The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (Review)

Date Finished: April 6, 2017

Page Count: 232

Genre: Realistic Fiction

            Clarification! I actually read Mark Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with Related Readings from the Glencoe Literature Library (I don’t know how to arrange all the stuff, I just went down the book cover and it’s still doesn’t make a lick of sense) due to someone else having checked out the book when I first decided I’d start reading it (Monday) so that’s why there isn’t the normal 366 pages or whatever. Due to not being able to find a picture of the addition I read I’ve selected the “cover” for an adaption of Huck Finn that I will never review here so there’s no chance of me running into conflict if I read a Huck Finn spinoff and review It (I won’t). My older sister likes to say I haven’t read the actual Huck Finn since the thing I have is too short but screw her, I’m pretty sure this has all 43, painful chapters of old school, deep south, bad mouth language in it, so take that bro! I done read Huck Finn younger than you!! It made me miserable but so what!!!! *Sob.*

            Yeah, I’m going to make this short and sweet for you guys, this book was a struggle. Not because I hated the stereotypes and not because everyone was saying n***** all the time (even the black folks called themselves n******! Y’all just going to disparage you’re selves like that?), it was because of the language. Not even Huck’s language, although his wasn’t the most polished, it was Jim. Poor, abused, runaway Jim and his terrible, terrible, lack of knowledge on how language works made me want to throw this book at my good friend who sits next to me in English class whenever I was reading it or my English teacher what the heck, I could probably throw the book at anyone in my English class and feel little remorse about hurting them. The reason I didn’t throw the book as it wouldn’t bring me any benefit other than possibly releasing some of my anger and then I’d get it big trouble and my reputation would forever be tainted even more than this blog has done all school year but it’s a good thing I didn’t because now I can get a excellent grade for this week’s blog due plus a good grade for reading enough outside of class *coughcoughIreadthisinoneweekcough.* Where was I going with this paragraph? Oh yeah, young people shouldn’t read this book unless they absolutely have to or are overachievers with nothing better to do than kill brain cells time because the language is challenging, stuff gets boring with all of Huck’s descriptions and world building (don’t get wrong, I love world building, but the way Twain does it is very mundane) and Jim is enough to make a person cry (or seriously consider crying). I repeat, DO NOT READ UNLESS NECESSARY KIDS. Now to talk about all the fun metaphors and symbolism and what not I picked up on.
 

Huck Finn and Jim traveling along the Mississippi. I'm so sad because I accidentally made Huck look like Jay (from Ninjago) and it was accidental but I did it and I'm sad!! The coloring was fun though, it was fun to utilize crayons and water colors, but I do wish I used some thicker paper for the drawing.

            Holy sheet, a decent picture; it’s been way too long me. So, first lets point out the elephant in the room: little orphan boy (Huck’s drunk father actually dies pretty early on in the book but it’s not reveled till the very end) becomes friends with an old slave running away from his masters. White and black didn’t mix back in the time of slavery; you’d supposedly go to hell for that. Dang, the racism is strong with this one; good thing Twain lived back in the 19/20^th century as this would not fly today (unless you want to consider… *glances off at current events* naw). But despite the highly unlikeliness of Huck and Jim’s friendship having existing in the past, I found it incredibly sweet to read. Huck was just looking to get away from the restrictions of society as well as his abusive father and Jim was looking for freedom. Huck’s young age made him more adaptable to change and he took Jim with him on his travels despite Jim having run away and Huck feeling as if it were wrong to take someone’s slave from them. I found the way they worked together to survive along the Mississippi, watching out for hostile people who would want to take Jim away, watching out for storms and stuff, *sigh* it was just beautiful. I was touched in chapter 15 when Huck tried to play a prank on Jim which deeply upset him due to Huck taking advantage of his dim nature when he was worried sick about him. Despite Huck not feeling sorry about it, it was nice to know he learned from his mistake and didn’t play anymore tricks on him after that. I also loved how Huck was upset that the king (or was it the duke?) sold Jim for $40 and made the decision to get Jim back even if it meant he was going to hell. Ah, genuine friendship, my favorite thing in novels.

