Read this book in my Junior year English class. I enjoyed it but the teacher preferred when we read it as a class, and had to write an essay on it. ( )

Okay. I did it. I read it. And my ears twitched hard every time the N word appeared. That is a lot of twitching. And also, I am just not a "boy on an adventure" kind of girl. ( )

Virtually everything I've read that is intelligent and informed describes The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as the great American novel. I've just finished it and see no reason to differ. ( )

This is a wonderful book. Huckleberry Finn is a charming narrator and a sympathetic protagonist. Although the plot and the events described are preposterous, the prose carries the reader through as the pages sizzle with wit, outrage and irony. There are many coincidences which stretch the credulity of the reader, but they entirely make sense within the universe of the book. It's interesting that Twain claimed that it was set 50 years or so before it was published, as I think this gave him the ironic distance he needed to ignore realism and ensure that the story was accountable only to its own logic.

I found the opening really dark, with Huck's father brutally neglectful and spiteful. In a way, the story doesn't lighten up much, but once Huck gets some agency over his own life it becomes compelling. The supporting characters are sometimes annoying, but Huck's reactions to them are always endearing and instructive. The sections I found most moving were when Huck is berating himself over his moral weakness in not returning a runaway slave. The irony is laid on rather heavy, I guess, but it has a shattering heft to it because of Twain's disgust at the intellectual laziness that allowed slavery to continue.

I really didn't enjoy the final section, which was disappointing. It seemed to have a totally different tone to the rest of the book and lacked the incisive wit or sharpness. It's like the difference between satire and pranks - as it loses its meaning, it stops being funny (I'm not a prank person). I devoured most of the book, but then toward the end found myself skimming a long monologue from a the town gossip as Twain lost control of his pacing, his characters and his plot. I think the problem is that the final section is too predictable. After all that Huck and Tom do to Jim, and after so many opportunities to escape, there was no way that Twain could allow Jim to end the novel still not free, because it would cast Huck and Tom in too negative a light.

I tend to struggle with books that are written in dialect - I find it distancing because it constantly reminds me that I'm reading. However, this is written in Huck Finn's voice and it's such a strong, unique voice that is so tied to his southern heritage that the dialect works. If he were telling the story of course he would do a different voice for each character, and that's what he does here. ( )

This book was fantastic in the beginning, with the adventures along the Mississippi, and the moral dilemmas between helping a slave gain his freedom (ironically deemed "immoral") vs turning him in. The second half of the book was honestly pretty bad though. The hijinx with the Duke and the King were pretty pointless. The plan with Tom and Huck to bust out Jim from captivity was downright stupid. I understand that was the intent, but it was cruel, and not enjoyable to read at all. ( )