Book Review: The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn

The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by Mark Twain published in the United Kingdom in December 1884. Commonly named among the Great American Novels, 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 another american classic, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The book follows Huck's adventure down the Mississippi River with Jim, a companion and a escapee slave. On the journey, he discovers that the world is different than what he anticipated as he continued down the river.

The book is eminent for its colorful description of various kinds of people, from the rich bureaucrats  to the slaves and places along the Mississippi River. The story is set in a Southern antebellum (pre-civil war period) society.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an often scathing satire on entrenched attitudes, particularly racism and the notion of individualism and identity, ideals of companionship and betrayals. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remains a classic and has also been the continued object of study by literary critics across the world since its publication. It was however criticized upon release because of its coarse language and became even more controversial in the 20th century because of its perceived use of racial stereotypes and because of its frequent use of the racial slurs.