Huckleberry Finn Language Analysis

Great Essays
No matter what topic they cover, classic novels allow readers to dive into the unfamiliar world of the past. These stories allow readers to discover what life was like in the time period of each specific book, and learn about the people that lived in these times. One of these great classic novels is Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Written in 1885, Twain’s novel is narrated by a boy named Huck, who goes off on an adventure to escape from his abusive father and help a runaway slave to freedom. One of the most out of the ordinary features of this book is the language it is written in, which is meant to mimic the way people spoke in that time period. However, this language is the source of an argument that has been going on for …show more content…
Twain’s writing is very honest in his novel. He does not attempt to beat around the bush, or sugarcoat the truth, instead he states things as they are. This is especially true when he discusses slavery. He wants the reader to know how slavery was truly a cruel act against humanity. He also wants to make his novel feel very real. Twain does this by using the language of the times. He states in his explanatory note that “In this book, a number of dialects are used…”(Twain 1). He then goes on to mention all the the dialects used throughout the story. He wants the reader to understand exactly how specific groups of people talked, and how they were all different from one another. The language each group or individual in the story uses towards slaves can be used to determine how they feel about them. Also, it come down to the fact that nobody today has the right to change the way Mark Twain wanted his story to sound. Twain once said “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug”(HOW????). Twain used the words he used for a reason, and those words should be kept the way twain intended them to be. Anything else strips the story of the lessons it is trying to deliver, and does nothing less than completely change the tone of the whole

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