The Huck Finn Experience

1. Have you read the novel –Huck Finn- before? If so where and why?

I first read Huck Finn in my 10th grade English class as an assigned reading. It was part of the school curriculum and had been for years, I'm sure.

3. What was your response to reading Huck Finn, and what do you remember from your
reading? Also, did you actually read the whole novel, or just parts of it? Did you read
Cliff Notes or Monarch Notes instead?

Surprisingly, to me at least, I really enjoyed the novel. I read the whole thing - the whole thing - unlike many of my classmates. Sparknotes was helpful in reviewing for the final test because I was the student that read ahead and by the time the unit was ending it had been several weeks since I last turned a page in the book. I remembered a surprising number of events, though the most clear in my mind was the scene where Huck is subject to a particularly clever scheme to reveal whether he's truly the girl he's pretending to be. Other moments were less clear, but I still remembered Huck pretending he had a smallpox ridden family in order to protect Jim and that the Duke and King used the phrase "Women and Children Not Admitted" to draw a big crowd.

4. If you were assigned to read Huck Finn in a previous class, either here or in high
school, how did your class as a whole react to the novel? Why do you think your
instructor assigned the novel? How did he or she try to “teach” the novel?

Like with most books my English class read, the class wasn't the most fond of the book. Most of them didn't read it and they didn't really connect with it. To be honest, I'm not sure even my teacher liked the novel. It was part of our class because it was part of the curriculum and no other reason that I could tell. I can't remember actually learning anything about book, sadly.

5. If you were required to read Huck Finn in a previous class, what sort of assignments
were you required to complete, and what exactly did you do during the classes when
Huck Finn was being discussed.

Though I'm sure there was more than one assignment attached to the the Huck Finn unit, I only remember the one major project I had to do. We had to take any passage from the novel and represent it in any number of multimedia forms. It could be a video reenactment, a picture book, a diagram or a model, or anything else we could come up with. I chose to do what amounted to basically an audio reenactment and I wrote a piano background for the scene where Huck pretends his family has smallpox. We spent a few days presenting our projects to the class, and mine was fortunately well received. Besides that, I really can't remember what we did when discussing Huck Finn.

6. Huck Finn is still one of the most controversial and most banned books in America.
Why is it so controversial?


I think a majority of the controversy is over the use of the n-word. Though it was vernacular in Twain's time (and Huck Finn is clearly written using vernacular), it is no longer a socially acceptable word. It's difficult for teachers to teach tactfully and many parents balk at having their children forced to read a book containing what most perceive to be a vulgar term. I suspect the depiction of Jim also factors into the controversy. It's true that a major purpose of the novel is to show the humanity of African-Americans, but alongside his humanity Jim is still a stereotyped character. He's superstitious and a simpleton and he talks like the uneducated man he is. To some, this is just as distasteful as the n-word.

7. Is Huck Finn still relevant to you as college student today? Should it continue to be
taught in college classrooms?

I wasn't able to connect as closely to Huck Finn as a character as I could in high school but I was happy to find that I was able to get more out of the novel. The subtleties of what Twain was doing where clearer to me as a college student and I appreciated being able to see better the systematic dismantling of the assumption slaves have no humanity. Though I originally scoffed at having to revisit a book read by freshman and sophomores in high school, I think it's a valuable addition to my curriculum and should continue to have a presence in college classrooms.

8. The general consensus among critics is that Huck Finn is a brilliant and powerful
novel, but also a flawed and problematic novel. What do you think might be flawed and/
or problematic about the novel?


I find it curious that we're attempting to describe a work of literature as "flawed and problematic" as though the author didn't uphold to the standards of how to write a perfect novel. Couldn't we just as easily describe the parts of the novel that are flawed or problematic as an artistic choice Twain made? That aside, I think the flaws and problems lie in the scattered feel of the novel. It's hardly a cohesive work, dramatically shifting between every third of the novel. Even in the middle of each of these sections, it has a piecemeal feel as though Twain was only loosely tying unrelated stories together in a shoddy excuse for a novel. Still, the work is enjoyable to read and makes a powerful point about slavery and racism, and I shy away from calling Huck Finn flawed.