American Literature

Quote: حياته الباكرة طابع بريد أمريكي من سنة 1940 يحمل صورة مارك توين ولد صمويل لانغهورن كليمنس في قرية تسمى "فلوريدا" بولاية ميسوري في 30 نوفمبر 1835 لأب تاجر من ولاية تينيسي يسمى جون مارشال كليمنس (1798 ـ 1847) وأم تسمى جين لامبتون كليمنس (1803 ـ 1890)[7]، وكان السادس في الترتيب بين سبعة إخوة لم يتجاوز منهم مرحلة الطفولة ـ بخلاف صمويل ـ إلا ثلاثة، هم أوريون (1825 ـ 1897) وهنري (1838 ـ 1858) (لقي حتفه في انفجار قارب نهري) وباميلا (1827 ـ 1904). بينما ماتت شقيقته مارغريت (1830 ـ 1839) عندما كان في الثالثة من عمره، ومات شقيقه بنجامين (1832 ـ 1842) بعدها بثلاث سنوات، كما مات شقيق ثالث هو "بليزانت" وعمره ستة أشهر[8]. وعندما بلغ توين الرابعة من عمره، انتقلت أسرته إلى هانيبال[9]، وهي مدينة وميناء بولاية ميسوري تقع على نهر مسيسيبي، وقد استلهم مارك توين مدينة سانت بطرسبورغ الخيالية التي ظهرت في روايتيه مغامرات توم سوير ومغامرات ه######يري فين من هذه المدينة[10]. وقد كانت ميسوري آنذاك من الولايات التي ما زالت تتبع نظام العبودية، مما ظهر فيما بعد في كتابات مارك توين. وفي مارس 1847 توفي ولد توين بالالتهاب الرئوي[11]، وفي العام التالي التحق توين بالعمل كصبي بمطبعة، ثم بدأ في سنة 1851 في العمل في صف الحروف (بالإنجليزية: typesetting) وبدأ يكتب المقالات و"الاستكتشات" الساخرة لجريدة هانيبال، التي كان يملكها شقيقه أوريون. وفي الثامنة عشرة من عمره، غادر هانيبال وعمل في الطباعة في مدينة نيويورك وفي فيلادلفيا وسانت لويس وسينسيناتي، وانضم إلى الاتحاد وبدأ في تعليم نفسه بنفسه في المكتبات العامة في الفترة المسائية، مكتشفاً منهلاً للمعرفة أوسع من ذلك الذي كان سيجده إذا كان قد التحق بمدرسة تقليدية. وفي الثانية والعشرين من عمره عاد توين إلى ولاية ميسوري[12]. وفي إحدى رحلات توين في المسيسيبي إلى نيو أورليانز أوحى له هوراس بيكسبي، قائد السفينة البخارية بالعمل كقائد سفينة بخارية، وهو هو عمل كان يدر على صاحبه دخلاً مجزياً وصل إلى 250 دولاراً شهرياً[13] (ما يعادل تقريباً 72400 دولار اليوم)، ونظراً لأن هذه المهنة كانت تتطلب معرفة وافية بكل تفاصيل النهر التي تتغير باستمرار، فقد استغرق توين عامين في دراسة ألفي ميل (3200 كيلومترا) من نهر المسيسيبي بتعمق قبل أن يحصل على ترخيص بالعمل كقائد سفينة بخارية سنة 1859. وأثناء تدريبه، استطاع توين إقناع شقيقه الأصغر هنري بالعمل معه، وقد لقي هنري مصرعه في 21 يونيو 1858 إثر انفجار السفينة البخارية "بنسلفانيا" التي كان يعمل عليها، ويقول توين في سيرته الذاتية إنه رأى في أثناء نومه تفاصيل مصرع أخيه قبل شهر من وقوعه[14]، وهو ما دفعه إلى دراسة الباراسيكولوجيا[15]، وقد كان من أوائل أعضاء جمعية الدراسات الروحانية. وقد حمل توين إحساسه بالذنب والمسئولية عن مصرع أخيه طوال حياته. وظل يعمل في النهر كملاح نهري حتى اندلعت الحرب الأهلية الأمريكية سنة 1861 وتوقفت الملاحة في نهر المسيسيبي.

