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 ...
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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. 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. 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. - Taken from "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" written by Mark Twain
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I give classic books to my kids as gifts. This was perfect. Age. quality. it was everything I hoped to gift for my families future generations to read and enjoy. Even made a box cover for the book. Can't hide the past from ignorance.
FanOfTimeLifeBooks
Aug 21, 2013
A Sophisticated Sequel to Tom Sawyer
Published in the United States in 1885, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn portrays the continuing story of one of the main characters first introduced in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Wanting to escape his abusive father, Huck runs away. Huck is joined with Jim, a runaway slave who fears being sold. Huck and Jim encounter all sorts of adventures and unique people on their way down the Mississippi River. The book also serves as a commentary on slavery and race relations in the nineteenth century. Thus, there is much more to this book than a boy simply narrating his adventures as he runs away with an escaped slave. True, the book uses words which would be considered offensive by present standards; moreover, some would say that this is a racist book. However, the book must be interpreted and analyzed in the time in which it was written. With this book, Mark Twain capably presents a social issue from the perspective of a boy seeking a better situation. I found Huck Finn more enjoyable as I read it right after I finished Tom Sawyer; while one does not have to read Tom Sawyer to understand Huck Finn, one will get a lot more out this book if the prequel is read first.
LorieC49
Mar 3, 2011
Huck Finn
Book in very good shape. Was sent out and arrived in great shape and promptly. Would recommend to anyone
Maggie1
Dec 29, 2009
read it for a reason
I call this an onion (or parfait!) book, best understood by recognizing its layers. While many people "enjoy" Huck when they are children, it's best read by adults or teens with their eyes and ears open. Twain gives us harsh criticism of all American society, disguised as an adventure. The only decent human being in the book is Jim, and that was Twain's point. Twain wrote in reaction to how he saw people treating each other, but he knew no one would read it if it began "You all need to be nicer!" At every turn we get a semi-humorous event with a terribly dark underbelly. If you don't pay attention, you'll miss the very serious nature of this novel.
dekesolomon
Sep 27, 2009
Huck & Jim's Serendipitous Salvation
Of all the endings possible for 'Huckleberry Finn,' only one would have made any sense. My own, uneducated guess is that Mark Twain didn't want (or didn't have the courage) to go that way, so he tacked on a resolution clapped together from maudlin slop and preposterous coincidence. When I put my mean eye on 'Huck Finn,' I can literally see where the fix was thrown in. It couldn't be clearer had the author drawn a line across the bottom of chapter 31.
Thus what might have been one of the world's great tragedies became what is yet one of the world's great pieces of kiddie lit. The world declares it so and so it will remain, which is some consolation because the book remains a tragedy of a sort.
The world needs kiddie lit, whether adults enjoy it or not. That's why 'Huckleberry Finn' will outlast ten thousand writers like me. It will survive all attempts to pry it out of its place in the canon and future generations will have to suffer that awful resolution just as I did. Most people don't notice anything wrong with it, anyway.
The upshot is that 'Huck Finn' is immortal: it is a thing like warfare or venereal disease. And if (unlike most Americans) you've read all of Mark Twain, you know the old geezer would have chortled at and cherished that thought.
When I was a lad of nine years, I'd have rated "Huckleberry Finn" at six stars, my logic then being that five were not enough. Today, 61 years old, getting on toward the end of a hard life, I give it three stars for the three fourths of the book that are truly superb. The rest of it is goo.