The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain1884Twain wrote the great American novel, a story about a boy and a runaway slave on a raft that lays bare the moral rot of the antebellum South.
Read this if you…
- want one of the most famous American books of all time
- are interested in a great white southern author wrestling with immorality of slavery/race relations
Skip this if you…
- didn't love Tom Sawyer
- hate when writers write out the dialect by spelling stuff wrong and its semi hard to read
- are expecting it to be as light as tom sawyer (definitely more serious)
Why It Matters
Twain wrote the great American novel, a story about a boy and a runaway slave on a raft that lays bare the moral rot of the antebellum South. Hemingway said all American literature comes from this book, and he was mostly right. Huck's choice to help Jim escape, "All right, then, I'll go to hell," is the most important moral moment in American fiction.
Where to go next
- Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn built on it. - Behind Tom and Huck stands Quixote and Sancho — Twain lifts Cervantes' pairing of the deluded romantic and his clear-eyed foil - Tom's elaborate make-believe is pure Quixote: the enchantment device, the insistence that reality conform to the books he's read, with Huck playing the unimpressed Sancho - *Huckleberry Finn* is Cervantes' picaresque illusion-versus-reality structure carried down an American river — reading *Don Quixote* first shows you the mold it was poured in
- The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn built on it. - Huck picks this very book up in the Grangerfords' parlor (Chapter 17) and pronounces it "interesting, but tough" - Twain put it there on purpose — he owned Bunyan and even called an earlier book *The New Pilgrim's Progress* — using the pious classic to mock a feuding family that brings rifles to the pew - Read Bunyan first and the joke sharpens: the model of the righteous journey, propped up in a house that has lost the thread
Depicted in Art
Huck Finn in ragged hat and trousers, hands in pockets, leans forward grinning — the original cover figure for the first edition.
Edward Windsor Kemble, 1885
Jim carries a tin bucket, head tilted, in three-quarter view — Kemble's introductory portrait of the character.
Edward Windsor Kemble, 1885
Huck creeps out a second-story window into the night to meet Tom Sawyer below.
Edward Windsor Kemble, 1885
On Jackson's Island Jim recoils in terror, certain that Huck — believed drowned — has returned as a ghost.
Edward Windsor Kemble, 1885
Huck stands barefoot in a doorway, a long rifle on his shoulder and a dead rabbit dangling from his hand.
Edward Windsor Kemble, 1884
Inside the floating house, Jim looks down at a corpse face-down on the floor; he tells Huck not to look.
Edward Windsor Kemble, 1885
Recommended Editions
Penguin Classics
2002
The Penguin Classics Huck. Uses a reliable scholarly text close to what Twain actually wrote, with an introduction on the river world and notes that earn their keep. The easy reading copy.
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Deep Dive
What It's About
This summary gives away plot details.
Notable Quotes
“All right, then, I'll go to hell.”
“You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter.”
More by Mark Twain
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
1876 · Adventure