Flaws in Mark Twain's novel "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"

Essay by Anonymous UserA+, November 1996

download word file, 4 pages 3.8

Mark Twain's novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is by any means a classic. However, there are several flaws. First of all the coincidence that everything happens with in my mind detracts some from the story. The other major problem is that the book seems to drag on and on the closer you get to the end, as if Twain had a page quota to fill and was not worried about the story. The other problem brought up on our hand-out was Huck's lack of seriousness in what was a very serious situation for Jim.

As for the coincidence part, it appears most obviously as you read towards the end. For example Huck ends up at Aunt Polly's, and I was thinking, yeah...right those chances are about one in a million. And then after Huck tells Aunt Polly that he is Tom, Tom shows up...uh-huh, I bet. It is things such as those I just mentioned that make it very difficult for me to read a book without becoming frustrated.

It is probably because I am used to real life and like it or not real life is just not that perfect.

My other gripe was that Twain seems to ramble on and on and on an..... To me it seems as if the story that he was writing became faint shortly after the time when Huck says, "It's me. George Jackson, sir"(pg. 95). I do have to give him that the feud was interesting filler, but you can only take so much filler. Then when John Wayne (The Duke) and Elvis (The King) come along there seem to be four or five stops along the river that except for one little detail, are the same. Please excuse the jump back, but how coincidental is it that you have...