Huckleberry Finn

The humor in Huckleberry Finn begins with language, which also functions as a method of moving the narrative and establishing and refining character. Twain's deliberate use of multiple dialects immediately captures each character's distinctiveness, and the dialects reinforce the verisimilitude of the characters' behavior--all in the context of humor. That occurs from the very opening of the novel, in which Huck as narrator explains why he is telling this story. The tone is conversational, ungrammatical, and filled with malapropisms, but it draws the read

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craftiness is is jejune and unrealistic in its own way: "Tom Sawyer was . . . going to help steal that nigger out of slavery. . . . Here was a boy . . . well brung up . . . yet here he was, without any more pride . . . than to stoop to this business and make himself a shame . . . before everybody" (Clemens 183). The ultimate comic irony, of course, is that it turns out Tom and Huck have freed a freedman. Meanwhile, Tom's management of the escape is a walk through the worldview and logic of adolescence, which is nothing if not illogical. It also provides an opportunity for a bit of contemporary cultural satire. When Tom and Huck plan to dig the foundations of the cabin where Jim is being held, Huck rather sensibly wants to use the picks lying nearby. Tom, however, as the voice of authority, is aghast, because he has "read all the books that gives any information about these things. They always dig out with a case-knife--and not through dirt, mind you; generly it's through solid rock" (Clemens 190). That is a reference to the unrealistic adventure stories that dominated youthful pop culture in the 19th century. Not all of the humor in Huckleberry Finn is as direct as the manifest content of these episodes indicate. But that is be
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Approximate Word count = 1996
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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