Here's part 2 of Crash Course's take on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. (I linked to part 1 last week.)

It's interesting.



My own thoughts:
* I actually liked the ending of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn just because I thought it was funny.  And I know the critics don't like it because its tone doesn't match the rest of the novel.  But it made me laugh--the sheer absurdity of Tom Sawyer's obsession with re-creating a prison escape scene from the adventure novels, and how Huck Finn and Jim just went along with the crazy plan.  (Although, as I said in my original review, Mark Twain did milk the joke a little bit too long.)

* John Green's attempt to defend the ending as something Mark Twain had planned all along may be a little bit too generous.  The publisher's introduction to my edition noted that Twain went through several phases when he was writing this book, and gave up on some of the plot threads and themes he had started.  And this may account for the sudden change in tone more than anything else.

* Jim does have a lot of positive characteristics in the novel, but he is also portrayed as a comic buffoon most of the time, and an honest appraisal  of the novel needs to balance this against the more modern-sounding pro-equality parts of the novel.  John Green, however, is still ignoring the problematic parts of the novel.

But all in all, still an interesting video essay.

Crash Course just posted a video essay on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which made me remember my own review of that book from last year.

I found Crash Course's take on the book very interesting.  My only two points of disagreement are:

1)The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is better than John Green is giving it credit for.  Sure, Tom Sawyer might not be Literature with a capital "L"--it might not be so heavy with the themes and symbolism that literary types like to gush over.  But it's funny, and it makes you laugh, and so it's all right with me.

2). Also...the race issue in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is more problematic than John Green is acknowledging.   It goes beyond simply using the "N-word".  Jim is frequently portrayed as a buffoon and a simpleton in the book.
That doesn't necessarily mean the book is racist (and I ran through a couple of different interpretations in my original review) but it is a problem that needs to be addressed.

With those caveats out of the way, I thoroughly enjoyed this little video essay:

Tom Sawyer Detective by Mark Twain

(Book Reviews)

And so I come to the end of the Tom Sawyer series, after The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Tom Sawyer Abroad .  

(Actually, if you're a real completist, according to Wikipedia, there are three more unfinished Tom Sawyer stories that were never published during Mark Twain's life, but were all published posthumously (W)--but I'm going to stop here, and just stick to the finished books in the series.)

I don't have a lot to say about this book, so this will hopefully be a pretty short review.

Like Tom Sawyer Abroad, this book is one of the lesser known sequels to The Adventure of Tom Sawyer.
Like Tom Sawyer Abroad, this book was written to get Mark Twain out of financial difficulty.

As with Tom Sawyer Abroad, this book is decidedly NOT a great work of literature.  And yet, it's short, it's easy to read, and it's got a few good chuckles in it along the way.  And so, I give it a recommendation, because it falls under the heading of "Well, you might as well read it if you're at all curious, because it's so quick and easy to read."

Judged purely on it’s plotline, I’d have to say this story is pretty bad. It relies on several incredible coincidences and contrivances.

It is also one of those murder-mystery stories in which the reader can guess what happened long before the characters figure it out, which makes it very boring for the reader.

What saves this book, then, are two factors. First of all, it’s very short. (Only about 60 pages in my edition). And a lot of faults can be forgiven in a story if the author keeps it mercifully short.

Secondly, there’s just enough glimpses of the old Mark Twain humor to redeem this story. For example, there's a wonderful little scene where Tom Sawyer uses reverse psychology to convince his Aunt Polly to send him and Huck Finn on a trip down to Aunt Sally.
There's another scene where Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn try to make up excuses as to why they arrived home late, and just get keep getting caught in one lie after another, until their Aunt Sally just loses all patience with them and drops the subject.
And there's another scene where Tom Sawyer gets very upset when Huck Finn suggests a missing person might not have been murdered, and accuses Huck Finn of being selfish for suggesting such a thing.  (In Tom Sawyer's mind, a murder-mystery always means excitement, and for Huck Finn to suggest no murder has taken place is, to Tom, an act of unbelievable selfishness).

There's not quite as much humor in this book as there is in Mark Twain's better books.  (This obviously wasn't his A-game on display here.)  But there's enough little gems here to mostly redeem the story.

I've already written a lot about the character inconsistencies in my review of Tom Sawyer Abroad, so I won't go through all that again here.  I'll just note that the characters appear in slightly different forms in each story, and leave it at that.
In this story, Tom Sawyer is now somewhat of a Sherlock Holmes type character--a brilliant wunderkind who notices all sorts of little things that the ordinary townsfolk overlook, and is thus able to solve the mystery that baffles everyone else.

Other Notes
* As of this writing, the Wikipedia entry on this novel claims (W) it is a sequel to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and a prequel to Tom Sawyer Abroad.
This novel was actually published two years after Tom Sawyer Abroad, but someone at Wikipedia decided it was actually before the events of Tom Sawyer Abroad.
I'd be curious to know how they arrived at this.  It's possible, but it's not at all definite from reading the text.
Both Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer Detective refer back to the events in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  (In Tom Sawyer Detective, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn go back to stay again with Aunt Polly and Uncle Silas in the town where the climatic events of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn took place.)
However, Tom Sawyer Detective completely ignores all the events that took place in Tom Sawyer Abroad.

* The plot of this little story is completely ridiculous.  Among other incredible coincidences, it revolves around identical twins showing up and disappearing at very convenient times.
Mark Twain starts off the book by acknowledging the story is far-fetched, but claiming: "Strange as the incidents of this story are, they are not inventions, but facts—even to the public confession of the accused. I take them from an old-time Swedish criminal trial, change the actors, and transfer the scenes to America. I have added some details, but only a couple of them are important ones."
Some research on the Internet reveals this claim may be half true.  Mark Twain apparently plagiarized the plot of the story from a Danish novel, and this Danish novel was apparently loosely based on some sort of reported incident in the 17th Century.
So for anyone keeping score, I guess that's one sin removed from Mark Twain for inventing a ridiculous plot, and one score added for being a plagiarist.

*  So, this is not the only Mark Twain murder mystery that involves identical twins--Pudd'nhead Wilson also had identical twins as part of its story.
This blogger here claims that Tom Sawyer Detective therefore works great as in introduction to Pudd'nhead Wilson.  (Presumably to see how the story gradually evolved in Twain's mind).  Maybe.  Except I believe Pudd'nhead Wilson was published first.

* Aside from character inconsistencies, I think there's at least one plot inconsistency in these books.  In both Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer Detective, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn are constantly thinking of get-rich-quick schemes.  In Tom Sawyer Abroad the boys flirt with the idea of starting a business selling genuine Sahara sand back in the United States.  In Tom Sawyer Detective there's a pair of stolen diamonds that the boys are trying to get the reward money for.
In both books, Mark Twain seems to have forgotten he already made these boys rich.  At the end of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Tom and Huck discover a cave full of gold, and all the money is invested on their behalf by Judge Thatcher.
...of course, I guess you could smooth over this apparent inconsistency by just arguing that the boys are insatiably greedy.

* The publisher's introduction in my volume (written by Stuart Hutchinson) does a good job of articulating how indulgent Mark Twain became towards his young hero by this last book.  He explains it much better than I could, so I'm just going to steal his analysis.

So much, too, for the Tom Sawyer of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, who was already losing much of his authenticity in Tom Sawyer Abroad.  Like Twain himself he has always wanted to star on centre-stage, to the extent that Twain, in Chapter 19 of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and as an act of self-criticism, makes us aware of "all the vicious vanity that was in him".  Also he originally counters Tom's fanciful sense of himself as an outcast by giving us a real outcast in the haunting and menacing presence of Injun Joe.  While Tom is the indulged hero of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, he isn't given this role on a plate--unlike in Tom Sawer, Detective. "How did you manage that?" the judge asks in this later novel:

Tom says, kind of easy and comfortable, "Oh, just noticing the evidence and piecing this and that together, your Honour; just an ordinary little bit of detective work; anybody could 'a' done it." "Nothing of the kind!  Not two in a million could 'a' done it.  You are a very remarkable boy."

Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky: What is Special About Language?

Tom Sawyer Abroad by Mark Twain

(Book Review)

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are the two most famous books in all of American literature.  But did you know that there are also two more little known sequels in this series: Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer Detective?

Tom Sawyer Abroad is a bit of a strange addition to the Tom Sawyer canon.  The two previous books had been grounded in realism, based primarily on Mark Twain's own real childhood memories (with, admittedly, some things slightly exaggerated for comic effect).

But here, all of a sudden, realism is completely out the window, and Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and Jim are on a fantastic voyage around the world in a magical airship.

Had this book come out in the days of the Internet, I think people would have described it as fanficcy--referring to the type of story that uses familiar established characters in such an outlandish way that it seems like the wild dreams of a adolescent fan, and not the work of a professional writer, who should know better.

...and yet...and yet, at the same time, that's kind of the book's appeal as well.  I mean, FanFiction can be kind of fun in it's own way, right?  Isn't there a 12-year-old boy inside all of us, who thinks it would be kind of cool to take Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn and take them out of small town Missouri and put the on a magical airship and send them over to Africa and the pyramids?  Doesn't that sound like an idea so crazy that it just might be fun?

