flaws and questionable choices made by Twain underneath, as it never reaches the intensity and quality of the preceding build-up. This paper seeks to demonstrate that this great American novel must be critiqued for its inadequate ending, which is the result of a disjointed writing process and several inconsistencies. Keywords: 19th-century American literature, Reconstruction era, narrative structure, conclusion, satire, humor, writing process

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This thesis examines Mark Twain's use of the dialectic between the characters Huck and Jim to illuminate Jim's humanity in the classic novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Over the course of their adventure, Huck learns that Jim is a human being and not property. This realization leads Huck to choose to assist Jim in his escape from captivity, and risk eternal damnation according to his religious beliefs. Huck's decision is driven by the friendship that develops between him and his fellow fugitive on their adventure. Jim's kindness and stewardship also provide a stark contrast to the treachery of the characters on the banks of the river. Twain thus crafts a message that slavery and race discrimination are wrong without taking the tone of an abolitionist, combining an amusing children's story with a profound social message. Although definitive proof of his intention to do so has never been found, human friendship is the sliver of common ground Twain used to reach...

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Mark Twain, the American author and satirist well known for his novels Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer , grew up in Missouri, which is a slave state and which later provided the setting for a couple of his novels. Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn are the two most well-known characters among American readers that Mark Twain created. As a matter of fact, they are the most renowned pair in all of American literature. Twain’s father worked as a judge by profession, but he also worked in slave-trade sometimes. His uncle, John Quarles, owned 20 slaves; so from quite an early age, Twain grew up witnessing the practice of slave-trade whenever he spent summer vacations at his uncle's house. Many of his readers and critics have argued on his being a racist. Some call him an “Unexcusebale racist” and some say that Twain is no where even close to being a racist. Growing up in the times of slave trade, Twain had witnessed a lot of brutality and violence towards the African slaves. ...

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... Its interpretation focused on the white characters of Tom, Becky, and an impish version of Huck Finn. ... No where could she find a discussion or race, slavery, or even a mention of Jim, one of the earliest major black characters in American literature. Fishkin writes: ...

The main objective of this study is to provide a descriptive account of the nature and way of Mark Twain’s handling of humor and satire used in his novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). The study also aims to shed light on whether Twain intended his novel to be humorous, or the humor was unconscious and unrealistic. The researcher sheds light on some major characters and scenes that exhibit the different types of humor and satire. The novel is a classic work of humor that becomes blended with satire, in which Twain became skeptic and agnostic and turned against mankind for its inhumanity. The story arouses humor in different means such as lies, deceptions, machinations of plot, prevarications of Huck and Tom, and through the superstitious beliefs of the primitive character, Jim. The study found out that the novel is a masterpiece of fun, farce and satire. The humor borders on farce; it is low and realistic. The researcher concluded that the novel is doubtlessly picaresqu...

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When I look at critical work on Mark Twain, I am struck by the extent to which it has been invested in establishing Twain as the symptomatic American writer. He is seen as the creator of a new national American literary vernacular idiom, promulgator of quintessentially American values such as frontier spirit, and a champion of free speech and social criticism. These virtues in turn are then distilled as the defining elements of national character. As a non-American national, I find something troubling in this approach. I do not dispute the validity of the established nationalist reading of Mark Twain per se. But I have found that my interest in the texts and the history with which they are involved is continually frustrated by this other insistence on the national parameters of the texts. I have always thought that I enjoy and value the texts, and yet am also aware that I do not value them for this reason. Is my valuation of the texts then invalid? What in any case is the basis for ...

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“The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain Essay

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Introduction

Mark Twain is known all over world for his witty humor. His novels and short stories are funny and easy-to-read, but at the same time the author manages to depict all human vices, making you laugh at them. He has some books about children, and one of them is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn .

We can see the world through the eyes of the white boy, Huck, who is the narrator. It is no surprise that a child is the one to tell the story, because children cannot lie. It is difficult to say that about educated and “decent” grown-ups. They go to church and believe in God, but still they accept racism and slavery. And as for Huck the color of skin doesn’t matter to him. He makes friends with a runaway slave, Jim. They start their journey along the Missouri.

As for their relations, they are the embodiment of true friendship. They friends help each other in every way. Huck treats the black man with respect just because Jim is older. This is how it should be in society, which claims to be moral and fair. But what can we see in the reality? In the eyes of general public they both are just outcasts.

