The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Adventures of Tom and Huck #2) (1884)

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by Mark Twain (AKA Samuel Clemens)



This book has an understandable reputation in some quarters as the greatest American novel.

 


Mark Twain's great achievement is to write a story that is thrilling, engaging and, at times, laugh-out-loud funny, yet can also be appreciated on a very deep level.

 

Mark Twain (AKA Samuel Clemens)

Huck Finn resists being "civilized," but he proves to have a practical intelligence and an innate moral sense that is superior to that of the civilized and educated society that looks down on him. 



This is most powerfully represented by Huck's friendship with the runaway slave Jim.

 


Even though he believes, along with the rest of white society at that time, that he is doing the wrong thing by helping Jim escape, he cannot turn his back on a friend and decides that he would rather be "bad" than betray his trust.

 


They are joined for a time by a pair of con men who are terribly cultured (or at least do a good job of faking it), and Huck is deeply impressed by them until he begins to realize the full extent of the harm they cause.

 


This is also the funniest part of the book.

 


The last section, in which Tom Sawyer reappears, slows things down a bit, but here, too, we see Huck's superiority.

 


Tom is an eternal boy, always looking for games and adventure.

 


For reasons I won't reveal here, we learn at the end of the book that Tom has inadvertently been quite cruel to Jim because of this never-ending search for excitement, and that Huck would have done better to obey his own inclinations rather than follow the lead of the friend he idolized.

 


As in "Tom Sawyer," Twain presents a fascinating and detailed picture of life on the Mississippi before the Civil War.

 


He makes it easy for us to immerse ourselves in Huck's world. 



Very highly recommended.



"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (Russian)

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"The Story of Huckleberry Finn" (Persian)

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"Huckleberry Finn" (Bengali)

"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (Italian)

"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (French)

"Huckleberry Finn's Adventures" (German)

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"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (Portuguese)

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"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (Finnish)

"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (Romanian)

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