In that respect, the biggest weakness of this book is also its biggest strength.  It completely doesn't fit with the tone and style of the two books before it, and yet, if you just let yourself go along with the craziness of it, it can also be a lot of fun.

Evaluation
There are three things you have to be willing to forgive in order to enjoy this book.
First of all, as mentioned above, the realistic universe of the first two books is gone, and we've now entered the fantasy genre.
Secondly, the characters portrayals are inconsistent from the first two books.  (I'll detail this more fully below.)
And thirdly, this book is a follow up to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which is often considered the best book in all of American literature.  So it's got a lot of expectations riding on it, and it doesn't live up to any of them.  It's not a bad little book, but it's not even in the same league as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,

If you can forgive all that, then you can enjoy this book.

It's not nearly as good as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  But then what is?  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been called the greatest book in American literature.  This book is no where close to that but...
...but it does have its moments.  A few laughs here and there, some interesting philosophizing thrown in at points.  And best of all, the tone is light, the prose is breezy, and it's very easy to read.  It may not be great literature, but for the small amount of effort that is required of the reader, this book is totally worth it.

As with most journey stories, there's not much of a coherent plot.  Huck, Tom and Jim encounter something.  They move on.  They encounter something else.
But the plot is not really the main point of this book.  The conversations are the main point.  Huck, Jim and Tom keep a running dialogue going all the time they're in the airship, in which they talk about everything from the crusades, to the history of the papacy, to the concept of time zones, to maps, to railroad speculating, to the rules of international diplomacy, to the US government's policy on import duties, et cetera et cetera et cetera.

Basically, the book is a dumping ground for every subject Mark Twain thought would be interesting, whether it's related to the plot or not.  So there's a whole chapter on a discussion Huck, Jim, and Tom have about how wonderful fleas are.  It has nothing to do with anything in the book that comes before or after it, but Mark Twain was clearly interested in fleas, and thought he could mine the material for some jokes.
And there are a lot of little digressions like that.

Literary criticism is always a favorite subject of Mark Twain--no matter which book he is writing, he always manages to take a few digs at other authors--and this book is no different.  Walter Scott (who Mark Twain really hated, and who was consequently a frequent target of Twain) comes in for a few jabs.  And a couple of the stories from Arabian Nights get satirized as well.

And then that's pretty much it.  The boys encounter a lot of random stuff and have a bunch of silly conversations.

Character Inconsistencies
In terms of story, this book picks up right where The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn left off--the boys return to their hometown, and are reveling in the glory of their adventures down the Mississippi River.  Tom Sawyer still has the bullet wound he received at the end of the previous book, and is working the attention for all it's worth.  Jim, from the previous book, is also back again and is again a supporting character.

The only big inconsistency, story-wise, is that at the end of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck Finn had sworn he would never write another book.  And yet, Huck Finn is once again the narrator for this volume as well.
(The original Adventures of Tom Sawyer was written in the 3rd person omniscient, but Mark Twain must have decided he liked using Huck Finn as a narrator, because he never returned to the 3rd person omniscient style for the rest of the series--Tom Sawyer Detective, the last book, is also told from Huck's perspective.)

Character-wise, however, these characters have now so completely evolved that there's almost no resemblance to the original Tom and Huck that first appeared in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

So what happened?
As someone who, in my youth, once dabbled in story writing myself, I'm somewhat sympathetic to how difficult it is to keep characters consistent.  After all, characters don't exist in objective reality--they exist only in your mind.  And your mind is a very fickle thing.
Perhaps somewhere along in the story, you decide to make the character do something that completely changes your image of them, and then in all the subsequent chapters, the character begins evolving along on a path that was completely different from what you had originally imagined. So that by the time you get to chapter 20, the character is now completely different from the character in the first 10 chapters.

I think that's what happened with Mark Twain and the character of Tom Sawyer.
There was an inconsistency about Tom Sawyer's character that goes back all the way to the first book.  In the first book, Tom hated school, hated learning, and had no aptitude for it.  In geography class, Mark Twain reports that Tom "turned lakes into mountains, mountains into rivers, and rivers into continents" (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, chapter 6).
When Tom was able to trick his Sunday School mates into swapping all their tickets (awarded as prizes for memorizing Bible verses) and tried to cash these tickets in for the prize, the Sunday School Superintendent immediately knew that something was suspicious.  "it was simply preposterous that this boy had warehoused two thousand sheaves of scriptural wisdom on his premises--a dozen would strain his capacity, without a doubt" (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, chapter 4).  And sure enough, when Tom Sawyer is examined on his Biblical knowledge, he ends up mistaking David and Goliath for two of the disciples of Jesus.

...And yet, even back in the original book, Tom Sawyer had the adventures of Robin Hood completely memorized back to front, so much so that he and Joe Harper could act out the whole book in the woods from memory.  And at the end of the book, Tom Sawyer appeared to have a wealth of knowledge about highway robbers that he had learned from reading pulp fiction.

In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer becomes even more of a bibliophile.  When planning the escape of Jim, it was apparent that Tom Sawyer had read (and committed to memory) vast amounts of pulp fiction about dungeons and prisoners and escaping (including The Man in the Iron Mask).
I thought it was somewhat inconsistent that the boy who had such a short attention span in school and church was now reading so voraciously. But maybe that's just the way boys are in real life?  They can never focus on their school assignments, but they can read vast amounts of fantasy/adventure pulp.

Nowadays, when we are living in the post-literate age, where very few people actually sit down and read books anymore, it's even more difficult to imagine Tom Sawyer as a reader.  But back in 1840s small town Missouri, what other ways were there for boys to escape into a world of fantasy than to read?

And so, I let it go.  It lingered in my mind a bit, but I didn't criticize it as an inconsistency at the time.

By Tom Sawyer Abroad, however, Tom has evolved into a professor of all things literary, historical, scientific, and geographic.  At this point, he's so far gone from the original Tom Sawyer that the two aren't even the same character really.  For example, when Tom Sawyer was delivering a lecture on Church history in the Middle Ages to Huck and Jim, (Chapter 8) I wrote in the margins: This is funny stuff--but this guy is NOT Tom Sawyer.

Gone also is the superstitious Tom Sawyer from the original book, who used to spend pages and pages trading local superstitions with Huckleberry Finn.  Now Tom Sawyer looks down at all superstitions, and is constantly ridiculing everything that Huck and Jim believe.

This is not to say that Tom Sawyer always gets everything right.  He still has his weakness, carried over from the first two books, of interpreting romanticized adventure novels as reality, and this is one of the few areas where Huck Finn and Jim are able to show more intelligence than Tom.  (Tom Sawyer wants to take Walter Scott's romanticized view of the Crusades as reality, and, later in the book, also wants to believe in the stories of flying horses in Arabian Nights, but in both cases, Huck and Jim are very skeptical of  these fantasies.)  And Tom Sawyer will also occasionally get his facts muddled, and deliver speeches to Huck and Jim that aren't entirely true.

But for the most part, Tom Sawyer is the authority on all things, and Huck and Jim are the ignoramuses.

Once again, this is inconsistent with the previous books.
In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, it was Huckleberry Finn who played the expert, and Jim who was the ignoramus. Jim was ignorant about everything about the world, and Huckleberry Finn had to educate him.
Back in that previous book, Huckleberry Finn would also sometimes get his history a little bit mangled.  (In an effort to explain to Jim how bad monarchs have always been throughout history, Huck Finn delivers a lecture on the history of the English kings in which several of the kings are chronologically out of order or are assigned to the wrong wives.)  It was apparently a favorite gag of Mark Twain that the self-proclaimed expert was not always as smart as he thought he was.  And yet, in broad terms, Huck Finn did seem to get the essence of British monarchy correct, even if he mangled the details.

But now, in this book, Huck Finn's previous expertise is taken away, and he is reduced to playing, alongside of Jim, the ignoramus who is completely ignorant of time zones, and geography.

As for Jim, he stays pretty much just like he was in the previous book, except that he has managed to lose most of his redeeming qualities, and is now only a buffoon.
The publisher's introduction in my copy consists pretty much of just one long attack on the literary shortcomings of this book.  (An interesting marketing strategy that!)   The publisher's introduction made the point that although Jim was portrayed as very ignorant and childlike in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, that book was also balanced out by portrayals of Jim as a three dimensional human being, someone with a family, someone with ambitions, and someone with a desire for freedom.  In this book, however, the publisher's introduction points out that all of that is gone now, and all that's left is the the ignorant child-like portrayal of Jim.  As such, they argue, it is possible to defend The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn against charges of racism, but not possible to defend this book.

Despite Tom Sawyer being more knowledgeable about most things than Huck and Jim, this does not mean that Tom Sawyer is always triumphant in the arguments.  Another one of Mark Twain's favorite gags is for the character who has some knowledge about the world to attempt to educate the other characters.  The other characters, however, will persist in not understanding, and stubbornly argue against the expert.  Often the ignorant character will use better logic than the knowledgeable character, and so the argument will end with the ignorant character winning the argument.

This gag also was used several times in the previous book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  However in that book, it was Huckleberry Finn who was knowledgeable about the world, and Jim who was ignorant.  Now the dynamics are switched around, Huck Finn has become stupider, and Huck and Jim are  now both on the same side.

