Believe it or not, I had actually never read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn before. I'd obviously read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but not this sequel, narrated from Huck's point of view. Much of the book deals with a trip that Huck and Jim take down the Mississippi River. It's interesting, because they're bound for the North, but they end up going into the Deep South, the heart of slave country. Along the way, they meet with all sorts of people and encounter all sorts of mishaps.
Huck narrates in his own voice, so it's very ungrammatical. But he's surprisingly smart; he learns how to read at the beginning of the book, and he has a lot more sense than Jim does in certain areas. And even though he is pretty uneducated, he's street smart (or shall we say river smart?) It's kind of funny, because a lot of times Huck misunderstands things. Like, at one point he says "I had learned all of my times tables to six times seven is thirty-five". Another time, he thinks the dauphin is the "dolphin", and that valet is "valley".
At first, the life the two of them lead seems idyllic: floating down the river in a raft, doing whatever they want, frying fish for dinner. But it's not really. They encounter all sorts of strange things.
I liked the section where they meet up with two con men, who claim to be an exiled duke and the exiled dauphin of France. They pull off all sorts of cons, and make a whole bunch of money. It was amusing, though obviously the men are criminals, and do a lot of shady things, and are eventually revealed to be pretty nasty people.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has a lot of humor in it and a great narrative voice. It is an interesting classic, though not one of my favorites, and (at least for me), not quite as good as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
Read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn:
- if you like Mark Twain
- if you like books set on the (Mississippi) River
- if you like books about journeys
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| Very Good! I would recommend this book! |
I'm so bad with my classics. I haven't read wither of them. Tom Sawyer does appeal to me more than other classics. Classics to me usually mean books that are boring but I've got to stop saying that because I've enjoyed a couple. I don't know if it's this one but I hear that the main character said some racial slurs... I know it's that time but it still bother me. Anyways I do like books where survival/adventure is the main subject. As well as Oliver Twist I love reading about con men and seeing them get busted. So I'll definitely read this as soon as I read Tom Sawyer (:
ReplyDeleteLove that puffin book again.
Classics aren't boring! There are so many good ones. Yes, there are some racial slurs in Huckleberry Finn, but it's still a good book.
DeleteIf you like reading about con men, you should try Paper Moon by Joe David Brown. It's really good (though they don't get busted).
Jane Austen's books are really good too.