The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

1884 (UK), 1885 (USA) (published) ; Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by Mark Twain, first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885. Commonly named as a Great American Novel, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written throughout in vernacular English, characterized by local color regionalism. It is told in the first person by Huckleberry "Huck" Finn, a friend of Tom Sawyer and narrator of two other Twain novels (Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective.) It is a direct sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. 

The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. Set in a Southern antebellum society, ceasing to exist about twenty years before the work was published, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an often scathing satire on entrenched attitudes, particularly racism. 

Perennially popular with readers, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has also been the continued object of study by literary critics since its publication. It was criticized upon release because of its coarse language and became even more controversial in the Twentieth Century because of its perceived use of racial stereotypes and because of its frequent use of the racial slur "nigger," despite strong arguments that the protagonist and the tenor of the book are anti-racist.

“But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it.  I been there before.”

Since the first time I read this novel in high school, I new it was a special novel. Throughout the time I read it as well as days after I finished, I found myself thinking in the dialects of the story as well as in Huck's verbal cadence. It profoundly surprised me how much this novel affected me, especially since I did not have any interest to read it in the first place. I'm in debt to my teacher who forced it upon us, because it began my love affair with the writer I consider the Father of American Literature.

And just like I consider Mark Twain the Father of American Literature, I consider The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn the first true American identity novel. I do not have any doubts this is how and why Twain wrote it, for the conflicts Huck faces throughout mirror the minor and major dilemmas our American nation struggled with since its inception. And just like Huck deduces at the end of the novel, America needed to “light out” of the world's ways of thinking about society and culutre, and not let it “sivilize” us to the plights of other countries, because frankly, “[we couldn't] stand it.” So as Twain recognized, as well as countless others since the popularity of this novel has traversed generations, “[we've] been there before” and do not desire to return.