Other Notes
* For a well-written intelligent review of this book from someone else: SEE HERE.

* I've seen this book called steampunk (W) in a number of different places, and I'm of general agreement with that designation.  (Although if you wanted to get technical, I think the word steampunk is supposed to refer to a modern story that imagines backwards towards the age of Victorian era science fiction.  I'm not sure the original science fiction actually written during the Victorian era qualifies).
Another technicality is that the airship isn't actually powered by steam, but by some mysterious substance much more powerful than steam.  As the mad professor exclaims: "Nobody knows the secret but me!  Nobody knows what makes it move but me--and it's a new power!  A new power, and a thousand times the strongest in the earth.  Steam's foolishness to it."  (from chapter 2)
(Mark Twain uses the narrative cheat common to all science fiction writers who don't understand science--just allude to some new technological invention and never explain it.)

* I’ve also seen in a couple different places the claim that this book is meant to be a parody of Jules Verne style adventure novels like Around the World in 80 Days.  However, having read Around the World in 80 Days, I’ve got to say I don’t see it.  Aside from the fact that both books involve travelling around the world, there's no specific parodying going on of either Jules Verne's writing style or his plot points (that I could see.)  Besides which, Around the World in 80 Days is itself a kind of parody of an adventure novel.

* While I'm nitpicking character inconsistencies, here's another one that got me.
The conclusion of the book revolves around Tom Sawyer losing his corn-cob pipe, and being so attached to his smoking habit that he has to send Huck and Jim back to get another corn cob pipe for him.
In the original The Adventures of Tom Sawyer book, however, Tom Sawyer gets sick when he and Joe Harper try to imitate Huck's habit of smoking tobacco from corn cob pipes.

* In the beginning of this book, Tom Sawyer is looked upon as a hero by the local townspeople because he traveled a few towns down the Mississippi.
This part, at least, is something that is consistent with the other books.  In the first Tom Sawyer book, Mark Twain reports that the local schoolboys are amazed to meet Judge Thatcher, who "was from Constantinople, twelve miles away--so he had traveled and seen the world--these very eyes had looked upon the County Court House, which was said to have a tin roof.  The awe which these reflections inspired was attested by the impressive silence of staring eyes."  (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, chapter 4).
Probably Mark Twain is exaggerating slightly for comic effect, but it makes sense.  Back then, travel was difficult and took many months.  And you couldn't just leave the farm for a couple weeks to go on vacation.  So I imagine Mark Twain is not exaggerating by much here when he describes the awe in which these small town people regarded anyone who had traveled around the state.
Just think of how much things have changed these days!

Other Notes from the Publisher's Introduction:
* The Publisher's Introduction notes the irony that this book was published in 1894--right around the same time Mark Twain wrote his famous essay "Fennimore Cooper's Literary Offenses".  The Publisher notes the irony of Mark Twain criticizing Fennimore for his lack of realism, while at the same time writing this book, which contains several plot points that Twain "wouldn't have forgiven Cooper.." (Publisher's Introduction, Wordsworth Classics).

* Also from the publisher's introduction comes the information that the sole reason that Mark Twain wrote this book was to escape from financial troubles.
Like most people, when reading the classics I save the publisher's introduction for last in order to avoid all the spoilers.  (Why they don't just put those things in the back of the book, where they belong, is beyond me, but that's another rant for another post.)  So while I was actually reading this book, I had no idea.  But I can't say I was surprised to find out.  It explains the huge difference in literary quality between this book and the previous books in the Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn series.
This book is less about Mark Twain trying to preserve his place in the literary canon than it is about him just trying to make a quick buck out of his most marketable characters.

*In the first chapter, Tom Sawyer attempts to enlist Huck and Jim on his plan to go on a crusade to take back the Holy Land.  But Huck and Jim don't share his enthusiasm for it.

I [Huck Finn--the narrator] studied over it, but couldn't seem to git at the rights of it no way.  I says, "It's too many for me, Tom Sawyer.  If I had a farm, and it was mine, and another person wanted it, would it be right for him to--."
"Oh, shucks!  You don't know enough to come in when it rains, Huck Finn.  It ain't a farm, it's entirely different.  You see, it's like this.  They own the land, just the mere land, and that's all they do own; but it was our folk, our Jews and Christians, that made it holy, and so they haven't any business to be there defiling it.  It's a shame, and we oughtn't to stand it a minute.  We ought to march against them and take it away from them."

I can't help but feel that this passage (which was meant to be satirical back when it was first written in 1894) has taken on a new significance since 1948.

Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky The Difference between Obama and Bush

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

(Book Review)

My History With This Book
So, I wrote all about my history with this series in my previous review of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.  But for the purpose of making this blogpost stand independently, I'll recap it briefly here.

Around 3rd grade or so, I read this book in an simplified "Children's Classics" version that we had laying about my house.  So I've been familiar with the basics beats of the book's plot ever since then.  (In fact, in a previous post, I included The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in a list of classic books that I felt no urgency to read because I already had the plot spoiled for me in simplified versions.)

When I was 11 years old, I read the original text of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and thoroughly enjoyed it.  I moved on to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but found Huckleberry Finn to be much harder going.  I lost interest in the long meandering journey down the Mississippi that didn't seem to be going anywhere.  So I gave up on it.  (This also I've previously  mentioned in my commentary on the most begun but unfinished book list--in which The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was ranked 77th of all time.  Which indicates this experience was not unique to me.)

But since then, I've heard so much praise for this book that I knew I had to come back for it eventually.  It's frequently called the greatest American novel of all time.
Typical of the high praise this book usually gets from literary types is Hemingway's famous quote:  "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called 'Huckleberry Finn.' ... it's the best book we've had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since."

Or this quote from H.L. Mencken:
"I believe that 'Huckleberry Finn' is one of the great masterpieces of the world, that it is the full equal of 'Don Quixote' and 'Robinson Crusoe,' that it is vastly better than Gil Blas, 'Tristram Shandy,' 'Nicholas Nickleby' or 'Tom Jones.' I believe that it will be read by human beings of all ages, not as a solemn duty but for the honest love of it, and over and over again, long after every book written in American between the years 1800 and 1860, with perhaps three exceptions, has disappeared entirely save as a classroom fossil."

Well!  With that kind of praise being bandied about by the literary greats, you have to come back and read this book sooner or later, don't you?

My Review
So, let me just start with a caveat here.  I'm a person of limited intelligence.  Much of the symbolism of this book probably went over my head.  And I don't expect to write the definitive review of Huckleberry Finn.  But I'll engage with this book at the level that I can.

 I'll start out by comparing this book to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer because, despite people always mentioning both books together in the same breath, they're actually quite different in narration style, focus, and plot.

Comparisons with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
This book is a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and starts out exactly where Tom Sawyer left off.  At the end of the The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and the rest of the neighborhood boys are forming a gang of robbers.  (One of the running jokes throughout this series is the inability of the boys to distinguish pulp fiction adventure books from reality, and the gang of robbers that they want to form is based off of fictional romanticized accounts of highwaymen (W) ).
At the beginning of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, we return right to this same scene.  Tom Sawyer is trying to explain to the group that they have to be gentleman robbers and do things "by the book", and the rest of the boys are reluctant to adhere to all the nonsensical codes of conduct, but nevertheless defer to Tom's authority on the matter.
(Although...if you wanted to nitpick this series for continuity errors, there are a couple of slip ups.  At the end of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the boys have pretty much figured out what a "ransom" is and how to do it.  In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, they've somehow lost this knowledge, and now they have no idea what a "ransom" is, but only know it's something they have to do because it's in all the books.)

However, despite continuing exactly from where The Adventures of Tom Sawyer left off, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is much different in tone and narration style.

Unlike Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is told in the first person, through the voice of Huckleberry Finn himself.  There's a really great line in the opening of the book (the kind of thing my college literature professors used to go nuts over) in which the character of Huck Finn comments on the previous book, and casts doubt on the reliability of the author Mark Twain.  "You don't know me, without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain't no matter.  That book was made by Mr Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.  There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.  That is nothing.  I never seen anybody but lied, one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary.  Aunt Polly--Tom's Aunt Polly, she is--and Mary and the Widow Douglass, is all told about in that book--which is mostly a true book; with some stretchers, as I said before." (Opening lines from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  I suppose you could use this to explain away the continuity errors mentioned above.)  

In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the presence of a 3rd person narrator allowed the author to escape from Tom Sawyer's perspective, and even to comment on things that Tom Sawyer did not yet understand.  For example, following the infamous white-washing scene, the narrator states: "Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all.  He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it--namely, that in order to make a man or boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.  If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would have comprehended that work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.  And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a treadmill is work, whilst rolling nine-pins or climbing Mount Blanc is only amusement.  There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line in the summer, because the privilege cost them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work, and then they would resign. "  (From The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Chapter 2.)

But in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the narration is entirely confined to Huck's perspective.  The adult reader can infer and guess a lot of things which Huck cannot, but Huck himself is often not able to see the significance of what he is doing.
The most famous example of this (the one mentioned by every review ever) is Huck's conflicted feeling over helping a runaway slave.  Huckleberry Finn has so thoroughly absorbed the mores of his community (the ante-bellum South) that he believes it's wrong to help a slave escape, and he believes that if he does it, he will go to hell.  But since he can't bring himself to forsake his friend Jim, he helps Jim anyway, believing all the time that he's a terrible person for doing it, and hating himself for it.
The adult reader, of course, knows that Huckleberry Finn's actions are right, and it's the mores of the community that are wrong, but Huckleberry Finn himself is never allowed to reach this conclusion.  He just believes he's helping Jim because he's a low-down dirty person who can't ever do right.

