Reviews

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Tom Ratliff, Mark Twain

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dyno8426's review against another edition

4.0

Embark upon a journey on a makeshift raft down the mighty Mississippi, going through the South American landscape, with our free-spirited and witty Huckleberry Finn and a runaway former-slave Jim towards freedom, all told with an authentic and engaging Southern dialect (that I particularly enjoyed). Huck and Jim are running away not just from an abusive father and slave ownership respectively, but their escape carries that pursuit of freedom from the corruptible influence of greed and desires that lurk in human society. In addition to being a direct comment on the inhumanity that the Southern states persevered through slavery, all the intermediary characters which become part of the adventures of Huck and Jim (especially the memorable villains "king" and "duke") serve as author's comments on the way how peace and satisfaction sometimes is attainable only on an island-like place, far from our fickle and selfish "sivilized" fellows. Huck's sense of morality and conscientious perspective lends maturity to this tale. It also features the legendary Tom Sawyer, the daydreaming adventure-seeking friend of Huck. All children have been Tom Sawyers growing up, at least to some degree of being caught up in their imaginations and constantly looking for escape to worlds from the stories that they have heard. It is a laugh out loud story, filled with unanticipated surprises and unique characters. This big, twisted escape becomes a sum of escapades through funny and frightening situations where our protagonist keeps on getting trapped in. Thoroughly enjoyable, this classic truly is "the Great American novel" to be read. Reading it made me excited to read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as well.

logan08's review against another edition

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3.0

It was a decent book. I liked the writing style, although it took a little time to get used to the dialects. It was a book that I enjoyed reading, but not one that I would want to read again. I liked the outcome of the ending, but once Tom was reintroduced into the story line, I hated it from that point on. I just found that whole section almost entirely unnecessary and it lessened my overall opinion of the book.

arnette19's review against another edition

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5.0

Finito dritto dritto nella lista dei miei libri preferiti di sempre.
Mi dispiace Tom (Sawyer), ma Huck ti dà due giri!
Da rileggere in futuro assolutamente in lingua originale.

fa_biene's review against another edition

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4.0

The part I love most is a powerful passage on morality, and one's individual judgement as opposed to society's rules and teachings.

Context of the quote: Huck reflects on the morality of helping Jim escape.
He thinks about the lessons he learned in Sunday school, teaching him what happens to people who assist runaway slaves. “People that acts as I’d been acting about [Jim],” he’d been told, “goes to everlasting fire.”

Huck worries about that, and decides to do "the right thing" and write a letter to Jim's owner and tell her where Jim can be found. However, his subjective judgement gets in the way:

I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking- thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me, all the time; in the day, and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a floating along, talking, and singing, and laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him agin in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me, and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he's got now; and then I happened to look around, and see that paper.

It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:"All right, then, I'll go to hell"- and tore it up.

Ah - brilliant!