The Literature Book

188

HUMAN BEINGS CAN

BE AWFUL CRUEL

TO ONE ANOTHER

THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN (1884),

MARK TWAIN

W

ith little history to speak

of and few literary

traditions to anchor

them, American writers in the 19th

century were engaged in holding

up a mirror to the varied, complex

populations of their rapidly evolving

nation. One author blazed a trail,

locating his story specifically in the

Mississippi Valley in the Midwest

with a poor white boy narrator like

no other. Mark Twain’s Huck Finn

relates his adventures in regional

dialect, salted with philosophical

musings and homespun wisdom,

and along the way becomes one of

the first authentic voices in

American literature.

What is it about The Adventures

of Huckleberry Finn that led Ernest

Hemingway to declare it to be the

starting point for all American

The use of regional dialect

in notable examples of 19th- and

early 20th-century American literature

gave a voice—and thereby a form of

representation—to races, regions, cultures, and

classes that had previously been denied one.

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

American voices

BEFORE

1823 The Pioneers, the first of

James Fenimore Cooper’s saga

the “Leatherstocking Tales,”

offers conflicting views of life

on the frontier in one of the

first original American novels.

1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe

creates multiple vernacular

voices in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a

sentimental story that inflames

the antislavery debate.

AFTER

1896 In The Country of the

Pointed Firs, Sarah Orne

Jewett paints a vivid picture

of life in an isolated fishing

village on the coast of Maine.

1939 John Steinbeck’s Pulitzer

Prize-winning novel The

Grapes of Wrath mixes local

color with social injustice

in an epic story of a family’s

journey west in the midst of

the Great Depression.

The Grapes of Wrath

(Steinbeck, 1939, Oklahoma)

“There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue.

There’s just stuff people do.”

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

(Stowe, 1852, Kentucky)

“It don’t look well, now, for a feller

to be praisin’ himself.”

Huckleberry Finn (Twain,

1884, Mississippi Valley)

“Say, who is you? Whar is you?

Dog my cats ef I didn’

hear sumf’n.”

The Country of the Pointed Firs (Jewett, 1896, Maine)

“’Tain’t worthwhile to wear a day all out before it comes.”

The Sound and the Fury

(Faulkner, 1929, Mississippi)

“Hush, now. We be gone in

a minute. Hush, now.”

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