The narration style of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is also much different than Tom Sawyer.  There's a lot more literary descriptions in Huckleberry Finn than there are in Tom Sawyer.  In Tom Sawyer, the narration style was kept brisk and the action moved quickly.  In Huckleberry Finn, however, you get a lot more passages like this:

"The river looked miles and miles across.  The moon was so bright I could a counted the drift logs that went a-slipping along, black and still, hundreds of yards out from shore.  Everything was dead quiet, and it looked late, and smelt late.  You know what I mean--I don't know the words to put it in." (From Chapter 7)

Or

"I kept quiet, with my ears cocked, about fifteen minutes, I reckon.  I was floating along, of course, four or five miles an hour; but you don't ever think of that.  No, you feel like you are laying dead still on the water; and if a little glimpse of snag slips by, you don't think to yourself how fast you're going, but you catch your breath and think, my! how that snag's tearing along.  If you think it ain't dismal and lonesome out in a fog that way, by yourself, in the night, you try it once--you'll see." (from Chapter 15).

And many more similar passages.  (I won't type the whole thing up here, but the first two pages of Chapter 19 are pretty much just a long description of what it's like to raft down the Mississippi river.)
All these literary descriptions are no doubt why the literary types love Huckleberry Finn so much, but for us non-literary types it can make parts of the book a bit of a slog.  I'm fairly sure this is the reason why 11-year-old me gave up on this book.

The focus of Huckleberry Finn is also much different than Tom Sawyer.  In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the focus of the book is all about the world of children--going to school and playing hooky from school, learning verses in Sunday School, the schoolyard romances and rivalries, the childish superstitions, and of course all the games.
In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the adult world is much more the focus of the story, as Huck Finn travels to many small towns along the Mississippi River, and observes how the adult villagers act. It's the adult world as viewed through the eyes of a naive child, admittedly, but it's the adult world nonetheless that is front and center in Huckleberry Finn.

And finally, the plot structure is much different.
Mark Twain starts off his book by writing: "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. 
by order of the author"  (Author's preface to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn).

However, as I wrote in my review of Tom Sawyer, this introduction really should apply more to the The Adventures of Tom Sawyer than to Huckleberry Finn.  Of the two novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer  was really the one that was truly episodic and plotless.  Huckleberry Finn does actually have an overarching plot--Huckleberry Finn teams up with an escaped slave named Jim, and they journey down the Mississippi River on a  quest to get to Cairo from where they hope to get a steamboat to help Jim escape to the free states.   (It's been pointed out by many a commentator the irony inherent in the story--the ultimate goal of Jim and Huck is to get North to the free states, but the whole journey consists of them going further and further South down the Mississippi River.)

But, within this over-arching structure, the book is a classic "journey" story.  The characters encounter random things along their journey, each of which is completely unconnected to the other, so instead of a plot building forward to its conclusion, we have a series of short encounters that don't advance the story at all.  (Since any commentary on Huckleberry Finn must, by law, make some sort of comparison to The Odyssey, I suppose here is as good as place as any to insert the mandatory reference to Homer.)

So if both The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are largely episodic, why did I enjoy Tom Sawyer so much as a kid, but give up on Huckleberry Finn?
I think it had a little bit to do with reader expectations.  In Tom Sawyer, you knew the whole book was just supposed to be a series of random adventures, so you didn't mind.
Whereas in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, there's this whole plot about escaping to the North which the author sets up, but then seems to forget about completely as he keeps bringing his characters on all these random diversions.  And, perhaps more so than Tom Sawyer, this frustrated expectation makes some readers think:  "Man, WHERE is this story going?"

That, plus a lot of the encounters in Huckleberry Finn don't really seem to have much of a point. While both The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are episodic, the episodes in Tom Sawyer are a lot more recognizable as episodes.  Typically Tom Sawyer plans some sort of scheme, Tom Sawyer executes his scheme, and hilarious consequences result.  The point of each story is the humor, and the humor is very obvious.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, however, is a lot harder to engage with, because there are all sorts of little encounters along the Mississippi River that don't seem to have an obvious point and don't seem to have an obvious punchline.  "Well, what was the point of that little bit?" I was constantly asking myself as I read through the book.   
In many of these encounters Huck Finn and Jim don't really even do that much.  They just act as observers on some piece of life along the Mississippi, and then move on.   "Was there some deeper meaning and symbolism that I missed, or did Mark Twain never really manage to fully develop that little bit?" I was constantly asking myself.

I think those reasons are why I lost interest in this book when I was a kid.  (And why, according to the completely unscientific Internet survey referenced above, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the 77th most begun-but-unfinished-book.)

As a full grown adult, however, I have a lot more patience, and can handle this kind of stuff in my reading a lot better than I could at 11.  (George Orwell makes the comment that Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are well-known under the guise of children's books, but are really completely not children's books at all.  [LINK HERE]).  And any adult reader with a bit of patience to stick with this book during some of the slower parts will be well-rewarded by the rich humor in other parts.

And there's some really great humor in some of the scenes in Huckleberry Finn.

I'll get to that in the next section.
Great Parts of this Book
Mark Twain is a comic genius, and the good parts of this book are very, very good.

There are brilliant little gems are throughout the book, but to me there are two episodes in particular which really make this book.

The first is all the parts with the King and the Duke.

For a large part of the middle of the book, Huckleberry Finn and Jim fall in with two con-men, one of them pretending to be the long lost Dauphin of France (W), the other one pretending to be a duke.  For much of the middle of the book, the schemes of these two conman dominate the plot, and Huck and Jim are mostly reduced to observers.

The tone of the book changes dramatically when these two conman take center stage.  Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer were never really angels, but they always had their hearts in the right places more or less, and they never set out to seriously defraud anyone.  The King and the Duke, on the other hand, are straight out villains.  But you kind of find yourself rooting for their various schemes anyway, just because the reader is seeing everything from their side, and not from the side of the people who are getting tricked.  (Technically the mind of Huck Finn is the reader's perspective, but Huck Finn listens in on all their conversations.)
At the same time, even though you kind of feel sympathetic for them, there's also a certain delight in knowing that their schemes are going to go wrong sooner or later, and that they will eventually get their comeuppance.

The best part is when the King and the Duke pretend to be the long lost brothers of a recently deceased man in order to get his inheritance, and they manage to con the whole town into believing it.
Even without benefits of spoilers, the reader knows this scheme is never going to work till the end.  I mean, you just know.  These characters never succeed in this type of book.  You know they'll pull off the scheme for a little bit, but then sooner or later it will all come crashing down on their heads.
So the whole time you, the reader, are eagerly waiting for them to get theirs.  But the suspense of the book comes in not knowing exactly when they're going to get found out.  And Mark Twain plays this whole thing expertly.  First it looks like they are going to get caught for sure, and then they scheme a way out of it.  And then something else will go wrong, and it looks for sure like they'll get found out, but then they'll scheme a way out of that.  And eventually you kind of admire them for their sheer audacity, and you even kind of half hope they'll get away with it, even as the other half of  you is eagerly waiting for them to get their just desserts.

In other words, it reminded me exactly of the same feelings I had reading the Flashman series.
The comparison is, of course, anachronistic.  I should say that Flashman is reminiscent of Mark Twain rather than saying that Mark Twain reminds me of Flashman, because it is Mark Twain who was the original.   But this is the order I encountered the books in.
At any rate, it's a compliment to Mark Twain's writing style that a book written in 1884 feels just as modern as the more recent Flashman books.

So that was one highlight of this book for me.  The other highlight was the rescue of Jim at the end of the book.

Near the end of the story, Jim is captured and imprisoned as a run-away slave, and Huck Finn is determined to free him.  At this point, Tom Sawyer re-enters the book, and commandeers the whole rescue operation.  Tom Sawyer is still obsessed with romantic adventure books, so he makes sure that Jim's escape happens just like it would in a book.  And so, just like the romantic miserable prisoners in an Alexander Dumas novel, Jim has to keep a prisoner's journal, and make friends with the rats in his cell, and take care to leave various clues for his pursuers to follow.
It's all ridiculous of course.  It's ridiculous first of all that Tom Sawyer would take these books so literally, and secondly that he would convince Huck Finn and Jim to go along with him.  But it's also hilarious. And once again, Mark Twain pulls it off brilliantly.

The really funny part is that although Tom Sawyer is nominally there to help Jim, all his plans just make Jim more and more miserable.  Jim gets tired of having to write in his journal, and leave clues, and hates all the rats that Tom Sawyer brought for him to tame.  And eventually Jim starts making comments about how he never would have become a prisoner if he had known being a prisoner was such hard work, and if he ever escaped, he would never become a prisoner again for a salary.

All that being said, Mark Twain probably stretches this joke out a little bit too long.  (It goes on for about 30 pages in my edition).  But it is still funny.  To quote from a small section of it, here's a small snippet of a conversation between Jim and Tom Sawyer.

