Book Review (Rucksack): The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Written by Mark Twain in 1884

The Raccoon: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn stars Tom Sawyer’s best friend, Huckleberry Finn, whose journey down the Mississippi River with a runaway slave challenges his learned customs and opinions and replaces them with an authentic, although disheartening, view of the world.

UNMASKED: Ernest Hemingway believed that all modern literature comes from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and I am inclined to agree with him. One of the first things I noticed when I began reading the book was the lack of flowery language and obtrusive metaphors, a welcome shift from earlier classics.  Furthermore, Twain addresses societal issues directly but quietly, does not write in any characters as “extras,” and lets his work broaden and grow instead of conforming to a central theme or plot line, all of which are hallmarks of my favorite contemporary authors.

With its young protagonist, “Huck Finn” is commonly thought of as a children’s book, and the story is in fact very accessible to children.  And young adults.  And adults.  Huckleberry’s narration is childlike, not childish, and there is plentiful humor and appreciable content for any age group.  Like Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, I know that rereading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn several years from now will be a new, yet equally rewarding, experience.

Strengths:

• Twain weaves an impressive amount of satire and humor into a story that has never been labeled as a comedy.
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is Twain’s argument for total equality and societal reform, without seeming to push an agenda.
• One does not need to read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer before this novel.
• Tom brings another dose of outlandish plans, but he does not steal the limelight from Huck’s unique story.

Weaknesses:

• This is not a comment on the book itself; simply the version I read.  The Penguin Classics Kindle Edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn reads, as my friend put it, “as if it was translated into Spanish and then back into English.”  Most of the words are butchered beyond repair, sometimes through spelling and other times through what must be intentional misuse of a thesaurus (i.e., “financial institution” as opposed to “riverbank”).  I stuck with the edition as a suicidal challenge of my comprehension abilities, but if you would prefer not to question the meaning of half of the sentences, you may want to purchase one of any of the other 203 editions of the novel (don’t ask how I was so lucky).

Rating: 20/20 cameleopards

Ideal Setting: Read this outdoors and away from society’s expectations, so that you may experience true freedom.