“It's always daunting, isn't it, to review a classic that so many people have read?
We discussed Huck Finn in my American Lit class this semester, and overall there really was quite a bit to discuss, despite the story being a very well-known one (at least to me). There is more to this book than than a simple story of a boy and a man floating down the river in a raft.
What I loved about this reading of Huck Finn is that we were also to read Toni Morrison's Introduction to it. It was through this Introduction that I was able to see the story in a completely new light - and to understand just what was so "wonderfully troubling" about it.
Morrison talks a lot about silence in the book - the silence in those moments of floating down the river, the silence with regard to learning much of anything about Jim's family, the silence with which Huck treats his friendship with Tom. Then there's the silence of Jim toward Huck - why did he fail to disclose who that man was under the cloth?
This is an extraordinarily troubling book, but yes.. a wonderful one as well. It's enlightening - it shows how hard the struggle was to accept the idea that a human is a human, no matter his or her skin color. It's educational, it reminds us of where we've come from in an effort to remind us of where we should not return. It's captured history through the dialect of Jim. It's a look at two individuals escaping slavery - Jim the actual slavery, and Huck, escaping abuse at the hand of his father.
I always recommend these books. Tom Sawyer is more suited to younger audiences (although I personally find Tom to be a scoundrel), but Huck Finn is a must read for teenagers and adults.”