"...I never knowed b’fo’ ‘t was so much bother and trouble to be a prisoner.”
“Well, it ALWAYS is when it’s done right. You got any rats around here?”
“No, sah, I hain’t seed none.”
“Well, we’ll get you some rats.”
“Why, Mars Tom, I doan’ WANT no rats. Dey’s de dadblamedest creturs to ‘sturb a body, en rustle roun’ over ‘im, en bite his feet, when he’s tryin’ to sleep, I ever see. No, sah, gimme g’yarter-snakes, ‘f I’s got to have ‘m, but doan’ gimme no rats; I hain’ got no use f’r um, skasely.”
“But, Jim, you GOT to have ‘em – they all do. So don’t make no more fuss about it. Prisoners ain’t ever without rats. There ain’t no instance of it. And they train them, and pet them, and learn them tricks, and they get to be as sociable as flies. But you got to play music to them. You got anything to play music on?”
“I ain’ got nuffn but a coase comb en a piece o’ paper, en a juice-harp; but I reck’n dey wouldn’ take no stock in a juice-harp.”
“Yes they would. THEY don’t care what kind of music ‘tis. A jews-harp’s plenty good enough for a rat. All animals like music – in a prison they dote on it. Specially, painful music; and you can’t get no other kind out of a jews-harp. It always interests them; they come out to see what’s the matter with you. Yes, you’re all right; you’re fixed very well. You want to set on your bed nights before you go to sleep, and early in the mornings, and play your jewsharp; play ‘The Last Link is Broken’ – that’s the thing that ‘ll scoop a rat quicker ‘n anything else; and when you’ve played about two minutes you’ll see all the rats, and the snakes, and spiders, and things begin to feel worried about you, and come. And they’ll just fairly swarm over you, and have a noble good time.”
“Yes, DEY will, I reck’n, Mars Tom, but what kine er time is JIM havin’? Blest if I kin see de pint. But I’ll do it ef I got to. I reck’n I better keep de animals satisfied, en not have no trouble in de house.”
(From Chapter 38)

Other Notes

Too Many Convenient Coincidences?
In order to advance the plot of this book, Mark Twain makes use of a number of rather unbelievable coincidences.  But then, Alexander Dumas was guilty of the same sin.  As was Charles Dickens.   So how hard should we be on Twain for this?
Perhaps in the 19th century, it was just more accepted that authors could get away with this stuff?  (I really don't know here, so I'm asking the question.  Anyone with any insight, feel free to leave a comment.)

The N-Word Controversy

So, it's impossible to talk about this book these days without mentioning the N-word controversy, and the censorship issue.

However, with apologies, I'm going to try to take a pass on this one.  I don't know enough about the historical use of the word "nigger" to comment on how accurately Mark Twain is representing it here.
Obviously in the 1840s, "nigger" was a lot less offensive than it is today.  That much I know.  But was it completely innocent, or was it a little bit offensive even back then?
From the text of Huckleberry Finn, the reader gets the impression that "nigger" was the only word available at the time to talk about black people.  Is that accurate?  Or were there alternatives that Mark Twain could have chosen?
Was there a difference in language between the 1840s (when this book is set) and the 1880s (when Mark Twain wrote it)?   Was the word becoming offensive by the 1880s?

If you could make the case that the word was not offensive during the 1880s, then I'd say that Mark Twain gets a free pass.  But I just don't know enough to comment.

As for the censorship issue:
I'm anti-censorship in general, but of course it's important to acknowledge there are all different shades of grey between mandating that a book be read, and out-right banning it completely.

It's one thing for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to be part of the mandatory school curriculum, and another thing for the book to be taken off of the mandatory curriculum but still usable at the teacher's discretion.  And another thing yet for the book to be outright forbidden in the classroom.  And yet another thing for the book to be removed from the school library.  And yet another thing for the book to be removed from the public library.

I'm sympathetic to the fact that the repeated use of the "n-word" in this book would make teachers reluctant to teach it.  Imagine, you've got a class full of 13 year-olds.  They're just looking for an excuse to say all the words that they know they're not supposed to say, just to fluster the teacher.  And then you've got some poor teacher who's got to get them to talk about a book full of that word without having them actually use the offensive word.
Taking this book out of the school library, however, would be another matter altogether.

The Racial Politics of this Book
The whole plot of the book, to the extent that there is a plot, is the story of trying to help a runaway slave to freedom.  So, this book is unmistakably anti-slavery.

But...if I had to quibble with the book, I might say that it doesn't seem to be anti-slavery enough.
I mean, compare this book with a film like 12 Years a Slave, in which the full horror and brutality and sadism of slavery is fully on display.  None of that comes through in Mark Twain's narrative.  Twain clearly believes that society is wrong to take away Jim's freedom, but the conditions of Jim's servitude are always portrayed as relatively benign.  The widow Douglas is not particular cruel to her slaves.  Uncle Silas is not particular cruel to his slaves.  And although the novel is sympathetic to Jim's conditions, Jim's misery is often played for comic effect in a way that sometimes seem to belittle the actual horrors of slavery.
(I've read some commentators say that since Mark Twain grew up in a household that owned slaves, he might have felt some complicity in it, and may have been reluctant to take on the full horror of slavery.)

But...perhaps it's being overly purist to complain that an anti-slavery novel is not anti-slavery enough.   Maybe I should just be happy that Mark Twain is on the right side of the issue, and just let it go.

The character of Jim himself is a bit more tricky, especially when we consider that in the 19th century you could be considered liberal and anti-slavery, and yet still believe that blacks were cognitively inferior to whites.
At various points in the book Jim seems like an idiot, and while I was reading, it was hard for me to avoid the thought that Mark Twain may have believed that black people were lacking in intelligence.

I still think this is a serious possibility actually.  But there are a few other alternative explanations.

One is that Jim's ignorance is meant to reflect his lack of education and the limited opportunities for intellectual advancement available for slaves, and not his inherent genetic ability.

The other is that Jim is not meant to represent all the people of his race, but just meant to represent himself.  He plays the comic idiot because Mark Twain needs someone to play the comic idiot in order to pay off all of his jokes, and in this case, the comic idiot just happens to be a black man.

One of Mark Twain's favorite gags is to have one character be completely ignorant of the world, and to adopt various ignorant statements about how the world works.  Someone will try to correct them, but then the ignorant character is able to use such good logic and such good arguments that they are able to win the debate and out-argue the other person.  In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Jim plays the role of the ignorant person with astoundingly good logic, and Huckleberry Finn plays the person who knows better, but is never able to win the argument.

Interestingly enough, however, the roles get switched up in the sequel: Tom Sawyer Abroad.  In Tom Sawyer Abroad, Huck Finn now plays the part of the ignorant person who uses logic to argue nonsense, and Tom Sawyer plays the part of the educated person.  (The character personalities are not entirely consistent across the different books in this series, but I'll get more into that when I review Tom Sawyer Abroad in another post.)  This would seem to indicate it's not a racial thing, it's just that Mark Twain needs some character to argue the absurd in order to play out all the jokes.

And then there's one more saving grace.  There's a brief passage in the beginning of the book that indicates Mark Twain is aware that not all black people are ignorant and uneducated.
In chapter 6, Huckleberry Finn's father, an uneducated, illiterate drunk, is complaining about how awful the government is, and among his lists of complaints, he mentions the following:

"Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here. There was a free nigger there from Ohio – a mulatter, most as white as a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat; and there ain’t a man in that town that’s got as fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed cane – the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the State. And what do you think? They said he was a p’fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain’t the wust. They said he could VOTE when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It was ‘lection day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn’t too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a State in this country where they’d let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I’ll never vote agin. Them’s the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may rot for all me – I’ll never vote agin as long as I live. And to see the cool way of that nigger – why, he wouldn’t a give me the road if I hadn’t shoved him out o’ the way. I says to the people, why ain’t this nigger put up at auction and sold? – that’s what I want to know. And what do you reckon they said? Why, they said he couldn’t be sold till he’d been in the State six months, and he hadn’t been there that long yet. There, now – that’s a specimen. They call that a govment that can’t sell a free nigger till he’s been in the State six months. Here’s a govment that calls itself a govment, and lets on to be a govment, and thinks it is a govment, and yet’s got to set stock-still for six whole months before it can take a hold of a prowling, thieving, infernal, white-shirted free nigger, and –” 
Pap was agoing on so he never noticed where his old limber legs was taking him to, so he went head over heels over the tub of salt pork and barked both shins, and the rest of his speech was all the hottest kind of language – mostly hove at the nigger and the govment, though he give the tub some, too, all along, here and there... 
(From Chapter 6)

The irony here is clear.  Huck Finn's father is illiterate, uneducated, and always drunk.  The black man is educated, and a professor, and yet the fact that the educated professor is allowed to vote makes the illiterate drunk think that the practice of voting has been somehow tarnished.  It's clear which side Mark Twain himself is on.

One a side note: although I've quoted only a small piece of it here, I love the whole anti-government rant from Huck Finn's father in chapter 6.  It's just perfect for illustrating that anti-government right-wing jerks were just as obnoxious in Mark Twain's day as they are in ours.
Because the government allows the black man some freedoms, Huck Finn's father thinks that he is somehow being oppressed by the government.  It reminded me of many comments I saw on the Internet recently after the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage.  Many conservatives though that they were somehow being oppressed because gay people had been granted a freedom.