What happens to children with years? They just lose the ability to see things not the way they are said to be, but the way they are. They learn to lie and, what is more, they start to believe in what they say. The Widow Douglas and Miss Watson are representatives of decent middle-class society, but Huck just cannot bear living with them and wearing the mask of hypocrisy for the rest of his life. As for the poor women they are sure they teach Huck only good, they want to make the boy “civilized”, but in fact they are just spoiling him. Under their influence Huck has to invent two gods. Because how can the God of love and compassion be so cruel? Huck is uneducated and his speech is rude, he’s far from being a small gentleman, but we can see that he is honest.

During their trip Huckleberry and Jim experience many funny and frightening adventures. Some of them made the boy feel sick of the humans. Two bandits, the King and the Duke joined them. They turned out to be cruel and immoral, had no sense of decency, nothing was sacred with them. When in one small town the King found out about death of one man, he pretended to be his brother. Everyone treated them with all the possible kindness and tried to please them and make them feel comfortable. Huck says “Well, if I ever struck anything like it, I’m a nigger. It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race.”

At the end of the story both evil-doers were punished. But when Huck saw the King and the Duke tarred and feathered, surrounded by crying and hooting crowd, he felt sorry for them.

“Well, it made me sick to see it; and I was sorry for them poor pitiful rascals, it seemed like I couldn’t ever feel any hardness against them anymore in the world. It was a dreadful thing to see. Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.”

So in such a way through the social outcast Mark Twain depicts many human vices. The question is why do we forget about who we are true? Why do we make so miserable fools of ourselves? Why do we have to wear stupid masks trying to fit the hypocritical society? Until everybody tries to find the answer, the damnation of the human race will still be in power.

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IvyPanda. (2021, September 21). "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-adventures-of-huckleberry-finn-by-mark-twain/

""The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain." IvyPanda , 21 Sept. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/the-adventures-of-huckleberry-finn-by-mark-twain/.

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IvyPanda . 2021. ""The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain." September 21, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-adventures-of-huckleberry-finn-by-mark-twain/.

1. IvyPanda . ""The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain." September 21, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-adventures-of-huckleberry-finn-by-mark-twain/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . ""The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain." September 21, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-adventures-of-huckleberry-finn-by-mark-twain/.

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Critical Ways of Seeing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in Context

Depiction of Huckleberry Finn on 1917 sheet music cover.

Library of Congress

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn opens with a warning from its author that misinterpreting readers will be shot. Despite the danger, readers have been approaching the novel from such diverse critical perspectives for 120 years that it is both commonly taught and frequently banned, for a variety of reasons. Studying both the novel and its critics with an emphasis on cultural context will help students develop analytical tools essential for navigating this work and other American controversies. This lesson asks students to combine internet historical research with critical reading. Then students will produce several writing assignments exploring what readers see in Huckleberry Finn and why they see it that way.

Guiding Questions

How does a critic's cultural context help explain his or her opinions about a book?

What influences on my cultural context help explain my opinions about a book?

How does acknowledging my opinions' origins in the culture around me, and recognizing that changes in culture cause changes in opinions, affect the way I state my opinion?

Learning Objectives

Read and write literary criticism

Perform historical/biographical analysis of non-fiction works

Define cultural context and describe aspects of others' contexts as well as their own

Make inferences and develop the ability to provide convincing evidence to support their inferences

Lesson Plan Details

• "Cultural context" is a term that is used often and defined rarely. Consider before starting the lesson how you will define and use this term with your students. Particularly useful in defining culture for this lesson is Eric Miraglia's What Is Culture? , accessible through the EDSITEment-reviewed Internet Public Library and its link to the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association site.
• Review key aspects of cultural contexts that have had an impact on critics of Huckleberry Finn , particularly Victorian morality and more recent debates about race and high school literary selections. In addition to print sources on these topics, the following websites may be useful: On Victorian mores: While it is difficult to find sites that look at the Victorian era in an unromanticized way, these sites provide some unique perspectives:
• Duke University's Ad*Access site, a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed History Matters site, provides an excellent look at popular culture through advertising.
• Gonzaga University's A Brief Timeline of American Literature, Music and Movies, 1890–1929 , a link also from the History Matters site, provides another look at late Victorian popular culture. On African-American status in the 19th century:
• The most succinct site offering a glimpse of 19th century African-American life is The Time Line of African-American History, 1852–1925 , which is part of the EDSITEment-reviewed Library of Congress American Memory Collection.
• See also Lesson 1 of the ArtsEdge curriculum unit on Mark Twain, The Lincoln of Our Literature: Lesson 1, Icon and Iconoclast
• Review the literary critical essays on Huckleberry Finn that students will use in Activity 2 below. Determine whether you want to choose a small group of these essays for your students' use or let students choose from the whole set. You may want to download and print the essays if you choose to work with a subset of the available essays. Two sites contain a wealth of these essays: the EDSITEment-reviewed Mark Twain in His Times , which contains dozens of contemporary reviews of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn .
• If appropriate or helpful, bookmark on computers students may be using the sites for literary essays and historical timelines.

