Why this Book I’ve been wanting to read this again for quite a while. Read it in Jr HS and didn’t care for it. Also all the fuss about the new book James about this adventure from Jim’s perspective reanimated my interest. 

Summary in 4 Sentences. In order to escape his abusive father, Huck fakes his death and takes a raft down the Mississippi river, and in the process runs into a runaway slave Jim, who Huck knew pretty well as he had been the slave of Ms Watson his fomer guardian.  Jim ran away after hearing that Ms Watson had planned to sell him in New Orleans which would take him away from his family for good.  As they go down the river they have a number of adventures, most notably after linking up with a couple of fraudsters who are preying on isolated communities along the river. One thing leads to another and eventually Tom Sawyer shows back up after Jim is captured and being prepared to to be sold,  and Huck and Tom scheme to help him escape. 

My Impressions: I enjoyed this book immensely – and am glad I chose to listen to it – and would recommend the Elijah Woods performance on Audible as part of  Audible’s Signature Classics (pictured)   Wood reads it in a what seemed to me to be a convincing rendition of the accents of the time, both for Huck, Jim and the many characters they come across in their adventures.  His reading and accents bring the characters and the story to life, and made for a compelling re-experience of this story.  I finished it in about a wee, just commuting and a bit on my bicycle.  

It was  uncomfortable hearing the N word used so regularly and comfortably in the book – apparently 200+ times.  That was the one word used in that time and place to refer to black people.  Racism was simply an accepted part of the culture those people were born into in that part of the South.  Huck was morally confused about what he’d been taught was the wrongness – illegality – of helping a fugitive slave.  He felt guilty about breaking the law, and that guilt was at odds with his sense that Jim was a good man who deserved his freedom.  Helping runaway slaves was an egregious offense at the time and he had to hide or make other excuses for being with a black man on his journey down the Mississippi.

Twain used this book to satirize a number of common practices in the book including slavery and the dehumanization of blacks.  He used Huck’s basic goodness, common sense and practical approach to problem solving to poke fun at people and practices that don’t hold up under scrutiny.  Twain’s wit is particularly vicous against arrogant and pretentious people – and especially against the “Duke” and the King of France that Huck and Jim encounter on their trip down the river. Twain is also unsparing in his satire of the gullibility of the hard working simple folk in the small towns along the river, but he gives them their dignity back when they respond viciously, when the realized they’d been had.

Late in the book, when Tom Sawyer  rejoins Huck and Jim, Tom’s romantic idealism provides more fodder for Twain’s humor, as Tom constantly comes up with absurd plans to fulfill his romantic fantasies about ‘the right way’ plan and conduct an escape, or an adventure or what have you.  His proposals make no sense to the reader, nor to Huck, nor to Jim, but Tom is so persuasive and claims to have a much more sophisticated view of life, that Huck and Jim acceded to most of his crazy plans. 

This is the announcement of this version of Huck Finn on Audible, and I strongly recommend it as an enjoyable way to re–experience this classic. “Audible is pleased to announce the premiere of an exciting new series, Audible Signature Classics, featuring literature’s greatest stories, performed by accomplished stars handpicked for their ability to interpret each work in a new and refreshing way. The first book in the series is Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, performed by Elijah Wood.”