Literature of Realism and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Shandong University, April 13, 2012.

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Literature of Realism and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Shandong University, April 13, 2012

Transcript of Literature of Realism and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Shandong University, April 13, 2012.

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Literature of Realism and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Shandong University, April 13, 2012

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Defnition Broadly defined as "the faithful representation of reality" or "verisimilit

ude," realism is a literary technique practiced by many schools of writing.

Although strictly speaking, realism is a technique, it also denotes a particular kind of subject matter, especially the representation of middle-class life. A reaction against romanticism, an interest in scientific method, the systematizing of the study of documentary history, and the influence of rational philosophy all affected the rise of realism.

According to William Harmon and Hugh Holman, "Where romanticists transcend the immediate to find the ideal, and naturalists plumb the actual or superficial to find the scientific laws that control its actions, realists center their attention to a remarkable degree on the immediate, the here and now, the specific action, and the verifiable consequence" (A Handbook to Literature 428).

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American Realism in Literature

American realism was an early 20th century idea in art, music and literature that showed through these different types of work, reflections of the time period. Whether it was a cultural portrayal, or a scenic view of downtown New York City, these images and works of literature, music and painting depicted a contemporary view of what was happening; an attempt at defining what was real. In America at the beginning of the 20th century a new generation of painters, writers and journalists were coming of age.

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Time span In American literature, the term "realism" encompasses the perio

d of time from the Civil War to the turn of the century during which William Dean Howells, Rebecca Harding Davis, Henry James, Mark Twain, and others wrote fiction devoted to accurate representation and an exploration of American lives in various contexts.

As the United States grew rapidly after the Civil War, the increasing rates of democracy and literacy, the rapid growth in industrialism and urbanization, an expanding population base due to immigration, and a relative rise in middle-class affluence provided a fertile literary environment for readers interested in understanding these rapid shifts in culture. In drawing attention to this connection, Amy Kaplan has called realism a "strategy for imagining and managing the threats of social change" (Social Construction of American Realism ix).

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Characteristics (from Richard Chase, The American Novel and Its Tradition) Reality being rended closely and in comprehensive detail: Selective

presentation of reality with an emphasis on verisimilitude, even at the expense of a well-made plot

Character as more important (than action and plot): Complex ethical choices are often the subject.

Characters as appearing in their real complexity of temperament and motive: They are in explicable relation to nature, to each other, to their social class, to their own past.

Class as important issue: The novel has traditionally served the interests and aspirations of an insurgent middle class. ( accoring to Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel)

Plausible events: Realistic novels avoid the sensational, dramatic elements of naturalistic novels and romances.

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Characteristics (to be continuted)Natural language: Diction is natural vernacular, not heighten

ed or poetic; tone may be comic, satiric, or matter-of-fact. Objective representatin: Objectivity in presentation becomes

increasingly important: overt authorial comments or intrusions diminish as the century progresses.

Interior or psychological realism is represented in a variant form.

In Black and White Strangers, Kenneth Warren suggests that a basic difference between realism and sentimentalism is that in realism, "the redemption of the individual lay within the social world," but in sentimental fiction, "the redemption of the social world lay with the individual" (75-76).

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Henry James (Art of Fiction) : The representation of life should be the main object of the novel.

James claimed that a text must first and foremost be realistic and contain a representation of life that is recognisable to its readers. Good novels, to James, show life in action and are, most importantly, interesting. The concept of a good or bad novel is judged solely upon whether the author is good or bad. His imaginative use of point of view, interior monologue and possibly unreliable narrators in his own novels and tales brought a new depth and interest to narrative fiction.

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Background Influence of Civil War on American psychology: T

he War led many to question the assumptions shared by the Transcendentalists concerning the benevolence of God, natural goodness and the optimistics view of nature and man. People began to thnik about the “real” world they were living in.

Development of industry: With wealth being more and more accumulated in the hands of the few “captains of industry” who provided stories of success for the thousands of common people.

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The frontier is closed: The worth of the American Dream, the romantic and idealized view of life and man began to lose its hold in the psychology and imaginatin of the Americans.

Suggesnted reading: "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" by Frederick Jackson Turner at http://www.learner.org/workshops/primarysources/corporations/docs/turner.html

Turner presented this paper to a special meeting of the American Historical Association at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. His assessment of the frontier's significance was the first of its kind and revolutionized American intellectual and historical thinking.

