Life, love and literature

Ernest Hemingway, another of America’s greatest writers, said about Twain’s Huck Finn: “All modern American literature comes from one book called THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.“ I really didn’t understand what he meant until I started teaching the novel in my high school American literature classes. I had read it and TOM SAWYER when I was much younger. I had just “tasted” them and thought they were tales of another era that sounded funny and exciting. When I began really “digesting“ the content of HUCK FINN, I was in awe of the author. He painted such a clear picture of life along the Mississippi River! He showed the reader the evils of slavery and through the young boy and Jim, the runaway slave, illustrated how completely the human heart can grab the courage to realize that it is wrong to treat human beings as property! Huck has been taught all of his life that a slave is property, so when his conscience tells him he must turn Jim in so he can be returned to his proper owner, through their journey he has been awakened to the fact that Jim is a human being who grieves just like him! When Huck tears up the letter he had written informing Miss Watson where Jim can be found, it is one of the most powerful instances in literature, hinting at a time when all people begin to realize that slavery is wrong. The saddest thing I know about this novel is that it is banned in many libraries. I think that is a huge mistake. Yes, Twain did use a derogatory term for Negro which he had people use to describe realistic characters. Pap is one character who is a drunken racist himself. That was the reality then; it might still be, but I choose to believe that we are more informed! If readers would allow themselves to read it, they would see that Mark Twain did as much to expose slavery as did Upton Sinclair’s THE JUNGLE did to expose meat packers and help bring about pure food and drug laws! I prefaced our study of the novel by addressing the fact that Twain had used the term, not that that was how he talked, but many people did. The reader knows that the author is much more fond of Jim than he is of Pap and other nefarious people they meet along the way! I may talk about HUCK FINN another day because Twain satirizes so many aspects of society of the time. There are levels upon levels. Just know that while TOM SAWYER is a story for young people, HUCK FINN was written for adults in the long run!