Biography

Samuel L. Clemens grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, the river town that inspired his most famous tales of boyhood adventure. His father died when the boy was only twelve, and young Clemens soon went to work as a printer's apprentice to help support the family. Printing and journalism became his best sources of income, and as he grew older and traveled across the country, Clemens began to write humorous sketches for such diverse papers as the Keokuk Saturday Post, the Territorial Enterprise, the Sacramento Union, and the New York Tribune. The pen name he adopted for his writing--Mark Twain--meant "two fathoms deep" or "safe water," a term he had learned as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi. Clemens's unique wit and knack for colloquial speech made such titles as Innocents Abroad (1869), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1883), Life on the Mississippi (1883), and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1894) instant American classics. Huckleberry Finn in particular is notable for the richness of its portrayals and for its complex presentations of issues such as family, race, and slavery.

Explorations

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is once again, and true to form, a "problem text," stirring controversy regarding its appropriateness as required reading in American high schools. The novel has been defended and attacked in a variety of ways since early in the twentieth century -- and discussion of its strengths and weaknesses can lead to very interesting dialogue about language, race, moral systems, and individual identity.

1. Some scholars believe that when Clemens began to work on Huckleberry Finn in the late 1870s, he was planning to write the novel as a mystery. Do you see "clues" being planted in the opening chapters (I-XIII)? If Clemens abandoned a mystery plot for Huck, did he weaken the book by doing so? What sort of plot did he replace it with? Is there a plot in this novel?

2. Look carefully at the way that Jim is portrayed in chapters XIV and XV. How would you describe his portrayal in the earlier chapter? In the later one? Does this succession of chapters indicate that Clemens has changed his mind about Jim in the process of creating him? Or are there continuities here that we should observe in thinking about Jim as an imaginative creation? Now look at the way in which Jim is portrayed in chapter XXXVII, and comment on how Clemens is developing Jim at this point.

3. Some critics regard Tom Sawyer as one of the villains of this novel--a young boy who forces the real world and actual people into dramatic forms and types that he has picked up from reading romantic fiction. How many other people in the novel suffer from overexposure to romanticism? Is this a major theme in the novel? If Huckleberry Finn ranks as a major work in the American realist tradition, then is its "realism" evident in the values that are affirmed -- or in the values that are rejected? Offer evidence from the novel in developing your answer.