On Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

While I can hardly say that I love Huck Finn, I appreciate it a lot more now than the other two times I’ve read it. I think the reason for this is that I now have much better context, both historical and literary. Although Huck Finn’s dialogue is largely written in dialect, I think younger me saw this as bad writing. Now that I’ve read other works from the same time period, I think I can see just how well the whole thing comes together. Huck Finn’s moral development regarding the ethics of slavery is gradual and beautiful to see, and some of the comedy is so good—Huck and Jim’s conversation about the French language is probably the comedic highlight of the book, I caught myself cackling out loud to the whole thing.