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

Death and Humor in Huckleberry Finn Huckleberry Finn potful be adopt as a boys adventure novel, as a work of serious 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, rife with adventure - and hopeless(prenominal)ly 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 body count, yet each various(prenominal) demise becomes an opportunity for high comedy. We laugh, and the novel will laugh with us. merely 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 latish nineteenth century was not exactly cheerful. Take this poem, published less than a year before Huckleberry Finn, as just one congresswoman When I am gone - Say Will the glad entwine wander, wander on Stooping with tenderest touches, yet With frolic care beset, Lifting the ache gray rushes, where the Stream And I so idly dream? I feel its soft caress The toying of its wild-wood tenderness On os frontale and lips and eyes and hair, As if through love aware That days must(prenominal) come when no fond wind shall creep Down where my hearts unawakened Hast thou a sympathy, A soul, O wandering Wind, that thou dost suspiration? Or ist the heart within 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 dent Twain and Huck Finn. (California University of California Press, 1960). 5 Mark Twain. chase the Equator. England Dover Publications, 1988. 6 Julia A. Moore. Mortal Refrains The Complete Collected numbers, Prose, and Songs of Julia A. Moore, The Sweet Singer of Michigan. doubting Thomas J. Riedlinger, Lansing Michigan State University Press, 1998 (5). 7 Mark Twain. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, London W.W. Norton 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).