Is Huck Finn Good Or Bad

The Adventures of HuckleBerry Finn by Mark Twain is one of the most controversial and iconic books in American history.There has been a constant conversation about whether the novel is a good or bad novel since it’s publication in 1884. Huck Finn is a great piece of literature and deserves the praise of being called a central Document of American culture. Yes, like all great things it does have it’s downfalls, for example the ending was very disappointing to many people because it stops abruptly but maybe that's because Twain had a deeper meaning to it. The novel also touches upon the ideas of racism but doesn't make racism the complete focus of the novel this is interesting because it is praised for being a book about slavery. Another piece

that keeps Huck Finn being a great work of American culture and highly debated novel is Huck's voice. He is an outsider who is telling the story of his journey and is looking in and seeing what's going on in society through a different perspective. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an iconic American novel and deserves to be called a central document of American culture for its views on the racism, the use of Huck's perspective, and the unique and craftiness of the ending that gets people talking. Twain has managed to use his skill to create a novel that kept people talking about it for decades, he essentially made one of the most iconic pieces of literature in our culture. Besides being a piece of culture the novel is timeless and deals with issues that are still prevalent in today's society.
One of the main things that comes up when you mention Huck Finn is that some readers did not like the ending.

Some people thought it was a complete let down and other people were just disappointed by the fact Jim had been free the whole time. Critics have said that the journey has become completely useless now that Jim has been free the whole time. But what most people don't know is that Mark Twain was purposeful with his writings. As said in the Mark Twain; A Life by Ron Powers many people would try want to work and edited Twain's writing but he would pass it up because they didn't have his vision “ Many novelist would be willing to ransom their agents for a passage of that caliber, but Twain wasn't satisfied. ( Powers 478)” Twain was a very particular man and he spent years working on this novel and he knew exactly how he wanted the ending. In the biography Powers talked about how Twain would write off and on never writing a novel straight through. He wanted everything to be the way because he had a purpose for it. Leo Marx's a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology said “The unhappy truth about the ending of Huckleberry Finn is that the author, having revealed the tawdry nature of the culture of the great valley, yielded to its essential complacency.” (LM 357) This makes complete sense and makes the novel even better because it makes one think and makes one wonder about human nature and if it is truly like how Twain portrayed it in the novel gives it another level of depth that the novel would have lacked completely if he didn't include this incredibly ironic ending. The ending is such an essential piece of any novel and how Twain chose to do his ending gives his book a quality that makes it a central document of American

literature.

Another thing that makes this novel unique is the fact it’s coming from the point of view of an adolescent. This isn’t a child who is well acquainted in society and has lived the average life of a child growing up in the south, Huck is an outcast. His Father is a drunk and poor role model for Huck. The only real experience Huck gets of a civilized life was for a few weeks with Ms.Watson but other than that he is a complete outcast in the town. When this novel is compared to many of the other novels being written at the time it’s different, Twain took this character who really no one would have thought to use and somehow gave him a novel. Huck is the perfect character to go on this whole adventure with Jim, For one he is really a character that doesn’t know society's norms as much as someone else in his town. Huck knows freeing Jim is bad but he still has the childhood curiosity and will the help even though everyone else will think bad of it sense about him. Huck was writing Ms.Watson a letter that he had Jim and then he decided to tear it up and says “ “All right, then, I’ll go to hell”-and tore it up. (195)” He had the kindness to sacrifice himself to hell so that he could free Jim. That’s what made Huck such a perfect character for this novel his perspective is so unique and gives such a different mood to the book than if a forty year old man was on this adventure with Jim.
Now it has been said that Huck’s perspective has been said to be a downfall of the book because Twain just couldn’t portray his voice correctly. As stated by Jane Smiley a pulitzer prizing winning novelist in article she wrought for Harper's magazine; “Huck is just a boy trying to survive. The villain here is Mark Twain, who knew how to give Huck a voice but didn’t know how to give him a novel.” (JS 62) But Mark Twain did give Huck a novel, probably not the novel that was necessarily expected. Twain used Huck as a character who was basically just Tom Sawyer’s main lacky and turned him into a boy who just wanted to be free and help Jim get free. He used Huck’s voice to portray truth in a time where it was hard to portray the truth about the issues that really matter. Huck’s voice is what makes the novel so fantastic and makes it such a classic piece of literature.