 Connections With Other Books I've Read
 * Several references are made to The Man in the Iron Mask.  Tom Sawyer has clearly read this book, and becomes obsessed with trying to recreate some scenes from Dumas's depiction of the imprisonment of the man in the iron mask, particularly the scene in which the man in the iron mask writes messages on the bottom of his plates.
(I'm unsure whether to count this as an anachronism or not.  I think The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are both supposed to take place sometime in the 1840s-50s.  The Man in the Iron Mask was, according to Wikipedia (W), first serialized in 1847-1850 in France.  I'm not sure when the English translation would have arrived in the small towns in Missouri.)

* In A Very Short History of the World, Geoffrey Blainey quoted from a section of this book, the conversation between Huck and Jim about the night stars, to illustrate how prominent the night sky used to be in the imagination of people in every era except our own.

* Several - of - the - books - I've - read on the English language have quoted from Huckleberry Finn to illustrate Mark Twain's documentation of the American vernacular.  (Although I've now forgotten which books in particular.  Possibly it was all of them.)
In the author's preface to this book, Mark Twain clams to have painstaking researched all the different dialects and variants of dialects he used in Huckleberry Finn.  

The Publisher's Introduction
 I don't want to say too much on the Publisher's Introduction, because there are tons of different editions of Huckleberry Finn floating around out there, and each one has their own separate introduction, and the introduction on the edition I read (Wordsworth Classics, Introduction by Stuart Hutchinson) is probably only of interest to me.

But I'll drop a few words here about a couple things that caught my interest.
Apparently Mark Twain had a hard time with this book, writing much of it in 1876, and then abandoning it for several years and finally coming back to it in 1879.  When Twain returned to the book, he had a different vision for it, which explains why the nominal plot of the book (Jim escaping to freedom) gets completely forgotten for much of the middle of the book as various other adventures take center stage instead.
 This could be considered a structural weakness of the book, although Stuart Hutchinson is able to use literary language to make the conflicting structures of the book sound like an intriguing literary device.  "As we now have it [the completed version of Huckleberry Finn], therefore, when the intention to 'go up the Ohio amongst the free states' duly comes along, it merely signals the possibility of one kind of Huckleberry Finn even as the book is already becoming another.  This latter Huckleberry Finn is inclusive of the realistic plot but not determined by it, because there is no authorial conviction that life in the overall sense can ever improve.  Consequently, the raft drifts in the current of a river mightier than human designs towards an ocean still mightier, a natural death (like life itself) in relation to which all other ends may be as contrived as Tom's games." (Stuart Hutchinson, introduction to Huckleberry Finn.)

Mr. Stuart Hutchinson also picked up on all sorts of symbolism in this book that I never picked up on.  Some of it struck me as a bit far-fetched, and at times I thought this might be a classic example of a literature professor trying to justify his job by picking a lot of nonsense out of thin area.  But I'll admit that there was probably a lot in this book that I probably just missed. Which brings me to my final point:

There's a Lot More In this Book
So, as I said in the beginning, it is not my ambition to write the definitive review of Huckleberry Finn.  There's a lot more themes in this book, but I'd be writing forever if I tried to cover everything.

For example, just like in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, there's a lot of satirizing of the European monarchy and aristocracy system.  (This apparently was one of Mark Twain's major pet peeves).

There's also a lot of religious commentary in this book.  Mark Twain was a life-long vehement critic of Christianity, but the criticism is pretty mild in Huckleberry Finn.  Much of it just rests on the humour of Huckleberry Finn misunderstanding the religious instruction he's being given.  Or the humour of how unappealing the traditional harps-in-the-clouds portrait of heaven is to a 12 year old boy.
The most damning criticism against Christianity, however, is also the subtlest.  Mark Twain never makes a big deal of emphasizing it, but it's noticeable that all of the most pious characters (Miss Watson, Uncle Silas) are also portrayed as slave owners.

There's 16 pages in the middle of the book which is just a re-telling of the Hatfield and McCoy saga.  (I was glad I had watched the History Channel Mini-series on the Hatfields and McCoys, so I had a pretty good idea of which details were straight out of history, and which details were made up.)

As Huck and Jim travel through several small towns along the Mississippi, there's all sorts of commentary on small town life, on the Southerners inflated view of their own bravery, on mob mentalities, et cetera.
There's some sexist remarks in this book (and in the previous book Tom Sawyer) that probably require the reviewer to make yet another caveat before recommending this book to someone.

Oh, and I haven't even gotten to the most important theme of the book: the idea that our conscience might not be based on an absolute universal sense of right and wrong, but based on conditioning by society--as when Huck's conscience tells him it's wrong to help a slave escape.

But since The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is arguable the most written about book in American literature, I'm sure someone has covered all of these topics and more elsewhere.  I'm going to leave off here.

Link of the Day
Who Controls the U.S. Government and the Gap Between Rich and Poor: Noam Chomsky

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain [Revisited]

(Book Review)

Why I'm Reviewing this Book
I've actually read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer once before, in 6th grade, so this review counts as a re-read.

 According to the rules I set for myself on this book review project, I generally only review books that I'm reading for the first time.  Books that I re-read don't get full reviews on this blog.  (This is partly to give myself a break from having to review every single thing I read, and partly because when I do re-visit an old book, I tend to either do it by audio book, or just dip in and out of it rather than read it straight through.)

Thus far, I've broken this rule twice.  I reviewed The Three Musketeers, a book that I had already read in childhood, because I wanted to set my thoughts down on the original before I went on to review the sequels. And also Kidnapped, for the same reason (I wanted to set down my thoughts on Kidnapped before moving onto the sequel.)

And (surprise) my reason for re-reading and reviewing Tom Sawyer are the same.  I want to set down my thoughts on Tom Sawyer before I get around to reading and reviewing  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the other books in the Tom Sawyer series, which I will be reading for the first time.

My History With this Book/Series
In elementary school, I read simplified versions of both Tom Sawyer  and Huckleberry Finn.  So I've been familiar with the plots of both books since about 3rd grade (or, depending on how you want to look at it, I've had the plots spoiled for me since that time.)

Furthermore, like everyone else in the world, I have seen this story done to death on movies and television.  I must have seen that white wash scene performed hundreds of times before I even finished elementary school.  So I had thoroughly engraved on my brain Tom and Huckleberry Finn rafting down the river, Becky Thatcher, Injun Joe and the dark cave, and most of the rest of it.

But in 6th grade, I decided to try reading Mark Twain's original text of Tom Sawyer.  And I found it surprisingly delightful.  Even as a 6th grader, with my literary senses still undeveloped, I found it an easy read.  And it was funny.  (I still remember chuckling over many of the scenes, like Tom Sawyer feeding painkiller to the cat, or Tom Sawyer embarrassing himself in Sunday School.)  And it was fun, and adventurous, and quick moving.

So I decided to move onto the spin-off book: Huckleberry Finn.

[Sidenote:  I always thought it was really cool that Mark Twain managed to take Huckleberry Finn, originally a supporting character in Tom Sawyer, and spin him off into his own book.  And not only that, but then manage to get both books accepted into the canon of Western Literature Classics.  It would be like if Shakespeare had spun Horatio off into his own separate play, or if Miguel de Cervantes had spun Sancho off into his own book, and then had this new play/book become just as much a household name as the original Hamlet/ Don Quixote.]

However, despite my general fascination with the idea of the inter-related novels of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, I found the actual reading of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to be hard going.  I got a bit bored with Huckleberry Finn and Jim going on their river journey that seemed to never end, and I lost patience with the descriptions of the Mississippi River.  So I gave up on it.

Why I'm Returning to this Series

In the years since, however, I've always regretted that I never stuck with Huckleberry Finn.  Especially since Huckleberry Finn (and not Tom Sawyer) is the book that all the literary critics always gush over.  In fact Huckleberry Finn  is often referred to as the greatest American novel of all time. (Not even  kidding--go ahead and Google search Great American Novel.  There's no consensus, of course, but Huckleberry Finn seems to pop up the most..)

I've also been vaguely aware ever since childhood of some of the other further sequels in the Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn canon.  (Although I never read it, Tom Sawyer Detective was in my grandmother's attic, and I flipped through it occasionally.)
I'm enough of a continuity geek that I like the idea of getting into a series and reading the whole thing through, and seeing how all the books fit together.   So I've always kind of wanted to go back and read all the Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn books from first to last.

I've especially been interested in going back to these books since I re-discovered Mark Twain a few years back, and remembered what a wonderful author he was.  Back in 2006 I read, and thoroughly enjoyed, Pudd'nhead Wilson, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. 

In fact, in my review of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, I admonished myself to read more Mark Twain.  ("Note to self: read more Mark Twain," I wrote.)
...That was all the way back on January 17, 2007--8 years ago now!  Wow it is scary how time gets away from you!   I had every intention of carrying on with Mark Twain as soon as I finished A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and all of a sudden 8 years have flown by and I haven't read anything further by him.