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Map of American Civil War

1808 – 1889

1809 - 1865

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Comparison between the North and SouthBelligerents United StatesCommanders and leaders

Abraham Lincoln

Winfield Scott George B. McClellan Henry Wager Halleck Ulysses S. Grant Gideon WellesStrenth 2,100,000Casualties and losses 140,414 killed in action~ 365,000 total dead275,200 wounded

Confederate States

Jefferson Davis

P. G. T. Beauregard Joseph E. Johnston Robert E. Lee Stephen Mallory

1,064,00

72,524 killed in action~ 260,000 total dead137,000+ wounded

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Mark Twain (Samuel Longhorn Clemens,1835–1910)

Twain grew up in the Mississippi River frontier town of Hannibal, Missouri. For Twain and other American writers of the late 19th century, realism was not merely a literary technique: It was a way of speaking truth and exploding worn-out conventions. Twain is best known for his works Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

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Stephen Crane (1871–1900),

His haunting Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage, was published to great acclaim in 1895, but he barely had time to bask in the attention before he died, at 28, having neglected his health.

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William Dean Howells(1837–1920), His ideas about realism in literature develope

d in parallel with his socialist attitudes. In his role as editor of the Atlantic Monthly and Harper's Magazine, and as the author of books such as A Modern Instance and The Rise of Silas Lapham.

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Henry James (1843-1916) An American-born British author. He is one of the founders and leaders of a

school of realism in fiction; the fine art of his writing has led many academics to consider him the greatest master of the novel and novella form. He is primarily known for a series of major novels in which he portrayed the encounter of America with Europe. His plots centered on personal relationships, the proper exercise of power in such relationships, and other moral questions.

His method of writing from the point of view of a character within a tale allowed him to explore the consciousness and perception, and his style in later works has been compared to impressionist painting.

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Major works by James

The American (1877) The Portrait of a Lady (1881) Daisy Miller (1878, novella)

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The Story(1884) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is

often considered Twain's greatest masterpiece. Combining his raw humor and startlingly mature material, Twain developed a novel that directly attacked many of the traditions the South held dear at the time of its publication. Huckleberry Finn is the main character, and through his eyes, the reader sees and judges the South, its faults, and its redeeming qualities. Huck's companion Jim, a runaway slave, provides friendship and protection while the two journey along the Mississippi on their raft.

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The novel opens with Huck telling his story. Briefly, he describes what he has experienced since, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which preceded this novel. After Huck and Tom discovered twelve thousand dollars in treasure, Judge Thatcher invested the money for them. Huck was adopted by the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson, both of whom took pains to raise him properly. Dissatisfied with his new life, and wishing for the simplicity he used to know, Huck runs away. Tom Sawyer searches him out and convinces him to return home by promising to start a band of robbers. All the local young boys join Tom's band, using a hidden cave for their hideout and meeting place. However, many soon grow bored with their make-believe battles, and the band falls apart.

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YOU don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly -- Tom's Aunt Polly, she is -- and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.

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Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars apiece -- all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round -- more than a body could tell what to do with. The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn't stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back.

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The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she called me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by it. She put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn't do nothing but sweat and sweat, and feel all cramped up. Well, then, the old thing commenced again. The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come to time. When you got to the table you couldn't go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals, though there warn't really anything the matter with them, -- that is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better.

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Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But she wouldn't. She said it was a mean practice and wasn't clean, and I must try to not do it any more. That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don't know nothing about it. Here she was a-bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in it. And she took snuff, too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself.

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Soon thereafter, Huck discovers footprints in the snow and recognizes them as his violent, abusive Pap's. Huck realizes Pap, who Huck hasn't seen in a very long time, has returned to claim the money Huck found, and he quickly runs to Judge Thatcher to "sell" his share of the money for a "consideration" of a dollar. Pap catches Huck after leaving Judge Thatcher, forces him to hand over the dollar, and threatens to beat Huck if he ever goes to school again.

