Death and Humor in Mark Twains The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Essa

Death and Humor in huckabackleberry Finn Huckleberry Finn can be read as a boys adventure novel, as a work of unspoiled literature, as a humorous historical account, as biting social satire . . . Im sure I could go on. This is a book that has delighted generations of readers - its rollingly funny, overriding with adventure - and hopelessly morbid. Thats right. I read Huckleberry Finn and it made me think of death. The novel has a strange way of dealing with death. Theres a pretty high soundbox count, yet each individual demise becomes an opportunity for high comedy. We laugh, and the novel will laugh with us. But it wont cry. Perhaps this was a nod to time and place. As far as the poetry of the time suggests, life in America in the late nineteenth century was not exactly cheerful. Take this poem, promulgated less than a year before Huckleberry Finn, as just one example When I am gone - Say Will the glad fart wander, wander on Stooping with tenderest touches, yet With frol ic care beset, Lifting the long gray rushes, where the Stream And I so idly dream? I tincture its soft caress The toying of its wild-wood tenderness On brow and lips and eyes and hair, As if through love aware That days must come when no fond wind shall creep Down where my hearts asleep Hast thou a sympathy, A soul, O wandering Wind, that thou dost sigh? Or ist the heart indoors us still That aches for good or ill, And deems that Nature whispers, when alone Our inner Self makes moan? Longing, by Wi... ...ems, amongst others, by Walter Blairs Mark Twain and Huck Finn. (California University of California Press, 1960). 5 Mark Twain. Following the Equator. England Dover Publications, 1988. 6 Julia A. Moore. Mortal Refrains The Complete Collected Poetry, Prose, and Songs of Julia A. Moore, The Sweet Singer of Michigan. Thomas J. Riedlinger, Lansing Michigan State University Press, 1998 (5). 7 Mark Twain. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, capital of the United Kingdom W.W. Nor ton and Company, 1999 (124). 8 Mark Twain. Post-Mortem Poetry, The Complete Humorous Sketches and Tales of Mark Twain, ed. Charles Neider. New York Doubleday, 1961 (156). 9 Mark Twain. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, London W.W. Norton and Company, 1999 (295). 10 Mark Twain. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, London W.W. Norton and Company, 1999 (194).