But, the other day I was in a bookstore, and I saw cheap reprints of all the Tom Sawyer books available: Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, of course, but also the lesser known Tom Sawyer Detective and Tom Sawyer Abroad.
And I thought: "This is it!  This is the year that I'm finally going to sit down and read this whole series straight through."

Although I had already read it once, I decided to start out by re-reading Tom Sawyer.  6th grade was a long time ago now, and the memory does fade somewhat after 25 years.  Plus, I wanted to have Tom Sawyer fresh in my mind when I started Huckleberry Finn so that I could catch all the connections.

My Review of Tom Sawyer After Re-Reading It

I remember this book as being an easy and painless read when I was in 6th grade, and I am delighted to find out 25 years later that my opinion is unchanged--it's still an easy and painless read.

[Sidenote: It's a source of fascination to me how some old books age better than others.  A lot of 19th Century classic books are hard to read nowadays--even 19th Century children's books.  The prose style is antiquated, the plotting and pacing are slower, the descriptions are generally longer, et cetera.  For example I mentioned in my review of The Black Arrow: "Although originally published as a boy’s adventure story back in 1888, like a lot of Victorian Era children’s stories the prose style is now slightly antiquated, and it’s no longer accessible for most of it’s target audience."  Fair enough.  Everyone knows that language and narrative styles change over time.  Which is why Chaucer is completely inaccessibly, Shakespeare is a struggle, and Victorian era books feel a bit old and stuffy.
But then, how do you explain the exceptions?  How do you explain that every once and a while, you come across a 19th Century book that feels so fresh and modern it could have been written yesterday?]

Tom Sawyer was written in 1876, but it really has aged remarkably well.  With few adjustments it could easily pass for modern fiction.  Add this book to my list of Classic Books which are Actually Fun to Read.

There's no real plot to Tom Sawyer.  It's just a series of stories.  Some of the stories are about little adventures Tom Sawyer goes on (the adventure in the dark cave, or running away to the island) and some of them are just about the various troubles Tom causes (feeding pain killer to the cat, fighting with other boys) and some of them are just descriptions of Tom's experiences of daily life in a small town (Sunday morning at church, or Monday morning in the school house).
 (In the preface to Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain wrote: "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot", but this introduction could just as easily be applied to Tom Sawyer.  In fact it's probably more true of Tom Sawyer.)
For the most part, the episodic nature of Tom Sawyer works very well.  Mark Twain seems to excel in short humorous episodes, and the reader never has to wait very long between set-up and pay-off.   My only complaint is that the book repeats a bit.   There's not one, but three episodes in which the whole town thinks that either Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn is dead, and goes into mourning.  (This is just in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer alone, and not even counting when Huck Finn fakes his death in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)

I'm not sure that Tom Sawyer is entirely consistent as a character.  In some of the stories, he's incredibly brilliant and cunning (like when he tricks all the boys of the town into whitewashing the fence for him).  But in other stories, he's incredibly naive and foolish (like the way he allows himself to stumble into his Aunt's verbal traps.)
But on the other hand, perhaps this sort of inconsistency--alternating between incredible sophistication and incredible foolishness-- is just what children are like in real life.
At any rate, the Tom Sawyer in this book may be inconsistent, but he's a fully dynamic character.
(Unfortunately in the sequel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer's characterization loses this roundness, and he becomes instead a one-note-gag character.  In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer's only characterization is that he is a committed fantasist.  But I'll get to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in my next review.)

Other Notes and Addenda

The narration
Tom's adventures are in themselves pretty humorous, but the way the narrator is constantly inserting himself into the book to comment on what's going on is an added pleasure.  One of several examples is when describing Sunday morning church service:

"The congregation being fully assembled now, the bell rang once more, to warn laggards and stragglers, and then a solemn hush fell upon the church, which was only broken by the tittering and whispering of the choir in the gallery.  The choir always uttered and whispered all through service.  There was once a church choir that was not ill-bred, but I have forgotten where it was now.  It was a great many years ago, and I can scarcely remember anything about it, but I think it was in some foreign country" (from Chapter 5)

Mark Twain the acidic literary critic also inserts himself into the book at times, and most of Chapter 22 is devoted to making fun of a book entitled "Prose and Poetry, by a Western Lady."

The Relationship Between Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn
Reading this book, I was reminded of  The Way of the Kings.   Or at least, I was reminded of the translator's introduction to The Way of the Kings, in which she pointed out that one of the characters represented someone trying to break free from society's constraints, where another character (the one lost in the jungle) represented someone who had already completely severed himself from all of society's rules.

The relationship between Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn is similar here.  Although I don't get any credit for noticing this, since the narrator pretty much spells it all out explicitly:

Huckleberry was cordially hated and dreaded by all the mothers of the town because he was idle, and lawless, and vulgar, and bad--and because all their children admired him so, and delighted in his forbidden society and wished they dared to be like him.  Tom was like the rest of the respectable boys in that he envied Huckleberry his gaudy outcast condition, and was under strict orders not to play with him.  So he played with him every time he got a chance.  Huckleberry was always dressed in the cast-off clothes of full-grown men, and they were in perennial bloom and fluttering with rags.  His hat was a vast ruin with a wide crescent lopped out of its brim; his coat, when he wore one, hung nearly down to his heels, and had the rearward buttons far down the back; but one suspender supported his trousers; the seat of the trousers bagged low and contained nothing; the fringed legs dragged in the dirt when not rolled up.  Huckleberry came and went at his own free will.  He slept on door-steps in fine weather, and in empty hogsheads in wet; he did not have to go to school or to church, or call any being master, or obey anybody; he could go fishing or swimming when and where he chose, and stay as long as it suited him; nobody forbade him to fight; he could sit up as late as he pleased; he was always the first boy that went barefoot in the spring and the last to resume leather in the fall; he never had to wash, nor put on clean clothes; he could swear wonderfully.  In a word, everything that goes to make life precious, that boy had.  So thought every harassed, hampered, respectable boy in St Petersburg. (Chapter 6.  Sidenote:  It's characteristic of the subtle ironic narration in this book that the narrator never has to mention that from an adult perspective Huckleberry Finn's poverty is much to be pitied.  The narrator just mentions all the reasons the other boys envied Huckleberry Finn, and leaves the adult perspective to be filled in by the reader's minds.)

So, when Tom Sawyer, Joe Harper, and Huck Finn run away from home to be pirates, Huckleberry Finn is the only one comfortable falling asleep without saying his prayers.  Tom Sawyer and Joe Harper, even though they have left the control of their respective guardians, still feel like they need to say their prayers or they will be hit with lightening.  Tom Sawyer and Joe Harper also have trouble sleeping because of their guilt over having stolen food, while Huckleberry Finn slept "the sleep of the conscience-free and the weary" (Chapter 13).

It's interesting, however, that in the sequel book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, this dynamic is completely reversed.  In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck Finn is always comparing himself to Tom Sawyer, and regretting that he doesn't have the courage and daring that Tom Sawyer does.
(Although ... maybe there is some precedence for this reversal in this first book.  Tom Sawyer is the only one of  the two boys who had the courage to testify at Muff Potter's trial.)

Joe Harper
Joe Harper, who I mentioned above, never became half as famous as Huck Finn, but he appears in many of Tom Sawyer's adventures in the early parts of the book.  He is more or less an identical copy of Tom Sawyer, having exactly the same ideas, and getting into exactly the same troubles.  When Tom Sawyer plays hooky from school and goes into the woods, he meets Joe Harper there doing the same thing.  When Tom Sawyer decides to run away from home, he meets Joe Harper, who is already planning the exact same thing.  Perhaps Joe Harper is not quite so clever or creative as Tom Sawyer, but he does have exactly the same interests, and causes exactly the same mischief.
I took Joe Harper's character to indicate that Mark Twain never meant to set up Tom Sawyer as particularly unique, but rather that Tom Sawyer's character was meant to be representative of all boys of a certain age.

This Book's Status as Historical Fiction
The book was written in 1876, but it's meant to take place during the time of Mark Twain's own childhood (1840s-1850s) and so recreates a world that no longer existed at the time of writing, and is technically a form of historical fiction.
In the preface to Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain wrote: "Most of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred; one or two were experiences of my own, the rest those of boys who were schoolmates of mine.  Huck Finn is drawn from real life; Tom Sawyer also, but not from an individual: he is a combination of three boys whom I knew, and therefore belongs to the composite order of architecture.
The odd superstitions touched upon were all prevalent among children and slaves in the West at the period of this story; that is to say, thirty or forty years ago."
Mark Twain further goes on to say:  "part of my plan has been to try to remind adults of what they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked, and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in."

As such, the book stands as an interesting chronicle of childhood from a time now long gone.
For example, one of many little interesting details is all the treasured possessions the boys collect.  This is a theme all throughout the book, but to take one incident, after the white washing incident, the narrator details all the toys Tom Sawyer had collected from his playmate: "By the time Ben was fagged out, Tom had traded the next chance to Billy Fisher for a kite in good repair; and when he played out, Johnny Miller bought in for a dead rat and a string to swing it with; and so on, and so on, hour after hour.  And when the middle of the afternoon came, from being a poor poverty stricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling in wealth.  He had, besides the things I have mentioned, twelve marbles, part of a Jew's harp, a piece of blue bottle-glass to look through, a spool-cannon, a key that wouldn't unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six fire-crackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass door-knob, a dog-collar--but no dog--the handle of a knife, four pieces of orange peel, and a dilapidated old window-sash" (From Chapter 2).

