Reply to Thread

Message:: [QUOTE="TheNickelGuy, post: 8179802, member: 20201"]1963 Mark Twain NYU HOF bronze medal [ATTACH=full]1429916[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]1429917[/ATTACH] Mark Twain and Huckleberry Finn are shown on this 1963 issue fromThe New York University ~ Hall of Fame ~ Medallic Art Co. medals. [ATTACH=full]1429920[/ATTACH] Huckleberry "Huck" Finn is the son of the town's vagrant drunkard, "Pap" Finn. Sleeping on doorsteps when the weather is fair, in empty hogsheads during storms, and living off of what he receives from others. Huck lives the life of a destitute vagabond. Mark Twain metaphorically names him "the juvenile pariah of the village" and describes Huck as "idle, and lawless, and vulgar, and bad", qualities for which he was admired by all the children in the village, although their mothers "cordially hated and dreaded" him. Huck is an archetypal innocent, able to discover the "right" thing to do despite the prevailing theology and prejudiced mentality of the South of that era. The best example of this is his decision to help Jim escape slavery, even though he believes he will go to hell for it. His appearance is described in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He wears the clothes of full-grown men which he probably received as charity, and as Twain describes him, "he was fluttering with rags." He has a torn broken hat and his trousers are supported with only one suspender. [ATTACH=full]1429921[/ATTACH] The character of Huck Finn is based on Tom Blankenship, the real-life son of a sawmill laborer and sometime drunkard named Woodson Blankenship, who lived in a "ramshackle" house near the Mississippi River behind the house where the author grew up in Hannibal, Missouri.Twain mentions his childhood friend Tom Blankenship as the inspiration for creating Huckleberry Finn in his autobiography: "In Huckleberry Finn I have drawn Tom Blankenship exactly as he was. He was ignorant, unwashed, insufficiently fed; but he had as good a heart as ever any boy had. His liberties were totally unrestricted. He was the only really independent person—boy or man—in the community, and by consequence he was tranquilly and continuously happy and envied by the rest of us. And as his society was forbidden us by our parents the prohibition trebled and quadrupled its value, and therefore we sought and got more of his society than any other boy's." [/QUOTE]

Log in or Sign up

Reply to Thread

Useful Searches