The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn (2002) - Plot & Excerpts
Whether it's the gods smiling on me, blind coincidence, narcissism, or a combination of the three, world events sometimes have a way of coinciding with whatever I'm reading. For instance, the week after I finished reading All the President's Men, Mark Felt revealed himself to be Deep Throat, bringing an end to a guessing game that had gone on for over 30 years. You're welcome.Now, weeks after I finally read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn the literary world is aflame over a new edition which changes the 200 plus usages of the n word to the seemingly more non-offensive word slave. Since I read this book for the first time last week, I consider myself an expert on this controversy, and what follows is my unsolicited opinion.The Drive-By Trucker's album Souther Rock Operais organized around the concept of what Patterson Hood calls the duality of this southern thing. Like Hood, I was raised in Alabama, and have had a ambiguous relationship with my home state and the whole concept of "The South." Down here, things are particularly Janus faced. For instance, a in the classroom I'm sitting in, not paying attention to Products Liability, is the composite of Alabama Law School's most infamous alumnus, George Corley Wallace*. However, Wallace is a more complex individual than you might suspect on first glance. The day the ex-governor died, Patterson Hood wrote the song "Wallace," which is written from the point of view of the Devil welcoming George to hell. As Hood points out, Wallace started his career as a progressive, New Deal inspired, judge. In his first run for governor, he spoke out against the Ku Klux Klan and was endorsed by the NAACP. However, after losing in the primary to a candidate who didn't hesitate to play the race card Wallace vowed never to be "outniggered" again. The rest is history. However, another thing the general public doesn't know is that Wallace had a late-career conversion. In the late '70s he admitted the error of his ways and asked forgiveness from civil rights leaders. Under his latter terms as governor, Alabama was better than most minority states at minority hirings. Wallace won his last term as governor with over 80% of the black vote. I'm not by any means a Wallace apologist. His actions during the Civil Rights movement were inexcusable, and the fact that he may have been more progressive than many men of his time just makes him more unprincipled. As Hood points out, racism is a national problem, but because of Wallace, it's convenient to associate race issues with an Alabama drawl. Yet, however much Wallace's dark side overshadowed his better angels, it would be a mistake to ignore the latter completely. Wallace is just one example of the Janus face nature of Southern culture. After the same environment that produced Wallace, David Duke, and Lester Maddox produced William Faulkner, Robert Penn Warren and Mark Twain. History here is difficult, filled with subtle distinctions based on perspective. Therefore, the subject is particularly susceptible to the uses and abuses of demagogues. Which brings us to the present controversy. Like many, my initial reaction to the new edition of Huck Finn was disgust. But the more you think about this issue, the more nuanced the controversy becomes. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is arguably the most important American novel ever written. As Hemingway said in an oft-repeated quote, "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. This sentiment leads one to two conclusions: 1) the novel should be taught as a part of any course dealing with American literature and 2) it takes a lot of gall to edit the author of such a work. However, I also cannot reconcile the issues that these two conclusions lead to. No teacher in my southern high school assigned Mark Twain, so this wasn't an issue. However, this book presents great difficulties to anyone who wishes to teach it at a modern high school.This all boils down to Twain's over two hundred uses of a specific word, which happens to be the most enigmatic word in the American lexicon. We would probably be better off if the word could find its way to extinction, but any hopes of the word's imminent disappearance are delusional, it's most likely here to stay. I'm keep bringing this allusion up, but the n word is the epitome of Janus-faced. I can't think of another word where so much depends on pronunciation. Anybody who has heard the word in a certain way can tell you there's a huge gap between ending the word with a -guh and ending it with a -ger. I also don't buy any arguments where one group of people are "allowed" to use the word and others aren't. Language isn't exclusive. My generation is the first generations who grew up with hip-hop in the cultural mainstream. Yet there is still the paradoxical situation involved here. A white kid may be thinking he is reciting one of his favorite rap lyrics, but to someone else he is doing something that is horribly offensive. So the problem presented by Huck Finn is a uniquely American one. The n word is something every kid has heard by the age of high school. Depending on your circumstances, you have probably have heard uttered with racism behind it by a friend, or a friend's parent, or even a relative. So this isn't your usual school censorship issue. But at the same time, I can't think of any way of rationalizing certain aspects of Twain's book that isn't in some way condescending. However, I still think that the sanitizing of the book is pure whitewashing. I also don't like the idea that this book should only be taught in college. