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N0KFQ > TODAY 18.02.08 08:01l 51 Lines 2552 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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To : TODAY@ALLUS
February 18, 1885
Twain publishes The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
On this day in 1885, Mark Twain publishes his famous--and
famously controversial--novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Twain (the pen name of Samuel Clemens) first introduced Huck Finn
as the best friend of Tom Sawyer, hero of his tremendously
successful novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). Though
Twain saw Huck's story as a kind of sequel to his earlier book,
the new novel was far more serious, focusing on the institution
of slavery and other aspects of life in the antebellum South.
At the book's heart is the journey of Huck and his friend Jim, a
runaway slave, down the Mississippi River on a raft. Jim runs
away because he is about to be sold and separated from his wife
and children, and Huck goes with him to help him get to Ohio and
freedom. Huck narrates the story in his distinctive voice,
offering colorful descriptions of the people and places they
encounter along the way. The most striking part of the book is
its satirical look at racism, religion and other social attitudes
of the time. While Jim is strong, brave, generous and wise, many
of the white characters are portrayed as violent, stupid or
simply selfish, and the naive Huck ends up questioning the
hypocritical, unjust nature of society in general.
Even in 1885, two decades after the Emancipation Proclamation and
the end of the Civil War, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
landed with a splash. A month after its publication, a Concord,
Massachusetts, library banned the book, calling its subject
matter "tawdry" and its narrative voice "coarse" and "ignorant."
Other libraries followed suit, beginning a controversy that
continued long after Twain's death in 1910. In the 1950s, the
book came under fire from African-American groups for being
racist in its portrayal of black characters, despite the fact
that it was seen by many as a strong criticism of racism and
slavery. As recently as 1998, an Arizona parent sued her school
district, claiming that making Twain's novel required high school
reading made already existing racial tensions even worse.
Aside from its controversial nature and its continuing popularity
with young readers, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been
hailed by many serious literary critics as a masterpiece. No less
a judge than Ernest Hemingway famously declared that the book
marked the beginning of American literature: "There was nothing
before. There has been nothing as good since."
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