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Upon Pap's return, Judge Thatcher and the Widow try to gain court custody of Huck, but a new judge in town refuses to separate Huck from his father. Pap steals Huck away from the Widow's house and takes him to a log cabin. At first Huck enjoys the cabin life, but after receiving frequent beatings, he decides to escape. When Pap goes into town, Huck seizes the opportunity. He saws his way out of the log cabin, kills a pig, spreads the blood as if it were his own, takes a canoe, and floats downstream to Jackson's Island. Once there, he sets up camp and hides out.

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He got to hanging around the widow's too much and so she told him at last that if he didn't quit using around there she would make trouble for him. Well, WASN'T he mad? He said he would show who was Huck Finn's boss. So he watched out for me one day in the spring, and catched me, and took me up the river about three mile in a skiff, and crossed over to the Illinois shore where it was woody and there warn't no houses but an old log hut in a place where the timber was so thick you couldn't find it if you didn't know where it was.

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He kept me with him all the time, and I never got a chance to run off. We lived in that old cabin, and he always locked the door and put the key under his head nights. He had a gun which he had stole, I reckon, and we fished and hunted, and that was what we lived on. Every little while he locked me in and went down to the store, three miles, to the ferry, and traded fish and game for whisky, and fetched it home and got drunk and had a good time, and licked me. The widow she found out where I was by and by, and she sent a man over to try to get hold of me; but pap drove him off with the gun, and it warn't long after that till I was used to being where I was, and liked it -- all but the cowhide part.

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But by and by pap got too handy with his hick'ry, and I couldn't stand it. I was all over welts. He got to going away so much, too, and locking me in. Once he locked me in and was gone three days. It was dreadful lonesome. I judged he had got drowned, and I wasn't ever going to get out any more. I was scared. I made up my mind I would fix up some way to leave there. I had tried to get out of that cabin many a time, but I couldn't find no way. There warn't a window to it big enough for a dog to get through. I couldn't get up the chimbly; it was too narrow. The door was thick, solid oak slabs. Pap was pretty careful not to leave a knife or anything in the cabin when he was away; I reckon I had hunted the place over as much as a hundred times; well, I was most all the time at it, because it was about the only way to put in the time.

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A few days after arriving on the island, Huck stumbles upon a still smoldering campfire. Although slightly frightened, Huck decides to seek out his fellow inhabitant. The next day, he discovers Miss Watson's slave, Jim, is living on the island. After overhearing the Widow's plan to sell him to a slave trader, Jim ran away. Jim, along with the rest of the townspeople, thought Huck was dead and is frightened upon seeing him. Soon, the two share their escape stories and are happy to have a companion.

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While Huck and Jim live on the island, the river rises significantly. At one point, an entire house floats past them as they stand near the shore. Huck and Jim climb aboard to see what they can salvage and find a dead man lying in the corner of the house. Jim goes over to inspect the body and realizes it is Pap, Huck's father. Jim keeps this information a secret.

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Soon afterwards, Huck returns to the town disguised as a girl in order to gather some news. While talking with a woman, he learns that both Jim and Pap are suspects in his murder. The woman then tells Huck that she believes Jim is hiding out on Jackson's Island. Upon hearing her suspicions, Huck immediately returns to Jim and together they flee the island to avoid discovery.

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“Next morning I said it was getting slow and dull, and I wanted to get a stirring up some way. I said I reckoned I would slip over the river and find out what was going on. Jim liked that notion; but he said I must go in the dark and look sharp. Then he studied it over and said, couldn't I put on some of them old things and dress up like a girl? That was a good notion, too. So we shortened up one of the calico gowns, and I turned up my trouser-legs to my knees and got into it. Jim hitched it behind with the hooks, and it was a fair fit. I put on the sun-bonnet and tied it under my chin, and then for a body to look in and see my face was like looking down a joint of stovepipe. Jim said nobody would know me, even in the daytime, hardly. I practiced around all day to get the hang of the things, and by and by I could do pretty well in them, only Jim said I didn't walk like a girl; and he said I must quit pulling up my gown to get at my britches-pocket. I took notice, and done better. “

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Every night now I used to slip ashore towards ten o'clock at some little village, and buy ten or fifteen cents' worth of meal or bacon or other stuff to eat; and sometimes I lifted a chicken that warn't roosting comfortable, and took him along. Pap always said, take a chicken when you get a chance, because if you don't want him yourself you can easy find somebody that does, and a good deed ain't ever forgot. I never see pap when he didn't want the chicken himself, but that is what he used to say, anyway.