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is exactly the type of book that needs to be taught in American literature courses, and one of the reasons for this is specifically because the language Twain uses. In most cases involving school censorship, the censorship is motivated by ignorance, or naiveté, or wishing to foist religious values on the community as a whole. Here, censorship is motivated by something more akin to cowardice. The aspects of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that cause problems are the same aspects that make the novel more than a children's story. I think there would be less of an issue if Twain made the story more melodramatic. The problem is that Twain ignores the melodramatic for the sake of a sense of realness.Huck Finn has been criticized for not exploring the nihilism of the plantation system. I'm sympathetic to a lot of arguments surrounding this book, but this criticism is patently ridiculous. Don't get me wrong, slavery and 19th century racism was undoubtedly both brutal and real, the stuff that justifies the melodramatic. However, Huck Finn was written twenty years after the Emancipation Proclamation, it's not an abolitionist polemic. Instead, it's more concerned with the fallacy of racism. Most encounters with racism don't involve the inherently evil backwoods hick who lives in the double wide. What makes racism so sinister is that it is far more sneaky than that. Far more frequently, you see racism in the sweet little old lady who, quite suddenly, utters something that leaves you thinking, "shit, that was really racist." Racism isn't a learned doctrine. You don't wake up one day and decide that you're going to start hating black people. Racism is a kind of indoctrination. There are no evil, sadistic slave owners in the novel. The shocking thing about the book is the people who own slaves and throw out the n word without a thought are otherwise completely decent, even friendly, people. The assumption that all racist people are somehow malevolent is a cousin of the assumption that all people of a different skin color or ethnicity are of a better value than an other for precisely those reasons. Both conclusions are assumptions made in the absence of nuance. The main narrative thread of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finnis Huck's rejection of a bias that had been he had been subconsciously indoctrinated in by the circumstances of his native culture. Although the slavery and racism Huck is exposed to is mostly benign, this should be treated as a denial by Twain of the inherent inhumanity of either. Having Huck's redemption caused by expose to cruelty would be the easy way out. What Twain does is far more complex and interesting. The action's of white people have nothing to do with Huck's conversion, instead it is achieved through his recognition of the humanity of his friend Jim. After all, it's not Mark Twain who uses the n word, it's Huck Finn. That Jim starts the novel as nothing more than "Nigger Jim" is a crucial aspect of the story. The n word signifies a prejudice beyond the status of "slave." By sanitizing any offensive racial terms, the redemptive power of the conclusion is weakened. There's a reason nobody reads Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin anymore. The evilness of slavery is a settled issue. What makes Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn still relevant is that it is one of the first works of American art to go beyond this to the next step towards racial equality. Changing the term "nigger" to "slave" might offend less people and it might make it easier for teachers to teach to high schoolers. But who said it was supposed to be easy? Problems associated with race have the most difficult problems America has faced since the first shipment of African slaves arrived in Jamestown. Confronting these issues should be uncomfortable. Great literature should be filled with nuance and subtlety. The place for good versus evil, black or white, you're either with us or against us is in fairy tales and children's stories. If The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has to conform itself to comfort modern readers, we might as well permanently assign it to the children's section.* Fun fact: Back in those days, they ordered pictures on the composite by class rank (Thank God they stopped doing this in the '60s). Wallace's picture is the last on the penultimate row. I'm not sure if George displayed a similar lack of effort and/or apathy, but this is a comfort to me.