            The you have Tom Sawyer, who could have guessed Twain’s other character would show his ugly mug in this book too and play a significant role. At first Tom was all “we’re going to be bandits and kill people, but not women” which alienated me big time, but then he showed up and did Huck a big favor which made me war up to his character. The biggest that made me like his character is how he reminds me of Yukari Yakumo. Yes the gap hag reminds me of one of the protagonists of America’s classic novels. One of the reoccurring things about Tom we see in later chapters when he accidently runs into Huck pretending to be him at his Aunt Sally’s is that he loves an adventure. The guy wanted to take the hard way to free Jim from his family because it’d be more of an adventure causing Huck and him to run around the house for months (or week, the timeline in the book is a bit fuzzy to me) stealing things, digging up the small shack that Jim stays in to give him candles to make pens out of and plates to write on (with his blood by the way), and even forging notes about thieves planning on stealing Jim causing a whole lot of trouble, including getting himself shot in the leg. What the heck does Yukari do? Whatever the hell she wants! She can manipulate boundaries for heaven’s sake! Who wouldn’t abuse that power in a wise way if they lived in a fantasy world for thousands of years? Half of Gensokyo’s incidents could be resolved real quick if Yukari wasn’t off sleeping on getting Reimu to do stuff for her instead so it’s obvious this chick would rather do things the fun, adventurous way that teaches people lesson like Tom (except for the lesson part). But because of this, “let’s do it the challenging way” attitude I found myself taking quite a liking to Tom near the end of the book (especially since I also like to take the hard way in many situations).

            Side characters were pretty typical, you’ve got the drunken dad who of course abuses his kid and tries to prevent him from becoming smarter than him and drinks himself to death, you’ve got the mom/aunt figures that get worried over all the littlest things and don’t want no harm to come to their babies, the pretty innocent t lamb that makes even the wildest of guys (looking at you Huck) soften at their naïve natures yet lovely womanly charms (bless you Miss Mary Jane), the swindlers who will do anything to get rich quick no matter who they hurt (I hated the duke and the king by the way, their schemes got tiresome and long I tell you), the young boys who search for convenient adventures, and the superstitious idiotic n****** that aren’t even see as human and are at the bottom of the social ladder. I’m assuming this was done on purpose by Twain to make a statement about American history before the civil war (assuming he wrote this pre-civil war, I have no idea nor intention of finding out) about the behavior patterns of different social classes and how prejudice they were towards colored folks in addition to being firmly cemented in their roles. Huck is the exception as he goes on this journey to escape society and discovers that there are some friends that are worth sticking with despite what negative things the world may say about them. But it’s more elaborate than that and I’ll admit some of this book went over my head due to the severe amounts of boring it was so don’t expect me to elaborate on that.
            So in a nutshell, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was a whole lot of lying (it was terrify how some of these characters would come up with a lie on the fly and just roll with it while feeling minimal regret), a whole lot of environment describing (it was so boring), a whole lot of scamming people, a whole lot of n******, a whole lot of eating, and a whole lot of boating. Somehow, I still enjoyed this book to a degree- *GASP* and would recommend it to someone of extreme reading skill, someone who is cultured, or someone who would like insight into the dirty past of America. We really shouldn’t pretend that all that stuff didn’t happen in the past, especially with people saying equality is nigh and stuff due to all the stuff that’s been legalized and is now tolerated more this decade. Crap, this decade is ending soon, I feel like an old hag. Any who, hope you enjoyed my super awesome artwork review and you can plan on getting the much anticipated review for Sacrifice by Cindy Pon coming up next week unless I die or something, since I plan to go to the library and finally get around to reading that after saying I would read it almost TWO MONTHS AGO. Way to go me, way to go. Alright, peace out y’all.