a. The Time Line of African-American History, 1852–1925 , which is part of the EDSITEment-reviewed Library of Congress American Memory Collection. b. The National Women's History Project's A Timeline of the Women's Rights Movement 1848–1998 , a link on the EDSITEment-reviewed History Matters site. c. A Brief Timeline of American Literature, Music and Movies, 1890–1929 , a link also on the History Matters site. d.  Harlem 1900–1940: Timeline , a timeline from the EDSITEment-reviewed Harlem 1900–1940: An African American Community . e. Mark Twain in His Times: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Contemporary Reviews , on the EDSITEment-reviewed Mark Twain in His Times .

• This assignment asks students to refer to several Internet sources. You may want to review your expectations for citing sources and providing proof before the unit begins, or link to a page that gives guidelines for electronic citations, such as this one from Purdue University . It may also be helpful for students to see a rubric for their assessment early in the assignment.
• Determine whether the cultural context of your classroom, most notably the school system and parental preferences, make it prudent for you to require parental permission before students explore this morally and racially challenging text.

Activity 1. Student critique

After reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , students write a short (200 to 400-word) critique, either of the novel in general or of a specific aspect of the novel. [See PDF file , Introduction to Literary Criticism and Analysis for guidance on writing a critique]

• Rationale: This will sharpen students’ familiarity with the book and with their own opinions of it. It will also help them to analyze other critics' work if they have engaged in the same kind of endeavor, and it will provide a later body of evidence in which they can detect their own biases and cultural influences.
• Planning/Rubric: As you design your instructions for the critique assignment, consider whether you wish students to use "I" in expressing their opinions, and consider the requirements you will give them for providing evidence for their positions. The student-written critique can be useful for this unit whether it is informal and emphasizes students' feelings or more formal and requires substantial evidence from the novel to support those feelings.

Activity 2. Comparing and contrasting two reviews of Huckleberry Finn

Students then compare and contrast the ideas in two published critiques or reviews of the novel, ideally from two different authors and time periods, with their own opinions as expressed in their critiques.

• Resources: A comprehensive sources for criticism of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the EDSITEment-reviewed Mark Twain in His Times, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Contemporary Reviews .
• Rationale: Considering their own ideas in the same way that they consider those of published critics will help students understand that all writers about a book are readers, and all individual readers notice and evaluate aspects of a text differently.
• Planning: a. Consider whether you want to limit the number of critical essays students can choose from. You may also consider other ways of structuring students' choices: for example, do you want them to pick two reviews that disagree on similar issues? While the unit's goal of exposing students to a variety of cultural contexts is reinforced when students choose critical essays from different eras, you may also consider limiting students' choices to the same time period or issue. b. Consider how you want students to report their findings. Is a simple "Similarities and Differences" chart acceptable? Do you want them to write up their findings in paragraph form? Because the unit requires students to write several texts, a chart might be welcome at this stage.

Activity 3. The cultural context of each Huckleberry Finn reviewer

Students will then explore the cultural context of each critic whose work they are analyzing. They will look at contemporary historical events and social practices during the critic's life, governing such realms as race, gender, age and class-based roles in society.

• Resources: The following EDSITEment-reviewed websites provide diverse information that will help students gain a sense of historical influences and social practices that may influence critics:

a. The Time Line of African-American History, 1852-1925 , from the EDSITEment-reviewed American Memory Collection. b. The National Women's History Project's A Timeline of the Women's Rights Movement 1848-1998 , a link on the EDSITEment-reviewed History Matters site. c. Gonzaga University's A Brief Timeline of American Literature, Music and Movies, 1890-1929 , a link from History Matters . d. Harlem 1900-1940: Timeline , a timeline from the EDSITEment-reviewed Harlem 1900-1940: An African American Community . e. Duke University's Ad*Access site, a terrific look at popular culture through advertising, a link through History Matters .

