The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

By: Mark Twain

Libby audiobook 9 hours

Read by: Tom Parker

Published: 1884 (this version 2004)

Genre: adventure

 

I was listening to this because it was available and it's been a while since I had read it. I am struggling to finish it because I dislike it more than I remembered. I can't find a blog entry for it, so when did I last read it? I'm also not able to locate an entry on my reading log, so . . . it's been a few decades.

Right at the start, my notes include "boy gang / oath / dark and awful." Even though they don't actually rob and kill, the fact that their game includes such intense violence is horrific, even by the standards of a century ago.

The widow and Mrs. Watson, the views on Providence, the religious attitudes . . . sigh.

Huck's dad is anti-learning. He's an illiterate alcoholic and wants no better for his son. 

The Mississippi River geography, calling "Cairo" (Illinois) "Cay-roh," trying to picture the path Huck and Jim took, . . . that was fun.

The use of the "N" word was so excessive and insulting. I knew that was a part of the story and the source of a lot of controversy about this book, but I had forgotten how overwhelming it was to listen to. Huck is sometimes a true friend to Jim and other times just as racist and awful as possible. I didn't like how gullible and superstitious Jim was, especially when he woke up after he and Huck had been separated and Huck denied he'd ever been gone or that there had been any fog. I didn't like that Huck even contemplated turning Jim in as a runaway slave - as though that "crime" is worse than the crime of having slaves! And if this was published in 1884 . . . were "runaway slaves" still a thing?!

By the time I got to the part with the Duke and the King, I decided I really didn't want to finish the second half of the book. I know that part of Twain's work as an author was to ridicule what was wrong with society (like the pointlessness of feuds and people killing one another until no one is left or the shucksters who pretend to be what they're not to fleece unwitting people), but I simply am not enjoying this book. And I know I've read it before.