Huckleberry Finn Author's Craft Analysis

Author’s craft is the main source of creative writing for many authors, especially for Mark Twain. In the book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Huck Finn has been trying to get Jim to escape from Aunt Sally and Uncle Silas. Both boys know that this is a hard escape to pull off because both Aunt Sally and Uncle Silas are trying to keep Jim hidden. While trying to keep Jim they would never guess that a plan to escape would ever happen since Jim already knows what it is like to get caught as a runaway. Mark Twain really helps to depict this scene through his author’s craft techniques. Throughout this section Twain uses exaggeration, humor, and irony in this passage to get the point across that Aunt Sally was not a happy camper

when finding out Jim’s escape plan.
Huck and Jim have been wanting to put this plan to test to escape from Aunt Sally’s house because it was not going to be another roadblock in stopping Jim from becoming a free man. With Twain’s writing to explain how the plan did not work that well was with using techniques like exaggeration, humor, and irony.

Aunt Sally talks with Sister Dunlap about the African American and how they take up too much space, “Why, dog my cats, they must a ben a housefull o’ n****** in there” (Twain 271). On how many Africans are described to be in the room Aunt Sally is surely exaggerating on how many there must have been. How there must have been so many they filled the room by themselves and with little space for her. It is also exaggeration to how she compares them with how dog and cats take up much room in a space as well. Not only did exaggeration but also there is a sense of humor that is set place in this passage as well. Aunt Sally finds the shirt that Jim used; “it kivered over it with secret African writ’n done with blood” (271)! Even stereotyping was happening during Twain’s time of writing the book, because it is used as humor in this passage to show how Aunt Sally thinks of what Jim did to the shirt. Not only did she find Jim had written on it but had thought that it was in a secret code that only Africans knew about. When in reality it was just Jim’s way of trying to communicate with Huck and Tom about the escape plan. Lastly Twain uses irony throughout this as well as a form of

understanding for the readers. Not only is it just irony but also with a little bit of stereotyping as well, “they’ve stole everything they could lay their hands on - and we a - watching all the time” (271). When this is added into the text it is to make it really help the reader understand on how Aunt Sally could not understand how Jim was able to take all the materials they needed to use for the escape plan. The ironic part about this is how Aunt Sally said she had been watching everything that has been going on, but she could not watch everything because they were able to take a numerous amount of items for the plan. Throughout the entirety of this book Twain uses many forms of author’s craft techniques to connect the reader the ways of showing exaggeration, humor and irony.