Huckleberry Finn -OS

by Mark Twain

Unlike the tall-tale, idyllic world of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is firmly grounded in early reality. From the abusive drunkard who serves as Huckleberry's father, to Huck's first tentative grappling with issues of personal liberty and the unknown, Huckleberry Finn endeavors to delve quite a bit deeper into the complexities-both joyful and tragic of life.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0883010984
• ISBN13: 9780883010983
• Release Date: January 1973
• Publisher: Pendulum Press
• Length: 64 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Age Range: 10 to 15 years
• Grade Range: Grades 5 to 10

Customer Reviews

Pleasantly surprised!

I teach high school English, and some students just can't catch Twain's humor without hearing his "voice." I found these recordings to be an effective way to jump-start my students' understanding of Twain's style of writing...many would have jumped ship straight to the cliff (notes, that is.) I planned 2-3 class periods to listen to some of my favorite passages, and it was a great success. Interest was up, and essays improved. Enjoy!

Excellent Audio CD of Classic

Finally, a reading of a classic that is worth the money. This story's narration covers a total of 9 Cds, and each disc has about 97 tracks (each track is only about 30 to 45 seconds). The good aspect of this is that it is quite easy to find your spot and, then pick up where you left off, if you happen to stop reading in the middle of a chapter. The negative aspect of short tracks is that it is difficult to skip around to particular chapters without "guessing" where a chapter might end (because there is no insert to tell which chapters are contained in each disc). Overall, Dick Hill does a superb job of reading in this unabridged version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Hill's voice personifies Huck's narrative, and he keeps the Southern flavor of Twain's novel intact. What makes this reading particularly great is that Hill has a great ability to not only take on Huck, but other characters as well. Hill changes his voice for other characters such as Tom Sawyer, Jim, the Duke and the king, Pap and others. For this reason, this CD is a great tool for the reluctant readers in classes, and serves as a great supplement for the study of this novel. I have found that buying audios to classic to be a gamble because you never really know what you are getting, but this is one of the best I've gotten.

A book not meant for everyone, but everyone should READ it.

When I first read this book, I was so taken with it, that I read from chapter 18 through the end of the book in one night. I was up until 3:30 in the morning, reading ahead of my 11th grade assignment, and loving every minute along the way. later in college, when I studied the book more, closer, and with a more educated eye (whatever that means) my love for the book increased. Now, as a teacher myself, I look forward to having my students read this book and discussing it in class.But now as for the title of my review:I can't help feeling bad for people who think that this is not a good novel because "we don't talk like that anymore." Are we to abandon books that are no longer contemporary to ourselves? I also take issue with people who claim that this book is a racist tirade based upon the use of the word "nigger," or because the escape route Jim took was down the Mississippi instead of up river. While currently offensive, Mark Twain used the term as a literary fact that most, if not all young boys of the south spoke in such a manner. Once more, Jim explained why he was going South before he headed north. the simple fact is that if you are going to criticize a book, then you should read it. mark Twain said as much in his essay, "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses."From reading a number of the reviews of this book, I have come to the opinion that while many read the book, more than a few are refusing to give Twain credit for subtext and the use of allegory. One reviewer down the line says that the book is racist because Twain makes a young boy to be twice as smart as Jim. Upon closer reading, Twain is showing what Huck feels to be true. Huck only thinks that he is smarter. The reader should pick up on the fact that Twain writes Jim as an intuitive father figure for Huck, one who teaches a true morality as opposed to the morality of the South.Simply put, you get what you put in to the reading of this book. If you think is is going to be a boring read because you "have to" read it for a summer reading list or school assignment, then that's what it will be. If you think it will be a difficult read because you don't want to try and read in dialects other than your own, it will be a hard read. If you are looking to justify the book as racist because of a single word that presentism doesn't excuse, then have at it. This book can be all of those things. However, this book also has the potential to enlighten the reader, give something wonderful to the reader, and teach about the human condition.