"وأيقنت ألا جدوى من إضاعة الوقت هباء, فأنت لا تستطيع أن تعلم زنجياً كيف يجادل. وعندئذ كففت عن الحديث" هاكلبري فين, بعد أن رفض الزنجي أن الاختلاف بين الأمريكي والفرنسي مثل الاختلاف بين القطة والبقرة إذا لم تستطع هذه الرواية أن توصل لك قيمة العلم والمنطق, وخطر العلم الزائف فما الذي سيفعل؟ إذا لم تشعرك الرواية بكمية الخطر والخداع الذي يتحتم عليك أن تحتمي منه في هذا العالم المحيط بك, فما الذي تبقى لنشلك من سذاجة الطفولة؟فكما يقول "بريان ديوننج":"قد يكون مارك توين أكثر النقاد فاعلية عند نقده لجهل البشر وخدعهم حتى الآن, بالرغم من مظهرها فهي تبدو وكأنها قصص مغامرات, فهي بالحقيقة مجموعة من إفشاءات صادمة للضعف البشري, والتي تقودها الخرافات, العنصرية, الجشع, والجهل" في ريفيو الجزء الأول: توم سوير تحدثت عن روعته الرواية كقصة مغامرات مسلية, ولكن في الجزء الثاني منها, والذي يُحكى لنا على لسان صديق توم سوير "هاكلبري فين", نشهد تحولا كبيراً واضحاً في موضوع المغامرات منذ الصفحات الأولى من الرواية:-tفدية؟ وما هي الفدية؟-tلست أدري! ولكن هذا ما يفعله المغامرون دائماً! ولقد قرأت عن الفدية في الكتب. ومن ثم فهذا هو ما يجب علينا أن نفعله!!-tولكن كيف يمكننا أن نفعل ذلك ونحن لا نعرفه؟-tمهما يكن من أمر, فإنه يجب علينا أن "نفعل" ذلك! ألم أقل لك إنه مذكور في الكتب؟ هل تريد أن تأتي عملاً يخالف ما ورد في الكتب؟ وأن تفسد كل مغامرتنا بذلك؟...-tولماذا لا يلتقط الإنسان هراوة و "يفتديهم" بمجرد مجيئهم إلى هنا؟!!-tلأن ذلك ليس مذكوراً في الكتب!..هذا هو السبب يا "بن روجرز".. هل تريد أن تعالج الأمور حسب النظام المتبع أم بطريقة مخالفة؟ -هذه هي المسألة ..ألا تظن أن أولئك الذين وضعوا الكتب يعرفون الإجراءات الصحيحة التي ينبغي اتخاذها؟ هل تظن "أنك" تستطيع أن تعلمهم شيئاً؟ كلا يا سيدي! سوف "نفتدي" هؤلاء الأشخاص بالطريقة المتبعة -t.. وهل نفتدي النساء أيضا؟ -tلا, فان أحداً لم يقرأ عن مثل هذا في الكتب! ======================الرواية هي إحدى الكلاسيكيات الخالدة, وعندما نقول أنها كلاسيكية ليس فقط معناها أنها قديمة, بل لأنها أيضاً أصيلة في أفكارها التي يتداولها اللاحقون تحت غطاء مسميات أخرى, فمثلا عندما تقرأ هذا المشهد:-tإن ما يجعلني أشعر بالحزن هذه المرة , هو أنني سمعت صوت باب يغلق بعنف منذ قليل , فذكرني ذلك بالمعاملة السيئة التي عاملت بها ابنتي اليزابيث الصغيرة في أحد الأيام ! لم تكن حينذاك قد بلغت الرابعة من عمرها , وأصيبت بالحمى القرمزية , وكانت إصابتها شديدة الوطأة ولكنها شفيت . واتفق ذات يوم أن كانت تقف أمام المنزل فقلت لها :-tأغلقي الباب.ولكنها لم تفعل , وابتسمت لي فجن جنوني , فقلت لها مرة أخرى بصوت مرتفع:-tألا تسمعيني ؟ أغلقي الباب .فوقفت جامدة في مكانها , والابتسامة على شفتيها , فازددت سخطاً وغيظاً وصحت :-tسأجعلك تطيعين ما أقوله لك .وهويت بيدي فوق رأسها , فسقطت على الأرض . ثم تركتها ودخلت المنزل وقضيت هناك عشر دقائق .. وعندما خرجت , كان الباب لا يزال مفتوحا والطفلة واقفة وقد خفضت رأسها والدموع تنهمر من عينيها .. وقد زادني ذلك جنونا ؛ وهممت بالانقضاض عليها , لولا أن الريح هبت في تلك اللحظة فأغلقت الباب خلف الطفلة .. ولمنها لم تتحرك من مكانها . فأحسست بأن قلبي يكاد يفلت من بين ضلوعي , وتقدمت نحو الباب وفتحته بلطف وهدوء وأبرزت رأسي من خلفه , فإذا بالطفلة لا تزال واقفة في مكانها ؛ وعندئذ صحت فيها صيحة مدوية مفاجئة , ولكنها لم تتحرك .. أواه يا هاك .. لقد انفجرت باكيا , وحملت الطفلة بين ذراعي وقلت لها : أيتها الطفلة المسكينة , فليغفر الله العظيم لجيم المسكين ما أتاه من أثر عظيم , لأن جيم لن يغتفر لنفسه هذا الإثم طالما بقي على قيد الحياة" .. يا الهي يا "هاك" ..لقد كانت الطفلة التعسة بكماء صماء .. ومع ذلك عاملتها لك خشونة.! تذكرت مشهد مشابه سرده ستيفن كوفي في كتاب العادات السبع الأكثر فعالية, رغم أنه سرده كمشهد حقيقي.====وقالت لي الآنسة واطسون انه ينبغي علي أن أصلي كل يوم حتى أستطيع على كل ما أطلبه في صلاتي! ولقد جربت ذلك, ولكن الصلاة لم تحقق لي أي مطلب! ... لقد كنت أحدث قائلاً: "إذا كان الناس يستطيعون الحصول على ما يريدون بالصلاة فلماذا لا يستعيد "ويكون وين" النقود التي فقدها في تربية الخنازير؟ ولماذا لا تستطيع الأرملة دوجلاس أن تسترد علية "السعوط" الفضية التي سرقت منها؟ ولماذا لا تستطيع الآنسة واطسون أن تزيد من وزنها" وعندئذ أيقنت أنه ليس في الإمكان أن يحقق الإنسان أمنيته بالصلاة! وذهبت إلى الأرملة وقلت لها رأيي, فقالت أن الشيء الذي يستطيع الإنسان الحصول عليه من الصلاة هو "الهبات الروحية" لا الهبات المادية!! ====في الغالب ستخرج من هذه التجربة متشكك يعمل عقله في كل الاحتمالات, فطوبى للمتشككين."فأجبت : أكبر الظن أن هؤلاء الجن أغبياء لأنهم لا يحتفظون بالقصر لأنفسهم بدلاً من أن يشيدوه لغيرهم ! فلو أنني كنت واحداً منهم , لما لبيت نداء أي شخص يحك مصباحاً قديماً من الصفيح !! بل لو أنني كنت واحداً من هؤلاء الجن, لتخليت عن عملي !"