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“Mornings before daylight I slipped into cornfields and borrowed a watermelon, or a mushmelon, or a punkin, or some new corn, or things of that kind. Pap always said it warn't no harm to borrow things if you was meaning to pay them back some time; but the widow said it warn't anything but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it. Jim said he reckoned the widow was partly right and pap was partly right; so the best way would be for us to pick out two or three things from the list and say we wouldn't borrow them any more -- then he reckoned it wouldn't be no harm to borrow the others. So we talked it over all one night, drifting along down the river, trying to make up our minds whether to drop the watermelons, or the cantelopes, or the mushmelons, or what. But towards daylight we got it all settled satisfactory, and concluded to drop crabapples and p'simmons. We warn't feeling just right before that, but it was all comfortable now. I was glad the way it come out, too, because crabapples ain't ever good, and the p'simmons wouldn't be ripe for two or three months yet. “

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Huck and Jim approach the Ohio River, their goal. One foggy night, Huck, in the canoe, gets separated from Jim and the raft. He tries to paddle back to the raft, but the fog is so thick that he loses all sense of direction. After a lonely time adrift, Huck reunites with Jim, who is asleep on the raft. Jim is thrilled to see Huck alive, but Huck tries to trick Jim by pretending that Jim dreamed up their entire separation. Jim tells Huck the story of his dream, making the fog and the troubles he faced on the raft into an allegory of their journey to the free states. But soon Jim notices all the debris, dirt, and tree branches that collected on the raft while it was adrift. He gets mad at Huck for making a fool of him after he had worried about him so much. “It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger,” Huck says, but he eventually apologizes and does not regret it. He feels bad about hurting Jim.

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“Jim looked at the trash, and then looked at me, and back at the trash again. He had got the dream fixed so strong in his head that he couldn't seem to shake it loose and get the facts back into its place again right away. But when he did get the thing straightened around he looked at me steady without ever smiling, and says:

"What do dey stan' for? I'se gwyne to tell you. When I got all wore out wid work, en wid de callin' for you, en went to sleep, my heart wuz mos' broke bekase you wuz los', en I didn' k'yer no' mo' what become er me en de raf'. En when I wake up en fine you back agin, all safe en soun', de tears come, en I could a got down on my knees en kiss yo' foot, I's so thankful. En all you wuz thinkin' 'bout wuz how you could make a fool uv ole Jim wid a lie. Dat truck dah is TRASH; en trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de head er dey fren's en makes 'em ashamed." (Chapter 15)

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“Then he got up slow and walked to the wigwam, and went in there without saying anything but that. But that was enough. It made me feel so mean I could almost kissed HIS foot to get him to take it back.

It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger; but I done it, and I warn't ever sorry for it afterwards, neither. I didn't do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn't done that one if I'd a knowed it would make him feel that way. “(Chapter 15)

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Meanwhile, Huck’s conscience troubles him deeply about helping Jim escape from his “rightful owner,” Miss Watson, especially after all she has done for Huck. Jim talks on and on about going to the free states, especially about his plan to earn money to buy the freedom of his wife and children. If their masters refuse to give up Jim’s family, Jim plans to have some abolitionists kidnap them. When Huck and Jim think they see Cairo, Huck goes out on the canoe to check, having secretly resolved to give Jim up. But Huck’s heart softens when he hears Jim call out that Huck is his only friend, the only one to keep a promise to him.

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Jim said it made him all over trembly and feverish to be so close to freedom. Well, I can tell you it made me all over trembly and feverish, too, to hear him, because I begun to get it through my head that he WAS most free -- and who was to blame for it? Why, ME. I couldn't get that out of my conscience, no how nor no way. It got to troubling me so I couldn't rest; I couldn't stay still in one place. It hadn't ever come home to me before, what this thing was that I was doing. But now it did; and it stayed with me, and scorched me more and more. I tried to make out to myself that I warn't to blame, because I didn't run Jim off from his rightful owner; but it warn't no use, conscience up and says, every time, "But you knowed he was running for his freedom, and you could a paddled ashore and told somebody." That was so -- I couldn't get around that noway. That was where it pinched. Conscience says to me, "What had poor Miss Watson done to you that you could see her nigger go off right under your eyes and never say one single word? What did that poor old woman do to you that you could treat her so mean? Why, she tried to learn you your book, she tried to learn you your manners, she tried to be good to you every way she knowed how. THAT'S what she done."

