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Mark Twain: Huckleberry Finn
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The life of Mark Twain, whose real name was Samuel Clemens, is a totally fascinating and moving story. He hated and spoke out against slavery and was a supporter of full adult suffrage. He was the first American to write in the vernacular and to write a sympathetic and well-developed portrait of a black person: Jim in Huckleberry Finn. He sponsored a struggling black man through law school, who later became the mentor of Thurgood Marshall, who was the first black American Supreme Court justice. Clemens struggled with depression; he was a man of constant sorrow; humour was what kept him from killing himself. He was born into modest circumstances, became wealthy and even became obsessive about it, to the point that it interfered with his writing. His dabbling in investments was a complete disaster; it ruined him financially.
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Mark Twain was an avid critic of American society. His novel The Gilded Age (1873, written with Charles Dudley Warner) satirizes the post-Civil War boom years and Washington politics. Life on the Mississippi (1883) is a highly critical account of middle-American society. Huckleberry Finn attacks racism, as Huck gradually comes to recognize the humanity that he shares with the escaped slave Jim. After a round-the-world lecture tour in 1895-1896, Mark Twain became an outspoken critic of imperialism. He attacked the actions of Western nations in Africa, China, and the Philippines in various works and served as vice president of the American Congo Reform Association.
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Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens 1835 - 1910) is one of America's greatest authors and humorists. He was celebrated in his time, and despite being frequently banned, is still read on campuses today. Of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," Ernest Hemingway said, ". ...all American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since."
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Twain began his career writing light, humorous verse but evolved into a grim, almost profane chronicler of the vanities, hypocrisies and murderous acts of mankind. At mid-career, with Huckleberry Finn, he combined rich humor, sturdy narrative and social criticism. Twain was a master at rendering colloquial speech and helped to create and popularize a distinctive American literature built on American themes and language. Many of Mark Twain's works have been suppressed at times for various reasons. When an anonymous slim volume was published in 1880 entitled 1601: Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors., Twain was among those rumored to be the author. The issue was not settled until 1906, when Twain acknowledged his literary paternity of this scatological masterpiece.
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Mark Twain is one of the most popular names in American literature, even as the name was a product of his imagination. With "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," Twain created one of the most controversial works in literary history, which is spiced with humor and resonating with tragedy.
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One of Twain's major achievements is the way he narrates Huckleberry Finn, following the twists and turns of ordinary speech, his native Missouri dialect. Shelley Fisher Fishkin has noted in Was Huck Black? (1993) that the book drew upon a vernacular formed by black voices as well as white. The model for Huck Finn's voice, according to Fishkin, was a black child instead of a white one. The character of Huck was based on a boy named Tom Blankenship, Twain's boyhood friend.
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Huckleberry Finn