Huckleberry Finn's Impact On American Literature
Ernest Hemingway once said “all modern American literature began with Huckleberry Finn.” Huckleberry Finn, a remarkably well written novel by Mark Twain, has received almost excessive praise since it was written and first published in 1884. On the other hand, it has been condemned for vulgarity and accused of stealing Uncle Tom’s Cabin’s thunder. Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a similar novel about slavery written about thirty-two years earlier. Huckleberry Finn’s impact on modern American literature was so great that it could be compared to Shakespeare’s impact on European theater.
To be the true basis of modern American literature, a novel would have to be centered on American concepts. One of the most prominent American concepts is “the American Dream”. Huckleberry Finn is the first novel to encompass “the American …show more content…
Although Twain wrote the novel after slavery was abolished, he set it several decades earlier, when slavery was still a fact of life. But even by Twain’s time, things had not necessarily gotten much better for blacks in the South. In this light, one might read Twain’s depiction of slavery as an allegorical representation of the condition of blacks in the United States, even after the abolition of slavery. This is shown prominently throughout the novel through the co- protagonist, a black slave named Jim, and his adventures and misadventures. A particular instance is when Jim and Huck have been nothing but accommodating to the two swindlers mentioned previously but the swindlers report Jim as a runaway slave and have him captured for monetary gain. The white swindlers show the unjust, repulsive way that blacks are being treated. Modern American literature is used expertly as a propaganda tool and Huckleberry Finn is one of the first instances of using literature to enlighten the masses about the evils of
To be the true basis of modern American literature, a novel would have to be centered on American concepts. One of the most prominent American concepts is “the American Dream”. Huckleberry Finn is the first novel to encompass “the American …show more content…
Although Twain wrote the novel after slavery was abolished, he set it several decades earlier, when slavery was still a fact of life. But even by Twain’s time, things had not necessarily gotten much better for blacks in the South. In this light, one might read Twain’s depiction of slavery as an allegorical representation of the condition of blacks in the United States, even after the abolition of slavery. This is shown prominently throughout the novel through the co- protagonist, a black slave named Jim, and his adventures and misadventures. A particular instance is when Jim and Huck have been nothing but accommodating to the two swindlers mentioned previously but the swindlers report Jim as a runaway slave and have him captured for monetary gain. The white swindlers show the unjust, repulsive way that blacks are being treated. Modern American literature is used expertly as a propaganda tool and Huckleberry Finn is one of the first instances of using literature to enlighten the masses about the evils of