The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Growing up during the early days of television, I was often entertained by Hollywood movies from the 1930s and 1940s - I suppose copyright laws at the time made the repeated showing of these films on television lucrative.

One such movie was the 1939 film, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn starring Mickey Rooney.

By the 1960s - thanks in part to films like the one mentioned above, Mark Twain's novel had gained the reputation of being a "children's' book". For that reason I had never read the novel, thinking it would be too immature for me.

I'd recently come to read (and in some cases, reread) the works of writer Kenzaburō Ōe. Reading over biographical sketches of Ōe as well, I learned that the Japanese writer credited The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn  as having a major impact on his life. Upon learning of the novel's influence on Ōe's writing, I decided to read the novel when I finished reading Ōe's The Silent Cry .

The novel is certainly not a children's novel.

Thankfully for my reading experience, the Mickey Rooney movie version isn't a 100% faithful adaptation of the novel. Many parts of the novel were a surprise to me. This is especially true of the ending.

The biggest criticism some modern readers have for the novel is Twain's frequent use of "the N word". Some have called the book racist on that account. I'm not one of those critics.

Some, like myself, see the book as satire and an indictment against racism.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is among the first in major American literature to be written throughout in vernacular English, and at times may be difficult for 21st century readers to follow. This is true regarding the dialog of both the white and the black characters. Many of the characters - of both races - don't come off as being particularly intelligent. A good deal of the humor comes from Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, the "Duke" and the "King" being basically doofuses.

The language may be a problem for many readers, but The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is really one of the Great American Novels.