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Theme Of Comedy In Huck Finn

Decent Essays

MARK TWAIN’S MESMERISING MISSISSIPPI
Dr. RALLAPALLI HYDERALI,
Head, Dept. of English,
S.T.S.N. Govt. UG & PG College,
Kadiri, Ananthapuramu District, A.P., hyderrallapalli@gmail.com Samuel Longhorn Clemens is not so well known to the world as the beloved Mark Twain, author of such American classics as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Innocents Abroad, The Prince and The Pauper, Life on the Mississippi and so on. Twain as a boy, young pilot and as a writer has spent his greater part of life on the river Mississippi. The river enthralled and mesmerized Mark Twain to the extent, that he even has got his pen name from the river depth measuring terminology. People all over the world love and revere …show more content…

In technique and structure and characterization “Huckleberry Finn” is for ahead of ‘Tom Sawyer.’ Huck’s narration of the story in the vernacular is something that has rendered the book vital and significant. Unfortunately the book has been misunderstood. The Concord Library Committee felt that the book was rough and coarse. An American reviewer could not check his exasperation and regarded Huckleberry Finn as, “An incarnation of the better side of the ruffianism that is one result of the independence of American.”2 Even then, this novel has a compactness and unity, with a dominant central factor holding the different pieces together. One who peruses the novel feels that the Mississippi River is the central factor, the thread that ties the various parts of the novel holding it together, preventing it from falling to …show more content…

The most important of these is Huck’s fight from the camping, restraining “civilizing” attempts of Miss Watson and the cruelty of his father. This soon becomes something more dynamic as it blends with Jim’s flight from the fetters of slavery to the dazzling prospects of freedom. At a certain point very early in the novel Huck’s flight and Jim’s get interwoven and become one theme, inseparable. The second element in the novel “Huckleberry Finn” is the keen social satire through which Mark Twain exposes the hypocrisy blood thirstiness and moral decadence of the various parts of the United States. Now, these places he has chosen are the places enshrined in the river Mississippi, that Huck and Jim are likely to stop at while drifting on their raft the towns along the river. The third major element is the shaping of Huck’s character. We see how in all these three elements the Mississippi is an integral part, functioning as something indispensable to each. Thus the river is an important character in the novel. The author, Mark Twain almost shaped it as a guardian or a god to protect the fugitives, Huck and Jim. This fact was well appraised by T.S. Eliot when he puts it about the river as “I do not know much about gods, but I think that the river is a strong brown god in the Twain’s

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