• Other Resources:

a. Consider how your school's history or social studies department could provide other resources for students; this may be a good opportunity for interdisciplinary cooperation. b. As students find historical and social markers that may influence critics, it will be beneficial for them to note what did not happen or had not yet happened. This may influence their inferences in the next step. For example, how could the fact that the Civil Rights Movement did not happen until after Booker T. Washington's death explain some aspects of how Washington views Huckleberry Finn ?

• Rationale: This background search will help students grasp what cultural context is and will give them a scholarly foundation for the inferences they will make in the next activity.
• Planning: This is the most time-consuming aspect of the unit. You may consider having students work in pairs or groups. Depending on students' access to computers and other research materials outside of class or school, you may need to schedule ample class time with access to computers for students to complete this task. Students may also need quick training in determining which information is relevant to their project.

Activity 4. How do social and historical context influence each reviewer?

Students will reread the two published critical essays they compared earlier, and they will make inferences that answer the central question of the unit: How do the historical and social realities students found in their cultural context research seem to influence critics' views of Huckleberry Finn ?

• Rationale: This will form the core of the students' cultural criticism; through the inferences they make here and the evidence they provide for those inferences, students will identify the relationship between a wider culture and an individual's ideas.
• Planning: Depending on how adept students are at making inferences, some training in that process may be necessary. Consider ways to help students brainstorm lots of possible cause-effect relationships, and then focus their assertions on ones they can provide logic or evidence for. A mini-lesson that may be helpful might include showing students pictures from magazines or family photo albums, and then asking them to guess when the pictures were taken and what evidence they have for their guesses.

Activity 5. The student's cultural context

Finally, students will try to identify key elements of their own cultural contexts, compare their cultural contexts with those of the critics, and demonstrate how these influences appear in their own critiques of the novel.

• Rationale: This will reinforce the inference-making and evidence-providing activities involved in cultural criticism of the most difficult subject to analyze: ourselves.

You might consider before the unit begins how you want students to provide assessable evidence that they have successfully completed steps four and five. If the unit culminates in an essay, consider developing and distributing a rubric for it as students are finishing their cultural context research or refer to the one provided here . You may also consider whether you want students to perform separate assessments of their inferences about published critics' cultural contexts and their own, or whether these two sets of inferences should be combined in one assessment.

Students may go on to use these skills to re-examine Mark Twain as a writer who is also a reader of history and culture—someone who, just as students have just done, examines how historical and social realities affect individuals. They can do this by examining materials that show the difference between the America of Twain's childhood, which heavily influenced the characters and plot of the novel, and the America of the 1880s, which heavily influenced in complex ways Twain's attitude toward the world of his childhood and the tone of his book. A good starting place for analyzing the changes in Twain's understanding of the world, particularly the roles of African-Americans in it, is Shelly Fisher Fishkin's essay " Teaching Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ," part of the PBS website on Huckleberry Finn and linked to the Internet Public Library. While the essay is directed to teachers, it is accessible to sophisticated students who have juggled well this unit's overlapping lenses of their own views, critics' views, and the views seen through Huck's narrating perspective. Fishkin refers readers to some of Twain's later writings, which clarify the differences between the older Samuel Clemens' views and the young, fictional Huck Finn's views on race. This sophisticated exploration might help students navigate historical fiction by detecting the ideas of one era as they show up in a story about an earlier time period.

Selected EDSITEment Websites

• African-American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A.P. Murray Collection: 1818–1907
• The Time Line of African-American History, 1852–1925
• A Brief Timeline of American Literature, Music and Movies, 1890–1929
• Living the Legacy: The Women's Rights Movement, 1848–1998
• A Timeline of the Women's Rights Movement 1848–1998
• Teaching Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association
• What Is Culture?
• Mark Twain in His Times: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Contemporary Reviews
• Mark Twain, The Lincoln of Our Literature: Lesson 1, Icon and Iconoclast

Materials & Media

Critical ways of seeing the adventures of huckleberry finn in context: introduction to literary criticism and analysis, critical ways of seeing the adventures of huckleberry finn in context: rubric, related on edsitement, american literary humor: mark twain, george harris, and nathaniel hawthorne, twain & american humor, american literature lessons — nineteenth century, a literary glossary for literature and language arts.

