Blog #10: Essay #5

The truth can never be covered by the misunderstandings and the predicaments. After the rains of distress, the shining of the sun will still come out and warm our hearts. In the essay of Kaplan, he used the words to tell us that the novel Advance of Huckleberry Finn, which has been written by Mark Twain, is a great book that just like the truth in the world and the sunshine after rains. Although at first, this book has met lots of denial and questioned, its valuable meaning for the literature and the society has been sure today.
In the essay, Kaplan has written that: “For Mencken, Mark Twain was ‘the true father of our national literature, the first genuinely American artist of the blood royal” (P. 375). He also wrote that: “By elevating Huck’s vernacular speech to the level of literature, Mark Twain advanced a cultural as well as literary revolution” (P. 375). At the beginning time of this book has been published, it is an arguable and questionable novel. As it has a black slave character Jim, the words that Mark Twain used for Jim’s words were “rough”, “coarse”, and “inelegant”; also the repeating “N” words. That’s a special point of this novel. Although those words are “rough”, “coarse”, and “inelegant”, without those words, the value of this book I think would be cat to a half. I think those words are a main thing for this book. If Mark Twain didn’t use those words, the character Jim can’t be showed out so perfectly. Jim is a slave; he didn’t know how to use the “nice” English words as he has got poor or no education. So I think those words showed out the nature of Jim. On the other hand, I don’t think the “N” word, which has been repeating so many times in this book, is not being mean to the black people in the society. It is a negative word, and Mark Twain just used this negative word to show something positive from Jim, and also make the positive characters became more positive. For the literary, this book used satire to show out the ideas of Mark Twain in a new and different way at that time. And for the society, the characters Jim and Huck just used their story to tell people what the “human beings” should be. Just like Kaplan said. This book is a “revolution” of not only the literary, but also the society at that time.