Huck Finn

I found “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” mostly uninteresting. It took me more than 2 weeks to read half of it, I kept falling asleep. The story lines where so outrageous that they weren’t believable. I know that these were to be stories for children but my son wouldn’t pay attention either. 

The outrageous bit about Tom and Huck starting a “gang” whose line of business was “Nothing only robbery and murder” showed how ignorant these boys were supposed to be. Though with Huck going to school he should have known what ransom was.  Tom imagining everything while everyone else thought that they were really going to be a “gang” kept the story somewhat interesting at that point.

When Huck and Jim get separated and Huck lives with the Grangerford’s, and they were talking about the feud between them and the Shepherdson’s reminded me of the Hatfield and the McCoy feud. That was an interesting theme, Twain managed to put in an obscure reference to Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” with Sophia Grangerford and Harney Shepherdson running away together like Romeo and Juliet would have liked to. Both had feuding families and both fell in love against their family’s wishes. The big difference would be that in Romeo and Juliet they killed themselves and here Sophia and Harney got away and their families killed each other.

The story line about the “Duke” and “King” was just a bit over the top. I was glad that Twain didn’t have Huck believe them about their supposed misfortunes. To have Jim believe these two fakes was a bit much for me; he was supposed to be intelligent for a slave. Though their cheating ways did help Huck and Jim financially for a bit it was still a little much for me to swallow, and didn’t make an enjoyable read for me.