Slavery and Racism in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”

How it works

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is absolutely relating a message to readers about the ills of slavery but this is a complex matter. On the one hand, the only truly good and reliable character is Jim who, a slave, is subhuman. Also, twain wrote this book after slavery had been abolished, therefore, the fact that is significant. There are still several traces of some degree of racism in the novel, including the use of the n word and his tendency to paint Jim in some ways that fit the stereotype of a slave despite these issues, for this essay on Huck Finn, argue that the character of Jim as the only righteous and honest character in a sea of white characters who are all greatly flawed proves that Twain wanted to show that despite the civilizen nature of white society, it is not perfect and slavery, which denies human rights, is a hypocritical institution.

As Andrew Solomon from the University of Pittsburgh said Out of this discouraging portrait of humanity, however, some few people can survive, though with difficulty, and the most endearing character to do so, of course, is Huck.6 Huck Finn, as we see him at the dawn of his adolescence,7 is basically simple and direct in nature. Huck tells the Dumas-inspired Tom Sawyer, for example, “”When I start in to steal a nigger, or a watermelon, or a Sunday-school book, I ain’t no ways particular how it’s done so it’s done”” (p. 206). The idea of race in this novel is very nocolant. It appears as if nothing is wrong with it, and in the day and age this was written, it is understandable that it didn’t faze anyone at the time. A true point to drive home what Solomon said would be “”Looky here, Jim; does a cat talk like we do?”” (p. 91) Jim can’t believe that people speak different languages all over the world, since we’re all the same. But if we’re all the same, why are some of us enslaved? And why doesn’t he seem to make that conceptual leap? As Jim tries to help Huck understand this, Huck is also trying to make Jim understand the concept that we are not all the ame and that some of us are much different than others.

As we continue to read throughout the novel, we notice that although Huck does not see a problem with slavery, he also doesn’t want to lose Jim to it. This shows when You see, when we left him all alone we had to tie him, because if anybody happened on him all by and himself and not tied, it wouldn’t look much like he was a runaway nigger, you know. (p. 169), this is important because of what it leads up to. When Huck, the Duke, and the King think of a way to make sure that Jim doesn’t have to be tied up it is a statement to the fact that Huck has started to form a relationship with Jim and wants to make sure that he is okay while they are away. The fact that this is important to Huck is a big deal, that even though they still treat him like a slave, there is some sort of comandiere in the way they interact.

The racism aspect of this novel is important because they teach us of a different time period. They explain to us through a unique way of teaching that this was considered acceptable in the way of the world. When Huck and Buck interact without Jim, it is as good a reference point as any because, Buck’s family had slaves. They had enough slaves that they were able to give one to Huck while he stayed with them. This is a good example because Huck notices the way that they are treated and doesn’t find it right. Which is a huge step for Huck as a growing, maturing teen.

When Jim is brought into the book we first imagine him as a dumb, uneducated piece of property, who was referred to us as a slave. As we move on throughout the novel, we learn that this is not only a facade but a way for Jim to cope with cards he was dealt that he called life. Slavery places Jim under the control of white society, no matter how wrong and inconceivable, white society may be, along with the preposterous racism that arose near the end of this time period.

Therefore in writing the novel, Mark Twain showed the growth of a part of white society that slaves were not property but human. Twain used Huck’s environment, teachings, and beliefs at the beginning of the novel as pro-slavery. Then used Jim as a tool to allow Huck to see the wrongful treatment of slaves that Huck realizes that Jim as a slave was a better person than his father other white people that were ranked higher in society. Then by the end of the novel Twain shows Huck willing to give up his status in society for someone he wouldn’t have given a second thought to, is now willing to give up life as he knew it.

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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Is this a good thesis statement for an essay on the adventures of huckleberry finn.

Twain uses characterization to portray Huck as an amazingly strong-willed character who is in touch with a personal sense of morality that enables him to disregard society's values.

Hey, this is really good. As long as Huck is the major person that you are characterizing this will be great. Make sure you know your major points which support your thesis statement. I would mention them in your intro. and then deal with each separately in the body of your paper. In your body remember to state-explain -quote. So, if Huck is accepting of blacks, you will explain the significance of this, then find and quote evidence from the text.

Hi. How about, "Twain's characterization of Huck shows an amazingly strong-willed young man, whose personal sense of morality overrides society's closed-minded bigotry and focuses, instead, on his own integrity and values." Saying that "characterization" portrays a character is a little redundant. Good luck.

I agree 100% with Aslan. Have strong opinions, but make sure to back them up with evidence. And make sure to cite all sources. Happy writing! :)

My braineth

HAHAHAHAHAHA IDK

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Is this a good thesis statement ?

Racial inequality has affected Huck and Jim’s friendship; throughout the novel, their relationship evolves into a father-son dynamic.

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