Twain's masterpiece: huckleberry finn

Twain's literary reputation rests most particularly on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In its hero, a resourceful, unconventional boy with an innate sense of human values, Twain created one of the most memorable characters in fiction.

Huck Finn is a poor boy who decides to follow the voice of his conscience and help a Negro slave escape to freedom, even though Huck thinks this means that he will be damned to hell for breaking the law.

Twain's masterpiece, which appeared in 1884, is set in the Mississippi River village of St. Petersburg. The son of an alcoholic bum, Huck has just been adopted by a respectable family when his father, in a drunken stupor, threatens to kill him. Fearing for his life, Huck escapes, feigning his own death. He is joined in his escape by another outcast, the slave Jim, whose owner, Miss Watson, is thinking of selling him down the river to the harsher slavery of the deep South. Huck and Jim float on a raft down the majestic Mississippi, but are sunk by a steamboat, separated, and later reunited. They go through many comical and dangerous shore adventures that show the variety, generosity, and sometimes cruel irrationality of society. In the end, it is discovered that Miss Watson had already freed Jim, and a respectable family is taking care of the wild boy Huck. But Huck grows impatient with civilized society and plans to escape to "the territories" - Indian lands.

Huck puts freedom above every­thing. He hates the mode of life of "respectful society", money has not yet spoiled him. He wants to give his money to Jim so that the latter could redeem his family out of slavery.

On the one hand, Huck Finn lied, swore, stole. He didn't want to live a "decent" life which he called "civilization". On the other hand, we see his attitude towards Jim, a run-a­way slave. He overcomes a terrific battle with himself when he decides he will not betray Jim. In a southern town a boy would rarely venture to help a slave, but Huck sympathizes with Jim and helps him to escape.

In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain shows the stagnant life of a typical provincial town. Ab­sence of culture, wild brutality, deadening dullness, money hunting — such are some of the features of the life pre­sented by the writer. In this book he comes forward as a bitter enemy of slavery. The book reveals the cruelty of a democracy which robs a Negro of all man's right, Mark Twain is acknowledged as America's greatest humorist. Some of his sketches and short stories are just gay jokes, others are sharply satirical. He has a peculiar way of pretending to be very serious about most absurd things. He hated the bourgeois philistine Society and fought against it with a help of laughter.

The ending gives the reader the counter-version of the classic American success myth: the open road leading to the pristine wilderness, away from the morally corrupting influences of "civilization." James Fenimore Cooper's novels, Walt Whitman's hymns to the open road, William Faulkner's The Bear, and Jack Kerouac's On the Road are other literary examples.

Huckleberry Finn has inspired countless literary interpretations. Clearly, the novel is a story of death, rebirth, and initiation. The escaped slave, Jim, becomes a father figure for Huck; in deciding to save Jim, Huck grows morally beyond the bounds of his slave-owning society. It is Jim's adventures that initiate Huck into the complexities of human nature and give him moral courage.

The novel also dramatizes Twain's ideal of the harmonious community: "What you want, above all things, on a raft is for everybody to be satisfied and feel right and kind toward the others."