mark twain & the adventures of huckleberry finn

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Mark Twain & The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

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Page 1: Mark twain & the adventures of huckleberry finn

Mark Twain & The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Page 2: Mark twain & the adventures of huckleberry finn

Twain Biography• Born Samuel

Clemons on November 30, 1835 in Missouri.

• Grew up near the Mississippi River his whole childhood.

• Learned how to pilot a steamboat in his 20s. He loved this job because it suited his love of freedom.

Page 3: Mark twain & the adventures of huckleberry finn

• In 1861, the Civil War halted shipping on the Mississippi, so 26-year-old Clemens traveled west to Nevada.

• 1862—published his first article under the pen name “Mark Twain”, riverboat jargon for water 2 fathoms (12 feet) deep.

• 1867—Twain traveled to Europe and the Middle East, writing along the way.

Page 4: Mark twain & the adventures of huckleberry finn

Twain’s Best Known Works

• The Innocents Abroad (1869)

• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)

• Life on the Mississippi (1883)

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)

Page 5: Mark twain & the adventures of huckleberry finn

• The last decades of Twain’s life were filled with sadness. He had to declare bankruptcy in 1894.

• Between 1896 and 1910, he lost his home, his wife died, and 2 of his daughters died.

• He died on April 21, 1909.

Page 6: Mark twain & the adventures of huckleberry finn

Huck Finn

• American author Ernest Hemingway said, “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn”

• The book is required reading in over 70% of American high schools.

Page 7: Mark twain & the adventures of huckleberry finn

• From the beginning, the book has caused controversy.– Huck and Jim were seen as bad role models

with low morals.– The language was thought to be too course

and vulgar.

Page 8: Mark twain & the adventures of huckleberry finn

According to Tom Lowery, Kamiak High School

• “Up until Twain and Huck, every American author was simply mimicking British authors…Twain finally says, in effect…screw this…I am going to write about TRUE AMERICAN CHARACTERS…scars and all…with AUTHENTIC American accents…and it’s YOUR problem if YOU can’t understand the dialects. I’m going to put them in authentic settings and believable story lines and tell the REAL story of what happened during that time…not some romanticized crap like The Last of the Mohicans or that other drivel that had been passed off as AMERICAN literature up to that time.”

Page 9: Mark twain & the adventures of huckleberry finn

Is Huck Finn racist?

• In 1957, the NAACP (Nat’l Assoc. for the Advancement of Colored People) charged Huck Finn with containing racist slurs (the “N” word appears over 200 times).

• Charges of racism have followed the book ever since.

• Jim is seen by many as a stereotypical and demeaning portrayal of African Americans.

Page 10: Mark twain & the adventures of huckleberry finn

John Wallace, 1982

• "The reading aloud of Huck Finn in our classrooms is humiliating and insulting to black students. It contributes to their feelings of low self-esteem and to the white student's disrespect for black people. . . . For the past forty years, black families have trekked to schools in numerous districts throughout the country to say, 'This book is not good for our children' only to be turned away by insensitive and often unwittingly racist teachers and administrators who respond, 'This book is a classic.'"

Page 11: Mark twain & the adventures of huckleberry finn

• Today, the NAACP’s stance on Huck Finn is “You don't ban Mark Twain-you explain Mark Twain! To study an idea is not necessarily to endorse the idea. Mark Twain's satirical novel, Huckleberry Finn, accurately portrays a time in history-the nineteenth century-and one of its evils, slavery.”

Page 12: Mark twain & the adventures of huckleberry finn

• Scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin says Huck Finn is "the greatest anti-racist novel by an American writer."