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I got to feeling so mean and so miserable I most wished I was dead. I fidgeted up and down the raft, abusing myself to myself, and Jim was fidgeting up and down past me. We neither of us could keep still. Every time he danced around and says, "Dah's Cairo!" it went through me like a shot, and I thought if it WAS Cairo I reckoned I would die of miserableness.

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Jim talked out loud all the time while I was talking to myself. He was saying how the first thing he would do when he got to a free State he would go to saving up money and never spend a single cent, and when he got enough he would buy his wife, which was owned on a farm close to where Miss Watson lived; and then they would both work to buy the two children, and if their master wouldn't sell them, they'd get an Ab'litionist to go and steal them.

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It most froze me to hear such talk. He wouldn't ever dared to talk such talk in his life before. Just see what a difference it made in him the minute he judged he was about free. It was according to the old saying, "Give a nigger an inch and he'll take an ell." Thinks I, this is what comes of my not thinking. Here was this nigger, which I had as good as helped to run away, coming right out flat-footed and saying he would steal his children -- children that belonged to a man I didn't even know; a man that hadn't ever done me no harm.

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I was sorry to hear Jim say that, it was such a lowering of him. My conscience got to stirring me up hotter than ever, until at last I says to it, "Let up on me -- it ain't too late yet -- I'll paddle ashore at the first light and tell." I felt easy and happy and light as a feather right off. All my troubles was gone. I went to looking out sharp for a light, and sort of singing to myself. By and by one showed. Jim sings out:

"We's safe, Huck, we's safe! Jump up and crack yo' heels! Dat's de good ole Cairo at las', I jis knows it!"

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In the end, all is well for Huck, Tom, and Jim. Jim informs Huck that he doesn’t have to worry about his c

ruel Pap anymore, because it was the corpse of his Pap that they found on the floating house when they left St. Petersburg.

Tom has recovered from his bullet wound and keeps a pendant around his neck containing the infamous bullet. Huck says, “There ain't nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I'd a knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn't a tackled it, and ain't a-going to no more. 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.”

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General reception

The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. Satirizing a Southern antebellum society that had ceased to exist about twenty years before the work was published, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an often scathing look at entrenched attitudes, particularly racism.

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T. S. Eliot says: "It is Huck who gives the book style. The River gives the book its form. But for the River, the book might be only a sequence of adventures with a happy ending. A river, a very big and powerful river, is the only natural force that can wholly determine the course of human peregrination.... Thus the River makes the book a great book... Mark Twain is a native, and the River God is his God."

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1935) says: "Huckleberry Finn took the first journey back. He was the first to look back at the republic from the perspective of the west. His eyes were the first eyes that ever looked at us objectively that were not eyes from overseas. There were mountains at the frontier but he wanted more than mountains to look at with his restive eyes--he wanted to find out about men and how they lived together. And because he turned back we have him forever."

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Ernest Hemingway says: "The good writers are Henry James, Stephen Crane, and Mark Twain. That's not the order they're good in. There is no order for good writers.... All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called 'Huckleberry Finn.' If you read it you must stop where the Nigger Jim is stolen from the boys. That is the real end. The rest is just cheating. But it's the best book we've had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since." -- from Ernest Hemingway, "The Green Hills of Africa" (1934)

“I believe that ‘Huckleberry Finn’ is one of the great masterpieces of the world, that it is the full equal of ‘Don Quixote’ and ‘Robinson Crusoe… I believe that Mark Twain had a clearer vision of life, that he came nearer to its elementals and was less deceived by its false appearances, than any other American who has ever presumed to manufacture generalizations, not excepting Emerson.

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Characterization of Huck Living in conflicts: He has got about

ten systems of conflicting rules he’s trying to sort out. He has to decide to what and whom he feels loyal: follow religion, or follow his gut instincts? Obey his father, or obey the Widow? Listen to Tom, or to the Phelpses? With all this conflict, Huck has to sort his way through what he thinks is right, which is hardly easy when you’re a young boy caught up in some pretty weighty moral issues.

