Mark Twain & Huckleberry Finn
In 1884, Mark Twain wrote one of the most controversial and
remembered novels in the world of literature, The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn. Mark Twain was the pseudonym of Samuel
Langhorne Clemens. He was born in Florida, Missouri, Nov. 30,
1835. Twain was one of six children. This contributed to his
family being poor. Twain often had to find inexpensive forms of
entertainment. Twain made Huckleberry Finn represent him
fictionally in this book. Huck did the same typical boy things as
Twain. ^Now, we'll start this band of robbers and call it..." was
one of the things Huck said (Twain 9). When Twain was four years
old, his family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, a small town on the
west bank of the Mississippi River. The Mississippi River and the
towns along it were used as the setting in The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn. "We judged that three nights more would fetch
us to Cairo, at the bottom of Illinois, where the Ohio River comes
in^^ (Twain 106). Huck and Jim were trying to reach a town named
Cairo. It was located in a free state, Ohio. Cairo was just one
of the many towns Twain referred to in this novel. Twain even
used familiar dialects in his novel. He stated at the beginning
of the novel, "the Missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of
the backwoods Southwestern dialect; the ordinary Pike County
dialect... are used to wit..." (Twain 1). In this book, as they
traveled down the Mississippi River, the values of Huck and Jim
were contrasted against those of the people living in the southern
United States. Huck (the narrator and one of the main characters)
and Jim(another main character) were both trying to reach freedom.
Twain based this book on things that were happening during this time in
his life. Huck was introduced without a father in...
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