A controversial masterpiece

Okay, we all know the plot, so there's no sense in rehashing it; but this book has generated a great deal of heat and very little light lately, it's been banned in some school districts and attacked as racist garbage, so this review will address the question: Is "Huckleberry Finn", in fact, a racist book?The charge of racism stems from the liberal use of the N word in describing Jim. Some black parents and students have charged that the book is humiliating and demeaning to African-Americans and therefore is unfit to be taught in school. If there has been a racist backlash in the classroom, I think it is the fault of the readers rather than the book. "Huckleberry Finn" is set in Missouri in the 1830's and it is true to its time. The narrator is a 13 year old, semi-literate boy who refers to blacks by the N-word because he has never heard them called anything else. He's been brought up to see blacks as slaves, as property, as something less than human. He gets to know Jim on their flight to freedom (Jim escaping slavery and Huck escaping his drunken, abusive father), and is transformed. Huck realizes that Jim is just as human as he is, a loving father who misses his children, a warm, sensitive, generous, compassionate individual. Huck's epiphany arrives when he has to make a decision whether or not to rescue Jim when he is captured and held for return to slavery. In the culture he was born into, stealing a slave is the lowest of crimes and the perpetrator is condemned to eternal damnation. By his decision to risk hell to save Jim, he saves his own soul. Huck has risen above his upbringing to see Jim as a friend, a man, and a fellow human being.Another charge of racism is based on Twain's supposed stereotyping of Jim. As portrayed by Twain, Jim is hardly the ignorant, shuffling Uncle Tom that was so prevalent in "Gone With the Wind" (a book that abundantly deserves the charge of racism). Jim may be uneducated, but he is nobody's fool; and his dignity and nobility in the face of adversity is evident throughout the book.So -- is "Huckleberry Finn" a racist book? No. It's of its time and for its time and ours as well, portraying a black man with sensitivity, dignity, and sympathy. If shallow, ignorant readers see Jim as a caricature and an object of derision, that's their problem. Hopefully they may mature enough in their lifetime to appreciate this book as one of the greatest classics of American literature.And for those who might be wondering -- this reviewer is black.

At least the children can write, a little...

It amuses me no end to see so many irate reviews, obviously written by spoiled schoolkids resenting their stoopid 'ol teacher making them read this stoopid 'ol book by some stoopid 'ol dead guy.There's rich material there for a cynic like Twain, or even more for one the likes of Ambrose Bierce or H. L. Mencken. Tiny, immature, ill formed minds incapable of grasping a truth deeper than Nintendo or Playstation lash out in outrage at a genius who holds up a mirror to expose their ignorance. The fact is, this is THE American experience of the 19th century, a microcosm of the defining characteristic of our country's beginning and of our national shame and curse. How did a nation, conceived in liberty, holding self evident so many truths about Man's rights, institutionalize the degredation of Black Americans, the utter denial of their very humanity? How could the noble idealistic American eagle ever swallow such a poisonous pill?Huck's bitter determination to "go to hell" in order to save his friend Jim is to me the most moving and courageous moment in all literature. Huck "knows" that Jim is not really human, that he is mere property, that he has no rights and deserves no consideration, and that Huck's social duty is to return the slave owner's lost property. Yet he knows even more deeply that Jim is his friend, mentor, companion, and in not saving him he will lose his own soul, regardless of what his society holds to be true. Thus Huck makes himself an outcast and outlaw in civilized society, and thus he prefigures the cataclysm of the Civil War, in which this vile contradiction nearly destroyed our nation. All the blood spilled during that war, however, has not expunged our Original Sin, and we have been paying for it ever since, and perhaps always shall.So try to expand your mind, at least accept the concept that the past is not a Real World episode in period costume, that people of another time did think and talk and act differently, that what "everybody knows" today will surely be as ludicrous a century hence as slavery may seem to us now. Reflect, also, on the courage of those who recognized evil ahead of their time and stood up to it, even though in this case such a hero is a fictionalized semi-literate boy.