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Adaptability to deal with the conflicts: What’s appealing about his character is that he approaches these conflicts so earnestly. Check out the scene where Huck decides to apologize to Jim even though he’s a black man, or that moment in Chapter 31 when Huck debates whether or not to turn Jim in and explain everything to Miss Watson. On the one hand, all the rules he’s been raised by tell him he can’t free a slave. No matter how he feels about Jim as a friend, he really does believe he’ll go to hell if he helps Jim out. Because of this belief, it reflects an incredibly strong personal character when Huck defiantly declares that, d--n his conscience, he’ll just go to hell and that’s that.

Page 49: Literature of Realism and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Shandong University, April 13, 2012.

As with several of the frontier literary characters that came before him, Huck possesses the ability to adapt to almost any situation through deceit. He is playful but practical, inventive but logical, compassionate but realistic, and these traits allow him to survive the abuse of Pap, the violence of a feud, and the wiles of river con men. To persevere in these situations, Huck lies, cheats, steals, and defrauds his way down the river. These traits are part of the reason that Huck Finn was viewed as a book not acceptable for children, yet they are also traits that allow Huck to survive his surroundings and, in the conclusion, make the right decision.

Page 50: Literature of Realism and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Shandong University, April 13, 2012.

Innocence: Because Huck is young and uncivilized, he describes events and people in a direct manner without any extensive commentary. Huck does not laugh at humorous situations and statements simply because his literal approach does not find them to be funny; he fails to see the irony. He does not project social, religious, cultural, or conceptual nuances into situations because he has never learned them.

As a coming of age character in the late nineteenth century, Huck views his surroundings with a practical and logical lens. His observations are not filled with judgments; instead, Huck observes his environment and gives realistic descriptions of the Mississippi River and the culture that dominates the towns that dot its shoreline from Missouri south.

Page 51: Literature of Realism and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Shandong University, April 13, 2012.

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For example, when Miss Watson tells Huck that “she was going to live so as to go to the good place [heaven],” Huck, applying what he knows about Miss Watson and the obvious lifestyle that makes her happy, responds that he “couldn’t see no advantage in going where she was going,” and makes up his mind to not try to get there. Huck does not intend his comment to be disrespectful or sarcastic; it is simply a statement of fact and is indicative of the literal, practical approach to life that he exhibits throughout the novel

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Pursuit or exploration of identity: Huck definitely struggles with his own sense of identity. In the beginning of the novel, he oscillates between his comfort living in the woods and his realization that, actually, gettin’ civilized ain’t so bad. He seems to make his living on the river out of pretending to be other people, and he certainly displays a penchant for telling lies all the time.

He constantly refers to Tom Sawyer as his foil while he’s on his journey; he repeatedly expresses a desire to be like Tom, wonders how Tom would act, hopes he’s doing as good of a job as Tom would, etc.

In the end, he is acting upon his own choice, presumably quite different from that of Tom.

Page 53: Literature of Realism and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Shandong University, April 13, 2012.

Defiance against the authority: Huckleberry Finn tells the story in first-person point of view. His narration, including his accounts of conversations, contains regionalisms, grammatical errors, pronunciation errors, and other characteristics of the speech or writing of a nineteenth-century Missouri boy with limited education.

In the form of language: The use of patois bolsters the verisimilitude of the novel.

As an “bad” boy in contrast to model boy: With his many bad habits, Huck lies, cheats, steals, and defrauds his way down the river. These traits are part of the reason that Huck Finn was viewed as a book not acceptable for children.

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“Through Huck's dialect and the informal diction of the novel's first person narrative, Twain is able to repeatedly trick his reader (especially his American readers) into laughing at the strange mix of naiveté and galling trickery present in Huck before slamming the truth in the reader's face: Huck is Us. The reader is reminded throughout the story that this backwards, uneducated, shameless narrator speaks to the reader as he does to nearly every character in the book--as an equal. Only when confronted with the subjects and ideas that form the bases of Religion and Romanticism does Huck become really condescending.”

Page 55: Literature of Realism and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Shandong University, April 13, 2012.

Uniqueness of the character: Huck Finn is the narrator and will tell his story in his own words, in his own language and dialect (complete with grammatical errors and misspellings), and from his own point of view. By using the first person narrative point of view, Twain carries on the southwestern humor tradition of vernacular language

Page 56: Literature of Realism and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Shandong University, April 13, 2012.

