Tom Blankenship In John Twain's Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn
1999 Words8 Pages
Walter Scott, and others. Those same adventures could be reenacted with his friends as well, and Clemens and his friends did play at being pirates, Robin Hood, and other imaginary adventurers. Among those companions was Tom Blankenship, an affable but poor boy whom twain later identified as the representation for the character Huckleberry Finn. There were local diversions as well fishing, picnicking, and swimming. A boy might swim or canoe to and explore Glasscock Island, in the middle of the Mississippi River, or he might visit the labyrinthine McDowell’s Cave, about two miles south of town. The first site evidently became Jackson’s Island in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; the second became McDougal’s Cave in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.…show more content… Some have called it the first Great American Novel, and the book has become required reading in many schools throughout the United States. Huckleberry Finn was an offshoot from Tom Sawyer and had a more serious tone than its predecessor. The main premise behind Huckleberry Finn is the young boy's belief in the right thing to do though most believed that it was wrong. Four hundred manuscript pages of Huckleberry Finn were written in mid-1876, right after the publication of Tom Sawyer. Some accounts have twain taking seven years off after his first burst of creativity, eventually finishing the book in 1883. Other accounts have twain working on Huckleberry Finn in tandem with The Prince and the Pauper and other works in 1880 and other years. The last fifth of Huckleberry Finn is subject to much controversy. Some say that twain experienced, as critic Leo Marx puts it, a failure of nerve. Ernest Hemingway once said of Huckleberry Finn: If you read it, you must stop where the Nigger Jim is stolen from the boys. That is the real end. The rest is just cheating. Hemingway also wrote in the same essay: All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark twain called Huckleberry Finn. Near the completion of Huckleberry Finn, Twain wrote Life on the Mississippi, which is said to have heavily influenced the former book. The work recounts Twain's memories and new experiences after a twenty two years absence from the Mississippi. In it, he also states that Mark Twain was the call made when the boat was in safe water two