Mark Twain and Finn

[amagmom]

I am so looking forward to the discussion on Mark Twain's book and the new fiction called Finn. Great way to reread a classic and have a new take as well. Can't wait, Thanks

[fanuzzir]

---

amagmom wrote:
I am so looking forward to the discussion on Mark Twain's book and the new fiction called Finn. Great way to reread a classic and have a new take as well. Can't wait, Thanks

---

I'm excited as well. That novel never fails to move and amaze me.
Bob

[RCM]

Just a general comment on what I perceive as the Twain/Finn divide (and I hope I'm not jumping the gun, here). Right off in the first few chapters of HF, Twain lavishes 95% of his time and his "refreshing" down-home style on young people and any fine, upstanding citizen who comes along. The reason Finn's character is not developed more is that Twain was not acquainted with the darker, even darkest, side of life. Is that a fair assessment?

[ziki]

---

fanuzzir wrote: That novel never fails to move and amaze me.
Bob

---

Why?

ziki

[fanuzzir]

---

RCM wrote:
Just a general comment on what I perceive as the Twain/Finn divide (and I hope I'm not jumping the gun, here). Right off in the first few chapters of HF, Twain lavishes 95% of his time and his "refreshing" down-home style on young people and any fine, upstanding citizen who comes along. The reason Finn's character is not developed more is that Twain was not acquainted with the darker, even darkest, side of life. Is that a fair assessment?

---

Not quite. Twain saw the world's worst--remember he was a reporter in San Franscisco, which in the mid-nineteenth century had the nickname of the Barbary Coast--a very uncivilized place. He must have seen plenty of Finns. And remember that Huck is just in a straightjacked in the early chapters. Though he is young, he is not innocent or even boyish (that is why Tom Sawyer, a real boy, is there to provide a telling contrast). The Widow Douglass, and American middle-class life, the rituals and games of boyhood are just as alien to him as Huck's father is to the town of Hannibal.

[jd]

Twain wrote the dark side of things in the book. Scary that HF a young boy would know so much violence and freedom, in contrast to TS who has a vivid imagination - about robbing and killing, but only in a pretend way. HF has seen it in real life and it colors his perspective. jd

---

RCM wrote:
Just a general comment on what I perceive as the Twain/Finn divide (and I hope I'm not jumping the gun, here). Right off in the first few chapters of HF, Twain lavishes 95% of his time and his "refreshing" down-home style on young people and any fine, upstanding citizen who comes along. The reason Finn's character is not developed more is that Twain was not acquainted with the darker, even darkest, side of life. Is that a fair assessment?

---

[ziki]

Hi John Dowell, ;-)
I am soooo pleased to see you here!
ziki

[fanuzzir]

Right JD. That duo becomes nearly impossible to sustain in Adventures of HF, but it does increase the pathos of Huck's struggle: a boy's game for one, life and death for another.
Welcome (back) to the club!
Bob

[Everyman]

I'm not so sure that Twain wasn't acquainted with the darker side of life; you didn't serve on a Mississippi river boat in those days without seeing a lot of the dark side of life, and his portrait of Jim shows some acquaintance with some ofthe less savory parts of society.

My sense is that he didn't focus much attention on Finn because he wasn't important as a character in his own right, but was only important for his role in getting Huck away from the Widow Douglas and then treating him so badly that he had to run away even from that relative Freedom hall. Once Finn had done his job in the novel, he was not further needed.

---

RCM wrote:
Just a general comment on what I perceive as the Twain/Finn divide (and I hope I'm not jumping the gun, here). Right off in the first few chapters of HF, Twain lavishes 95% of his time and his "refreshing" down-home style on young people and any fine, upstanding citizen who comes along. The reason Finn's character is not developed more is that Twain was not acquainted with the darker, even darkest, side of life. Is that a fair assessment?

---

[jd]

Ziki - Ditto.

[fanuzzir]

Pap is certainly a baroque creation, so I do see in him more than a plot device. I also think that Twain could have stuck with him if he had cared to go deeper into the dark river of the American soul, but he wanted to explore something more innocent and redemptive in the friendship of Jim and Huck.