Themes of the work Thematic image of the work: natural, free indivi

dualism contrasted with the expectations of society.

Huck feels confined by the social expectations of civilization and wants to return to his simple, carefree life. He dislikes the social and cultural trappings of clean clothes, Bible studies, spelling lessons, and manners that he is forced to follow. Huck cannot understand why people would want to live under such circumstances, and he longs to be able to return to his previous life where no one tries to “sivilize” him.

Page 57: Literature of Realism and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Shandong University, April 13, 2012.

Freedom: The contrast between freedom and civilization permeates the novel, and Huck’s struggle for natural freedom (freedom from society) mirrors the more important struggle of Jim, who struggles for social freedom (freedom within the society). Both Huck and Jim search for freedom during their adventure down the Mississippi, and both find that civilization presents a large obstacle to obtaining their dream. From the beginning, readers realize that civilization is filled with certain hypocrisies, including religion and the practice of slavery.

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“Freedom” in diverse dimensions Twain wrote a novel that embodies the search for freedom. He wrote during the post-Civil War period when there was an intense white reaction against blacks. Twain took aim squarely against racial prejudice, rising segregation, lynchings, and the generally accepted belief that blacks were sub-human. He "made it clear that Jim was good, deeply loving, human, and anxious for freedom".

To highlight the hypocrisy required to condone slavery within an ostensibly moral system, Twain has Huck's father enslave him, isolate him, and beat him. When Huck escapes - which anyone would agree was the right thing to do - he then immediately encounters Jim "illegally" doing the same thing.

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Morality in perspectives Throughout the story, Huck is in moral conflict

with the received values of the society in which he lives, and while he is unable to consciously refute those values even in his thoughts, he makes a moral choice based on his own valuation of Jim's friendship and human worth, a decision in direct opposition to the things he has been taught.

Mark Twain in his lecture notes proposes that "a sound heart is a surer guide than an ill-trained conscience", and goes on to describe the novel as "...a book of mine where a sound heart and a deformed conscience come into collision and conscience suffers defeat".

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Racism involved in the novel

Much modern scholarship of Huckleberry Finn has focused on its treatment of race. Many Twain scholars have argued that the book, by humanizing Jim and exposing the fallacies of the racist assumptions of slavery, is an attack on racism. Others have argued that the book falls short on this score, especially in its depiction of Jim. According to Professor Stephen Railton of the University of Virginia, Twain was unable to fully rise above the stereotypes of black people that white readers of his era expected and enjoyed, and therefore resorted to minstrel show-style comedy to provide humor at Jim's expense, and ended up confirming rather than challenging late-19th century racist stereotypes.

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In one instance, the controversy caused a drastically altered interpretation of the text: In 1955, CBS tried to avoid controversial material in a televised version of the book, by deleting all mention of slavery and having a white actor play Jim.

Another example involves the disputes on the appropriateness of teaching the book in the U.S. public school system—this questioning of the word “nigger” is illustrated by a school administrator of Virginia in 1982 calling the novel the "most grotesque example of racism I’ve ever seen in my life". According to the American Library Association, Huckleberry Finn was the fifth most-frequently-challenged book in the United States during the 1990s.

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Historical Background

By the time that Mark Twain completed The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the U.S. Congress had amended the Constitution to do the following:

Abolish slavery (Thirteenth Amendment, 1865), Guarantee citizenship rights to every person born in the

U.S. (Fourteenth Amendment, 1868) Grant all citizens the right to vote regardless of "race,

color, or previous condition of servitude" (Fifteenth Amendment, 1870).

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However, beginning in 1877, some state legislatures began passing segregation laws that limited or denied blacks access to white-controlled schools, restaurants, restrooms, cemeteries, theaters, parks, and other facilities. Consequently, Twain's theme of racism in Huckleberry Finn remained current when the book was published. It remains current today because, even though segregation laws have been struck down, racism persists as a serious problem.