It all sounds a bit odd to be considered treasures, but then, in the days before every toy was mass-produced out of a factory and tied into some movie or cartoon TV show, what did little boys amuse themselves with?
Occasionally one gets the feeling that Mark Twain is exaggerating stuff for humorous effect.  Did children in the 1840s really collect dead rats on strings?  Wasn't that pretty unsanitary?
...And yet, if I push my childhood memories, I can recall a certain boyhood fascination with the bodies of dead animals.  (And in fact I remember an incident when my younger brother, at about Tom Sawyer's age, once found a dead chipmunk, which he hid inside our closet, until the dog found it and started retrieving the chipmunk bones to chew on.)

I'm not going to get into trying to sparse what is authentic and what is exaggerated in Tom Sawyer.  I wouldn't have the expertise for one thing.  But there's tons of commentaries for Tom Sawyer out there already which tackle this question.
(The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are to American literature what Shakespeare is to British literature, in that they've been written about and analyzed to death over the years, and it's impossible to find anything new to say that hasn't been said before.  Which I suppose makes my whole review here pretty superflous, but anyway...)

There are also a few little interesting details about slavery in this period that pop up in the book.  For example, when Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn are frightened by a howling dog, Tom Sawyer looks out and recognizes the dog as ''Bull Harbison".  A footnote by Mark Twain adds some detail that is unnecessary to the narrative, but very revealing about the culture of the time: "If Mr Harbison had owned a slave named Bull, Tom would  have spoken of him as 'Harbison's Bull'; but a son or a dog of that name was Bull Harbison" (Author's footnote from Chapter 10).
And yet, from the perspective of a modern reader, the injustices of slavery during this period mostly feels overlooked.  Sure, there's a comment here and there (as quoted above), but a modern reader would expect condemnation of slavery to get much more attention.  (Slavery of course is a much more central piece of the narrative in the following book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but even during this story of a runaway slave, the real horrifying cruelty of the system never really seems to catch author's attention for long.)

Could it be that a full-on anti-slavery novel like Uncle Tom's Cabin could only be written by a Northerner?  Perhaps for someone who grew up in the South, slavery was so much of an every day occurrence that they got used to it, and never learned to be horrified by it?  (I don't know, I'm just thinking out loud here.)

Tom Sawyer and the Lost Childhood of the Modern World
 It's cliche to talk about Tom Sawyer and bring up the loss of childhood in the modern world.  I know it.
But, like many cliches, it's cliche for a reason...you can't help it.  Reading this book forces you to think how much childhood has changed.  Specifically, you can't help but notice how much of Tom Sawyer's childhood is spent outdoors, and contrast that with how much modern childhood is now an exclusively indoors phenomenon.
Instead of spending all his time inside watching cartoons or playing video games, Tom Sawyer is always outside fishing, or swimming, or playing Robin Hood in the woods with his friends, or rafting down the river, or exploring caves....
And it's not just that childhood recreations have changed since the 19th century.  Reading this book you get the feeling of a whole societal loss of connection to the outdoors.  For example, Tom Sawyer and his classmates actually walked to school!  And they walked home again after school.  Does anyone know any children in North America who actually walk to their schools these days?
Or here's another little detail that made me sigh a bit: in church, Aunt Polly makes sure that Tom is always sitting next to the aisle-- "Tom being placed next the aisle, in order that he might be as far away from the open window and the seductive outside summer scenes as possible" (Chapter 5).
I have childhood memories of squirming uncomfortably in Church as well, but it wasn't the seductive outside summer scenes that I was longing for, it was wanting to get back home and play video games.  Another modern childhood wasted in front of a TV screen!
But even more than that, there were no seductive outside summer scenes in my church.  The church was air conditioned, what few windows there were, were always closed up, and it was all walls and brick and mortar.  And even if there had been an outside view, all we would have seen outside the church was a gigantic parking lot anyway.  It makes you long for these old churches with no air-conditioning and open windows and the seductive outside summer scenes.
(All that being said though, lest I let my romanticism run away with me, I should remind myself that it's only possible to romanticize nature in temperate climates.  Mark Twain and his characters all grew up in Missouri.  If they had grown up in Michigan, no doubt Tom Sawyer would have spent a significant amount of the year cooped up indoors, no matter what century he lived in).

On the Other Hand...
On the other hand, there are plenty of little details in these books that definitely fall into the: the-more-things-change-the-more-they-stay-the-same variety.  For example, Aunt Polly's fascination with health magazines seems to describe exactly the health advice one finds on many Internet websites these days:
She was a subscriber for all the "Health" periodicals and phrenological frauds; and the solemn ignorance they were inflated with was breath to her nostrils.  All the rot they contained about ventilation, and how to go to bed, and how to get up, and what to eat, and what to drink, and how much exercise to take, and what frame of mind to keep oneself in, and what sort of clothing to wear, was all gospel to her, and she never observed that her health journals of the current month customarily upset everything that had been recommended the month before.  (from Chapter 12).

Also in the human-nature-never-really-changes category is an incident in the sequel book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in which Huck comes across a girl completely fascinated with black colors and poetry about death, and one can't help but think of the modern goth teenagers.

Superstitions
Another big theme of the book is superstition.  And this is really huge in this book.  Not only is Tom Sawyer constantly making references to various superstitions all throughout the book, at some points Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn spend several pages debating the truths of various superstitions.

Apparently this is all based on real life.  In the author's introduction, Twain writes: "The odd superstitions touched upon were all prevalent among children and slaves in the West at the period of this story."

It's interesting how strongly Tom Sawyer believed in these silly childhood superstitions, but it made me remember my own childhood as well.
Take for example, this passage.
He [Tom]  went to a rotten log near at hard, and began to dig under one end of it with his Barlow knife.  He soon struck wood that sounded hollow.  He put his hand there and uttered this incantation impressively:
"What hasn't come here, come!  What's here, stay here!"
Then he scraped away the dirt, and exposed a pine shingle.  He took it up and disclosed a shapely little treasure-house whose bottom and sides were of shingles.   In it lay a marble.  Tom's astonishment was boundless.  He scratched his head with a perplexed air, and said:
"Well that beats anything!"
Then he tossed the marble away pettishly, and stood cogitating.  The truth was, that a superstition of his had failed here, which he and all his comrades had always looked upon as infallible.   If you buried a marble with certain necessary incantations, and left it alone a fortnight, and then opened the place with the incantation he had just used, you would find that all the marbles you had ever lost had gathered themselves together there, meantime, no matter how widely they had been separated.  But now this thing had actually and unquestionably failed.  Tom's whole structure of faith was shaken to its foundations.  He had many a time heard of this thing succeeding, but never of its failing before.... (Chapter 8).

 I'm sure everyone who reads this book is immediately reminded of all the childish superstitions and crazy beliefs that sometimes went around the playground in their school days.  I was certainly thought of a couple, and how strongly I believed in some of them.  (I remember once my grandfather went through great effort to try to talk me out of one particular crazy idea that was popular on the school playground, but it was no use.  Everyone else on the playground believed it, so I knew there had to be something to it. )
I suppose it should be no surprise that children are naturally credulous.  Children come into this world knowing nothing, and have to be told everything.  And  because the real world is often just as strange as the fantasy, it's no wonder children will believe one as easily as another.  And this is how these crazy beliefs and superstitions fly so readily around the school yard.

The issue gets a bit more sticky, however, when Mark Twain attributes these superstitions to children and slaves.  Which a modern reader will balk at, because it seems to put slaves on the same cognitive level as children.
Superstition does exists in the adult world  as well, of course, (I saw plenty of it in Cambodia) but it's a much more complex topic.  Since slaves play very little part in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (they are occasionally referenced as authorities on superstition, but are mostly kept off-camera), I'll just leave that can of worms un-opened for now, and move on to the next topic.

Injun Joe
 I want to continue to say good things about this book, but, unfortunately, in addition to everything else, there's racism in this book as well.

Injun Joe is the villain of this book.  Which in and of itself doesn't prove racism (an Indian can be a bad guy just as easily as a white man), but the narration unfortunately repeatedly implies that Injun Joe is evil because of  his Indian blood.  (And plus, even the very name Injun Joe...)

 It surprised me that Mark Twain had written this, because in Pudd'nhead Wilson, Mark Twain appeared to have a very forward thinking view on racial identity.  (In Pudd'nhead Wilson, Mark Twain appears to be arguing that race is much more of a societal construct than it is a matter purely of bloodlines.  And this was years before this same theory would become popular with liberal academics).  Plus, Mark Twain had so eloquently spoken out against American imperialism in the Philippines.  
 So it surprised me that the portrayal of Injun Joe in Tom Sawyer was so revoltingly racist.

I guess it's strange how some people can be progressive on some issues, but have blind spots on other issues.

I'm not an expert on Mark Twain, or his views, but lots of other people are, and since Twain is the most written about American author, there are tons of articles online examining Twain's portrayal of Injun Joe.  See, for example: HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE....and many more.
 
Link of the Day
Telling the Truth about Imperialism