American Literature books summary

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Pap { Huckleberry's father and the town drunk and ne'er- do-well. When he appears at the beginning of the novel, he is a human wreck, his skin a disgusting ghost-like white, and his clothes hopelessly tattered. Like Huck, he is a member of the least privileged class of whites, and is illiterate. He is angry that his son is getting an education. He wants to get hold of Huck's money, presumably to spend it on alcohol. He kidnaps Huck and holds him deep in the woods. When Huck fakes his own murder, Pap is nearly lynched when suspicions turn his way. But he escapes, and Jim eventually finds his dead body on an abandoned houseboat.

Judge Thatcher { Judge Thatcher is in charge of safeguarding the money Huck and Tom won at the end of Tom Sawyer. When Huck discovers his father has come to town, he wisely signs his fortune over to the Judge. Judge Thatcher has a daughter, Becky, whom Huck calls "Bessie."

Aunt Polly { Tom Sawyer's aunt and guardian. She appears at the end of Huckleberry Finn and properly identifies Huck, who has pretended to be Tom; and Tom, who has pretended to be his brother, Sid (who never appears in this novel).

The Grangerfords { The master of the Grangerford clan is "Colonel"Grangerford, who has a wife. The children are Bob, the oldest, then Tom, then Charlotte, aged twenty- five, Sophia, twenty, and Buck, the youngest, about thirteen or fourteen. They also had a deceased daughter, Emme- line, who made unintentionally humorous, maudlin pictures and poems for the dead. Huckleberry thinks the Grangerfords are all physically beautiful. They live on a large estate worked by many slaves. Their house is decked out in humorously tacky finery that Huckleberry innocently admires. The Grangerfords are in a feud with the Shepardsons, though no one can remember the cause of the feud or see any real reason to continue it. When Sophia runs off with a Shepardson, the feud reignites, and Buck and another boy are shot. With the Grangerfords and the Shepardsons, Twain illustrates the bouts of irrational brutality to which the South was prone.

The Wilks Family { The deceased Peter Wilks has three daughters, Mary Jane, Susan, and Joanne (whom Huck calls "the Harelip"). Mary Jane, the oldest, takes charge of the sisters' afiairs. She is beautiful and kind- hearted, but easily swindled by the Duke and Dauphin. Susan is the next youngest. Joanna possess a cleft palate (a birth defect) and so Huck somewhat tastelessly refers to her as "the Hare Lip" (another name for cleft palate). She initially suspects Huck and the Duke and Dauphin, but eventually falls for the scheme like the others.

The Phelps family { The Phelps family includes Aunt Sally, Uncle Silas and their children. They also own several slaves. Sally and Silas are generally kind-hearted, and Silas in particular is a complete innocent. Tom and Huck are able to continue playing pranks on them for quite some time before they suspect anything is wrong. Sally, however, displays a chilling level of bigotry toward blacks, which many of her fellow Southerners likely share. The town

in which they live also cruelly kills the Duke and Dauphin. With the Phelps, Twain contrasts the good side of Southern civilization with its bad side.

Summary

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was finally published in 1885. Twain had begun the book years earlier, but the writing was done in spurts of inspiration interrupted by long periods during which the manuscript sat in the author's desk. Despite the economic crisis that plagued the United States then, the book became a huge popular and financial success. It would become a classic of American literature and receive acclaim around the world{today it has been published in at least twenty-seven languages.

Still, at the time of publication, the author was bothered by the many bad reviews it received in the national press. The book was principally attacked for its alleged indecency. After the 1950s, the chief attacks on the book would be against its alleged racism or racial bigotry. For various reasons, the book frequently has been banned from US schools and children's libraries, though it was never really intended as a children's book. Nonetheless, the book has been widely read ever since its first publication well over a century ago, an exception to Twain's definition of a classic as "a book which people praise and don't read."

Chapter 1 Summary

The narrator (later identified as Huckleberry Finn) begins Chapter One by stating that the reader may know of him from another book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by "Mr. Mark Twain," but it "ain't t no matter" if you have not. According to Huck, Twain mostly told the truth, with some "stretchers" thrown in, though everyone{except Tom's Aunt Polly, the widow, and maybe Mary{lies once in a while. The other book ended with Tom and Huckleberry finding the gold some robbers had hidden in a cave. They got six thousand dollars apiece, which Judge Thatcher put in trust, so that they each got a dollar a day from interest. The Widow Douglas adopted and tried to "civilise" Huck. But Huck couldn't stand it so he threw on his old rags and ran away. But he went back when Tom Sawyer told him he could join his new band of robbers if he would return to the Widow "and be respectable."

Реферат опубликован: 31/07/2007