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Huckleberry Finn

MARK TWAIN - HUCKLEBERRY FINN
It was at the end of the Civil War in 1865 that Mark Twain found his literary voice. That year he published a humorous short story entitled "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." Many newspapers in the country ran the short story and Twain became an overnight sensation.
The popularity of the "Celebrated Jumping Frog" allowed Twain to go on a lecture tour as a comedian. He took his comic approach in life to Europe and wrote a travel book called The Innocents Abroad in which he made fun of the ancient relics of the old world that are supposed to be so impressive to tourists.
Mark Twain's most significant contribution to American literature and to political satire today occurred because of his brilliance as a novelist. Twain is the perfect example of a writer who evolved from journalism to fiction. Its not until the late 1800's that Twain's writing becomes darker and more serious in its criticisms of America. One of the reasons that his satire became sharper may be the personal tragedies that he experienced in his own life. In 1891 he faced bankruptcy, in 1896 his favorite daughter Susy dies, and in 1909, his other daughter Jean dies. In 1904, his wife Olivia dies when they are traveling in Italy. The culmination of these tragic events and Twain's overall disillusionment with humanity served to produce some of his most successful texts and set the stage for future political satirists who would entertain America.

The key text in Mark Twain's collection is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which some critics have claimed to be the most subversive text in American literature. Through humor, Twain uses his protagonist, Huckleberry Finn, to attack such respected institutions as education, religion, the family, and the justice system. By making two "dregs of society" heroes in his text, Twain thumbed his nose are respectable middle class literature. The fact that he used a variety of dialects rather than standard proper...