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“ 亲近型不可靠叙事常见的第二、第三、第四子类型在马克•吐温的《哈克•贝利芬历险记》中有很好的体现,在此我将一并讨论并评价其总体效果。第二个子类型我称之为隐含作者和叙述者之间的“玩笑式比较”。隐含作者玩笑性地采用了不可靠叙事来提醒读者注意他和叙事者之讲述的共同点或不同点。隐含作者如何建立他和叙述者之间的关系决定“玩笑式比较”将产生疏离效果还是亲近效果。例如,隐含作者若让叙述者高估其故事讲述的能力,我们多半会认为这就是疏离型不可靠性。马克•吐温小说的第一段提供了一个绝好的例子来说明具有亲近效果的“玩笑式比较”。 ( 唐伟胜:《叙事》)

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这里,哈克谈论《哈克•贝利芬历险记》时是一名可靠的报道者,但如果从读解者和评价者的角度看,他的可靠性就令人生疑了。一方面,哈克显然是权威的报道者,因此站在“作者的读者”位置,我们坚信他的诠释和评价是可靠的。如果说有人知道《汤姆•索耶》是否有胡侃鬼扯的成分,那个人就是哈克。另一方面,如果我们完全信赖哈克,那么作为隐含作者的马克•吐温就在引导我们发现《汤姆•索耶》的某些伦理缺陷,尽管是极微小的缺陷。摆脱这种有趣的困局的办法并不难:隐含的吐温玩笑式地处理哈克这个人物的“模仿”成分和“虚构”成分之间的关系,从而使哈克的读解和评价显得有点不太可靠。对“作者的读者”而言,哈克和《汤姆•索耶》中的其他事件一样都是虚构的,他在一部虚构小说中所作的“真实”与“胡扯”之分也就站不住脚。隐含的吐温无意邀请其“作者的读者”回到《汤姆•索耶》中去寻找胡扯的地方,因为我们根本找不到。而且,我们知道,哈克批评吐温胡扯(并原谅这些胡扯),完全是因为吐温准许他这样做。换言之,这种玩笑式的比较涉及到了吐温的“错层”手法的使用:他让自己和哈克处于同一叙事层面(将自己从小说作者的身份转变为研究汤姆的生平然后为之著书的记者、传记作家或历史学家),同时又信任其读者能够认识到,他是那一叙事层面的创造者,正是他这个创造者的授权,哈克才能对同一叙事层面的其他人挑过拿错。授权哈克来指责自己胡扯,又让他表现出宽宏大量的气度,隐含的吐温就塑造出了一个有点不可靠但非常吸引人的哈克形象。其结果是,在小说的第一段,无论情感上还是伦理上,我们和哈克及隐含的吐温都保持着“亲近”关系。

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Major Ideas of Realistic literature 1. Writers sought to portray American life as it really was, insisting that the ordinary and the local were as suitable for artistic portrayal as the magnificent and the remote.

2. The representation of life was considered the primary object of the novel. An objective and realistic reflection of human existence was advocated rather than the idealized view as advocated by romanticism and sentimentalism.

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3. The style is characteristic of the combination of the gentle and graceful prose and the vernacular diction and rough frontier humor.

4. Characterization also witnessed typical shift from “flat characters” to “round characters”. Writers sought to describe the wide range of American experience and to present the subtleties of human personalities, to portray characters who were not simply all good or bad.

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From Realism to Naturalism In the 1890s, Howells spoke against the description of

bleak fiction of failure and despair, and advocated the writing of the “smiling aspects of life”, since he believed that America was a land of hope and possibility.

But the turn of the century just witnessed a generation of writers whose understanding of lack of orders, beliefs and values helped facilitated the growth of naturalism.

Naturalists dismissed the validity of values and truths and attempted to present the extreme objectivity and frankness of life. They described people from lower classes dominated by their environment.

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Many critics have suggested that there is no clear distinction between realism and its related late nineteenth-century movement, naturalism.

As Donald Pizer notes in his introduction to The Cambridge Companion to American Realism and Naturalism: Howells to London, the term "realism" is difficult to define, in part because it is used differently in European contexts than in American literature. Pizer suggests that "whatever was being produced in fiction during the 1870s and 1880s that was new, interesting, and roughly similar in a number of ways can be designated as realism, and that an equally new, interesting, and roughly similar body of writing produced at the turn of the century can be designated as naturalism" (5).

Put rather too simplistically, one rough distinction made by critics is that realism espousing a deterministic philosophy and focusing on the lower classes is considered naturalism.