The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Context
    Samuel Clemens was born in Missouri in 1835. He grew up in the town of Hannibal, Missouri, which would become the model for St. Petersburg, the fictional town where Huckleberry Finn begins. Missouri was a "slave state" during this period, and Clemens' family owned a few slaves. In Missouri, most slaves worked as domestic servants, rather than on the large agricultural plantations that most slaves elsewhere in the United States experienced. This domestic slavery is what Twain generally describes in Huckleberry Finn, even when the action occurs in the deep South. The institution of slavery figures prominently in the novel and is important in developing both the theme and the two most important characters, Huck and Jim.
    Twain received a brief formal education, before going to work as an apprentice in a print shop. He would later find work on a steamboat on the Mississippi River. Twain developed a lasting afiection for the Mississippi and life on a steamboat, and would immortalize both in Life on the Mississippi (1883), and in certain scenes of Tom Sawyer (1876), and Huckleberry Finn (1885). He took his pseudonym, "Mark Twain," from the call a steamboat worker would make when the ship reached a (safe) depth of two fathoms. Twain would go on to work as a journalist in San Francisco and Nevada in the 1860s. He soon discovered his talent as a humorist, and by 1865 his humorous stories were attracting national attention.
    In 1870, Twain married Olivia Langdon of New York State. The family moved to Hartford, Connecticut, to a large, ornate house paid for with the royalties from Twain's successful literary adventures. At Hartford and during stays with Olivia's family in New York State, Twain wrote The Gilded Age, co-authored with Charles Dudley Warner in 1873 and The Prince and the Pauper (1882), as well as the two books already mentioned. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was finally published in 1885. Twain had begun the book years earlier, but the writing was done in spurts of inspiration interrupted by long periods during which the manuscript sat in the author's desk. Despite the economic crisis that plagued the United States then, the book became a huge popular and financial success. It would become a classic of American literature and receive acclaim around the world{today it has been published in at least twenty-seven languages.
    Still, at the time of publication, the author was bothered by the many bad reviews it received in the national press. The book was principally attacked for its alleged indecency. After the 1950s, the chief attacks on the book would be against its alleged racism or racial bigotry. For various reasons, the book frequently has been banned from US schools and children's libraries, though it was never really intended as a children's book. Nonetheless, the book has been widely read ever since its first publication well over a century ago, an exception to Twain's definition of a classic as "a book which people praise and don't read."
    Characters
    Huckleberry Finn { The protagonist and narrator of the novel. Huck is the thirteen or fourteen year-old son of the local drunk in the town of St. Petersburg, Missouri, at the start of the novel. He is kidnapped by his father, Pap, from the "sivilizing" in uence of the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson, and then fakes his own death to escape. He meets Jim on Jackson's Island. The rest of the novel is largely motivated by two conflicts: the external con ict to achieve Jim's freedom, and the internal con ict within Huck between his own sense of right and wrong and society's. Huck has a series of "adventures," making many observations on human nature and the South as he does. He progressively rejects the values of the dominant society and matures morally as he does. Jim { A slave who escaped from Miss Watson after she considered selling him down river. He encounters Huck on Jackson's Island, and the two become friends and spend most of the rest of the novel together. Jim deeply grieves his separation from his wife and two children and dreams of getting them back. He is an intensely human character, perhaps the novel's most complex. Through his example, Huck learns to appreciate the humanity of black people, overcoming his society's bigotry and making a break with its moral code. Twain also uses him to demonstrate racial equality. But Jim himself remains somewhat enigmatic; he seems both comrade and father figure to Huck, though Huck, the youthful narrator, may not be able to thoroughly evaluate his friend, and so the reader has to suppose some of his qualities.
    The Duke and Dauphin { These two criminals appear for much of the novel. Their real names are never given, but the younger man, about thirty years old, claims to be the Duke of Bridgewater, and is called both "the Duke" and "Bridgewater" in the novel, though for the sake of clarity, he is only called "the Duke" here. The much older man claims to be the son of Louis XVI, the executed French king. "Dauphin" was the title given to heirs to the French throne. He is mostly called "the king" in the novel (since his father is dead, he would be the rightful king), though he is called "the Dauphin" in this study guide since the name is more distinctive. The two show themselves to be truly bad when they separate a slave family at the Wilks household, and later sell Jim.
    Tom Sawyer { Huck's friend, and the protagonist of Tom Sawyer, the novel for which Huckleberry Finn is ostensibly the sequel. He is in many ways Huck's foil, given to exotic plans and romantic adventure literature, while Huck is more down-to-earth. He also turns out to be profoundly selfish.
    On the whole, Tom is identified with the "civilzation" from which Huck is alienated. ............