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Cover of Huckleberry Finn

Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain

Summary

The sequel to …Tom Sawyer , The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , was published eight years after that popular book, in 1884, and it managed not only to equal it but to improve upon its Mississippi adventure formula. It is considered Twain’s masterpiece and also one of the foremost pieces of American literature. The novel is narrated by Huck Finn and sees him faking his own demise to get away from his appalling drunken father. Together with a runaway slave called Jim, Huck makes his way down the Mississippi on a raft. On the aimless journey, Huck and Jim become involved with a series of contrasting characters such as the feuding Grangerford and Shepheredson families and later the suspicious ‘Duke’ and ‘Dauphin’ who sell Jim back into slavery. Like its predecessor it is a picaresque novel, but together its disparate elements become a complex moral commentary on the ‘American experience’ as seen through the eyes of an innocent boy. Tom Sawyer does return briefly in the rescue of Jim, but this is very much the irrepressible Huck’s book as the title suggest. Enormously influential and popular, Huckleberry Finn , was also somewhat controversial with its often racy content and its depictions of the evils of slavery.

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