Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Difference between revisions

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This novel is an [[Even Better Sequel]] to [[Mark Twain]]'s ''[[The Adventures of Tom Sawyer]]''.

 

The book is in public domain, and the full text is available for free at [http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76 Project Gutenberg].

 

* [[Abusive Parents]]: Old Finn.

* [[The Alcoholic]]: Again, Old Finn.

* [[Bowdlerize]]: An edition has recently been released with every incidence of the n-word changed to "slave". In their piece on it, ''[[The Daily Show]]'' pointed out a 1955 TV adaptation that ''wrote Jim out entirely''.

* [[Civilian Villain]]: Old Finn (Huck's father) is a perfect example.

reckoned a body could reform him with a shotgun, maybe, but he didn't know no other way. }}

* [[Complaining About Things You Haven't Paid For]]: Employed to set up a [[Stealth Insult]]--"He didn't charge nothing for his sermons; and it was worth it, too."

* [[Complexity Addiction]]: Tom apparently suffers from this; his plan for freeing Jim is needlessly complicated and based on fiction he's read. Of course, it's later revealed that {{spoiler|the whole rescue was pointless, since Jim was supposed to be a free man, and Tom knew it the whole time and was only having fun}}. But telling him that the moment he arrives would kill the potential of an epic prank.

* [[Conscience Makes You Go Back]]

* [[Demoted to Extra]]: Becky Thatcher.

* [[Dirty Old Man]]: The Dauphin; this is, interestingly, not played for laughs at all - Huck is outright disgusted.

* [[Misaimed Fandom]]: Tom takes inspiration for his adventures at the beginning of the book from ''[[Don Quixote]]'', believing it to be a story of a great adventure.

* [[Mood Whiplash]]: Huck has just seen a man get shot to death for no real reason, and the lynch mob that goes after the killer is [[Shaming the Mob|dispersed]] by a [[Breaking Lecture]]. What's his reaction? Go to the circus!

* [[Narm]]: In-universe, with the poems and pictures made by Emmeline Grangerford [[Verbal Tic|alas.]]

* [[Nobody Here But Us Birds]]: As in ''[[The Adventures of Tom Sawyer|Tom Sawyer]]'', Tom and Huck use cat cries as signals.

* [[No Celebrities Were Harmed]]: The Dauphin is loosely based on Emperor Norton, whom Mark Twain personally knew when he worked as a newspaperman in San Francisco.

* [[Not So Different]]: Huck sees Jim crying one night over not knowing where his family was, and starts to realize that Jim has the same feelings white people do, and it's the start of his unlearning of everything he's been taught.

* [[Parental Abandonment]]

* [[Parental Substitute]]

Tom: I don't know. But that's what they do. }}

* [[Political Correctness Gone Mad]]: The book is scathingly anti-slavery, but is often banned from schools for supposed racial insensitivity--it has the n-word in it. In response to [[New South]] Books' plans to release an edition that replaces Twain's many uses of Nigger with the word "slave", there are plans to replace the word N-Word [http://io9.com/#!5762499/a-campaign-to-replace-the-n+word-in-huckleberry-finn-with-the-word-robot with the word Robot] Do see above for [[Fair for Its Day]], though.

* [[Rule of Cool]]: Parodied to pieces by Tom's plan to free Jim, which could be done simply and quickly, but Tom insists on engineering around the [[Rule of Cool]]. {{spoiler|It goes badly.}}

* [[The Runaway]]: Huck's escape from his [[Abusive Parents|alcoholic father]] sets up the rest of the plot.

* [[Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right]]: Huck helps the fugitive slave Jim escape from being sold back into slavery even though he is told (and he believes!) he would go to hell for such actions.

* [[Shout-Out]]: Tom models his adventures on the stories he's read. The careful reader can identify the specific stories even when he doesn't mention the titles--for example, "Why, look at [[The Count of Monte Cristo (novel)|one of them prisoners in the bottom dungeon of the Castle Deef, in the harbor of Marseilles, that dug himself out that way]]."

 

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[[Category:School Study Media]]