Huckleberry Finn

May 13
07:47

2006

Max Weber

Max Weber

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I am sure that Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn should be studied at the high school level mainly because, as Ernest Hemingway wrote in The Green Hills of Africa, “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.”

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Huckleberry Finn is the adventures novel. It is a book for children,Huckleberry Finn Articles but at the same time it is far more than just the kids’ book. The older a person is the more meaning he or she can find in the book. It is probably one of the main reasons the book is considered a masterpiece. It definitely should be studied. And the best is to study it at high school level because it can be well understood at that age. The book and Huck’s adventures are still very interesting for young people, but they can already understand the deeper meaning of the novel.

The whole story is filtered through Huck’s consciousness, a consciousness of a child. Everything in the story is seen through clear-seeing eye of childhood which can question and upturn so many social values just by failing to comprehend them. Huck is just like any kid at high school. His concern is primarily with the facts of experience. He sees everything as something fresh and new, and realistic. Of course, Huck does not know enough about politics, economics, and such and such to serve as satirist. So now the method of direct satire is closed to Twain. But the indirect method is richly open, and Twain makes the most of it. The book is one of the best examples of satire.

Like Mark Twain, Huck values what is useful, what is comfortable, and what is kindly. Huck’s standards are so uncomplicated and so morally correct that his very presence becomes a rebuke to conventional values and behavior. It is one of the best books about morality and real human values.

According to Ernest Hemingway, the style of the book is the most influential style in American literature. So it is very useful to study the book at high school together with other masterpieces of American literature. The book has also very interesting form and shows a great use of different vernaculars.

The book discusses ideas, like racism, freedom, humanism, and civilization, that are useful to explore at high school level. These themes can be effectively connected with other subjects that are studied at high school level.

The book makes readers think and question generally excepted norms. It makes readers want to explore. In the novel boy’s idyll during the voyage is described as opposed to civilization. The leisure, the absence of constraint, the beauty of the river—all these things delight readers. “It’s lovely to live on a raft.” The description of this idyll is the happiest scenes in the book. There are no constraints as in “sivilazation” on the land. The freedom which Jim seeks, and which Huck and Jim temporarily enjoy aboard the raft, is accordingly freedom from everything for which Miss Watson stands. The journey is Huck’s escape from being “sivilized.”

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