Huck Finn

Is the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn a book for children or a book for adults? It's the story of a child, but it uses questionable language and it exposes children to inappropriate things, and so it gets put in this middle place of questioning.

I find this middle place fascinating-- I applaud Samuel Clemens for not saying, oh, kids might read this book I had better... Although in the mid-nineteenth century few novelists concerned themselves with a child reader.

Susan Honeyman, in her text Elusive Childhood, talks about authors who give children adult characteristics and adults child-like characteristics, and she comments on how adult it is of Huck to sympathize with Jim when he misses his family. Huck thinks "I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks do for their'n." This statement is supposed to be this great commentary on race. Mature Huck, through Jim, learns to see people as equals. I think something is missing here though-- Jim is a good guy. Jim loves his wife and children. This is not something that Huck has seen before. There are no references to him having a mother. His father is MIA most of the time, and when he is around, he's quite abusive. I would think that Huck would see Jim's love for his family as an anomoly instead of as an equalizer.

Books for children are not just this place to say-- this is a story about kids-- or story telling how kids should behave. Books for children provide places for analysis. Why do critics always jump to race issues when discussing Huck? Huck introduces us to a number of character types, and these introductions provide us a different glimpse of culture than we might have caught before.