Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapters 01 to 05
1884
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapters 01 to 05
1884
One of the most radical books ever written in American English, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn tells its story through the voice of a teenage outcast whose rough grammar and raw honesty expose the lies civilization tells itself. The novel opens with Huck Finn escaped from the Widow Douglas's well-meaning attempts to civilize him, only to be dragged back into the arms of his own father, a violent drunk who sees his son as property. So Huck fakes his own death and floats downstream to Jackson's Island, where he stumbles upon Jim, a runaway slave seeking freedom to freedom. These opening chapters establish their tentative bond and launch Huck into the tangled world of the Grangerfords, a genteel family locked in a pointless blood feud that reveals the violence simmering beneath the surface of 'respectable' society. Mark Twain understood that to tell this story honestly, he had to let Huck speak in his own voice, imperfect, observant, and morally clearer than the adults around him. What follows is a book about what happens when a boy raised to believe in slavery decides his conscience matters more than the law.
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