What do You think about The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn (2002)?
يظهر في هذه الرواية مارك توين الفكاهي و الساخر بشكل قوي جنباً إلي جنب مع مغامرات هكلبري فين المشوقةوهذا ما افتقدته في مغامرات توم سوير ويقول معظم نقاد الأدب ،ان رواية "مغامرات هكلبري فين " تعتبر درة فريدة بين جميع الأعمال الأدبية التي كتبها مارك توين ، كما تعتبر علامة بارزة في الأدب الأمريكي الكلاسيكي بصفة عامة .الفكرة الأولي و الأساسية هي مشكلة العبودية فيبين هنا أن العبد الزنجي "جيم" انسان طيب و مخلص هو أفضل من بعض البيض المحتالين و طوال هذه المغامرات تظهر الأفكار الفرعية مثل الثأر و الاحتيال و النصب علي عامة الشعب بصوره المتعددة : فهناك من يلقي محاضرات عن الخمر مقابل مبلغ من المال و هو نفسه يشربها!و الآخر من يدعي أنه ممثل أو طبيب لمداوة جميع الأمراض أو مدرس للغناء و الجغرافيا !و يستطيع أن يتنبأ بـ البخت و يري الطالع و هذان الاثنان يستطيعان أن يظهرا بمظهر الملك والدوق و يلقيان خطب قوية مؤثرة تأسر قلوب المستمعينو كما قال في قصة الرجل الذي أفسد هادلبرج.. لا شئ في العالم مثل خطبة جيدة يقدر علي إرباك الجهاز العقلي و إفساد عواطف جمهور غير مدرب علي حيل الخطابة.. ثم اجمل جزء في الرواية الجزء الأخير حيث ذروة السخرية و الفكاهة بالنسبة للأجزاء الأخري
—Amir Lewiz
Now, how in the nation is a body going to start this review? Well, I'll be ding-busted!I usually don’t like reading colloquial prose style, accented dialogue and dialects. All too often they require additional effort to decipher and are just plain irritating. However, I have to make an exception for Mark Twain because he does it better than anybody else I can think of. There is never any confusion about the meaning and his colloquial narrative style and dialogue add a great deal of humour, charm and atmosphere to the story.Adventures of Huckleberry Finn does not need any synopsis I think, as it is one of the most widely read novel of all time. At the most basic level it is an adventure yarn of a rough young lad and an escaped slave on a raft down the Mississippi River, both running away from unbearable circumstances, and meeting some very colorful characters along the river. It is a very funny novel without actually being a “comic novel” in the sense that its primary purpose is not to make you laugh but to tell a ripping yarn with some serious issues embedded therein. I find it to be a generally good-natured story in spite of some underlying dark themes like slavery, parental abuse and violence. The biting social satire is delightful and Twain seems to enjoy poking fun at his favorite targets of nice but dim gentility, racists, bigots, roughnecks, con men and the religious.There is a genuine sense of childhood innocence in Huck Finn’s first person narrative and I felt swept along with his enthusiasm for life and taste for adventures. Huck is a wonderful protagonist who is easy to identify with. Twain subtly charts the development of Huck’s morality through his experiences in this book, particularly from the time he spends with Jim, the escaped slave who he initially views as a little less than human. Jim is in fact the moral compass and the true hero of this book, much more so than Huck’s famous friend Tom Sawyer who does some highly reprehensible things in this book just for a lark*The word “nigger” appears on just about every page of this book and I have read that Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is banned in some schools because of this***. I have to wonder whether the people who want to ban the book actually bothered to read it. Twain is very compassionate toward the black characters in this book, and – as I mentioned earlier – Jim comes out of it shining brighter than anybody else. The book is at its funniest when detailing Tom Sawyer’s plan for rescuing Jim from captivity, his absurd adherence to the principles of a proper prison break is hilarious (though he really is an atrocious little fellow). However, the funniest part of the book for me is when Huck is trying to explain the concept of a foreign language to Jim. Twain gives an almost unassailable reason why the French should only speak English**Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a book I can read again and again just for the prose. Certainly if you have never read it even once you should make a bee line for it.___________________________NotesI listened to the excellent audiobook edition from Librivox.org. Wonderfully read performed by John Greenman. Thank you sir!* “What the hell? A brother's freedom ain't no game man!” - Thug Notes review (on Youtube).I'm going to have to read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer just to see how he is characterized in his own adventure, surely he cannot be so despicable and borderline insane as he is in this book. Of course if you want to enlighten me on this point I would appreciate it very much.** "Why, Huck, doan' de French people talk de same way we does?""No, Jim; you couldn't understand a word they said—not a single word.""Well, now, I be ding-busted! How do dat come?""I don't know; but it's so. I got some of their jabber out of a book. S'pose a man was to come to you and say Polly-voo-franzy—what would you think?""I wouldn' think nuff'n; I'd take en bust him over de head—dat is, if he warn't white. I wouldn't 'low no nigger to call me dat.""Shucks, it ain't calling you anything. It's only saying, do you know how to talk French?""Well, den, why couldn't he say it?""Why, he is a-saying it. That's a Frenchman's way of saying it.""Well, it's a blame ridicklous way, en I doan' want to hear no mo' 'bout it. Dey ain' no sense in it."*** Apparently NewSouth Books published an edition where "nigger" is replaced by "slave" ಠ_ಠ. On the bright side, this led to publication of The Hipster Huckleberry Finn where "nigger" is replaced with "hipster" to placate the hip and sensitive.
—Apatt
Still the greatest novel I have ever read. As a boy, I ripped through it every year, starting around age 10, for about 5 years. I read and loved it as an exciting, funny and sometimes terrifying adventure book for kids.I didn't pick it up again until around age 21. I was talking to a very literary friend, and mentioned that Huckleberry Finn was a great book for kids. He looked at me and said, "You haven't read it lately, have you? Go and read it again."I did, and found myself (as predicted) reading a completely different book. The depth of Twain's insight into the good, bad and ugly of the American canvas, as seen by a child, was truly astonishing. I will never forget thinking what a miraculous talent was on display in those pages.I proceeded to read it every year for the next 5 years or so. Since that time, I have come back to it again and again, usually thinking "I will just read a few pages and go on to something else". By the time I finish the first page, I am hooked to the point where I have trouble putting it down, or sleeping when I do put it down.If you love books, and haven't read this one, see if you can get through the first five pages and then stop. If you can, you are tougher than I. If I picked it up now, I would be hooked all over again.
—Jim