Quote: زواجه وأبناؤه يقول توين إنه عندما أراه تشارلز لانغدون صورة شقيقته أوليفيا أحبها من أول نظرة. وقد التقى توين وأوليفيا سنة 1868 وأعلنا خطبتهما في العام التالي، ثم تزوجا في فبراير 1870 في إلميرا بولاية نيويورك[20]. كانت أوليفيا تنتمي إلى عائلة "ثرية ولكنها متحررة"، وقد أتاحت له التعرف إلى بعض أفراد النخبة المفكرة، ومنهم معارضو العبودية و"الاشتراكيون واللادينيون وناشطات حقوق المرأة وناشطو المساواة الاجتماعية"، وكان من بين هؤلاء هارييت بيتشر ستاو وفريدريك دوغلاس والكاتب ومنظر الاشتراكية اليوتوبية وليام دين هاولز[21]، الذي ارتبط توين معه بصداقة طويلة الأمد. عاش الزوجان في بفالو بولاية نيويورك من عام 1869 إلى عام 1871، وكان توين يمتلك حصة من أسهم جريدة "بافالو إكسبريس" التي كان يعمل فيها محرراً وكاتباً. وقد توفي ابنهما لانغدون بالدفتيريا وعمره 19 شهراً. وفي سنة 1871[22] انتقل توين وأسرته إلى هارتفورد بولاية كونيكتيكت حيث شرع في إنشاء منزل (أنقذه معجبوه سنة 1927 ـ بعد وفاته ـ من الإزالة ليتحول إلى متحف خاص به قائم حتى اليوم)، وفي هارتفورد وضعت أوليفيا ثلاث بنات: سوزي (1872 ـ 1896) وكلارا (1874 ـ 1962)[23] وجين (1880 ـ 1909). وقد دام زواج توين وأوليفيا 34 عاماً، انتهت بوفاة أوليفيا سنة 1904.

Quote: كان توين مغرماً بالعلم والبحث العلمي، وقد تصادق مع نيكولا تسلا وكان يقضي الكثير من الوقت في معمل تسلا. وقد حصل توين نفسه على ثلاث براءات اختراع[24]. ويروي كتابه "يانكي من كونيكتيكت في بلاط الملك آرثر" قصة أمريكي سافر عبر الزمن ونقل معه التكنولوجيا الحديثة إلى إنجلترا في عهد الملك آرثر، وقد صار هذا النوع من قصص الخيال العلمي فيما بعد جنساً مستقلاً في أدب الخيال العلمي سمي بالتاريخ البديل. وفي سنة 1909 قام توماس إديسون بزيارة توين في منزله في ريدنغ بولاية كونيكتيكت وقام بتصويره سينمائياً، وقد استخدمت بعض لقطات ذلك الفيلم في الفيلم القصير "الأمير والفقير" الذي أنتج عام 1909.

Quote: في سنة 1896 أصيب توين باكتئاب شديد إثر وفاة ابنته سوزي بالالتهاب السحائي، وقد عمق أحزانه وفاة زوجته أوليفيا سنة 1904 ووفاة جين في 24 ديسمبر 1909[25]، وكذلك الوفاة المفاجئة لصديقه هنري روجرز في 20 مايو1909. توين مرتدياً الزي الجامعي بعد أن منحته جامعة أكسفورد درجة الدكتوراه الفخرية سنة 1907 وفي سنة 1906 بدأ توين ينشر سيرته الذاتية في جريدة "نورث أمريكان ريفيو"، وفي سنة 1907 منحته جامعة أكسفورد درجة الدكتوراه الفخرية في الآداب. شاهد قبر مارك توين وقد ذُكر أن توين قال ذات يوم: "لقد جئت إلى هذا العالم مع مذنب هالي سنة 1835، وها هو قادم ثانيةً العام القادم، وأنا أتوقع أن أذهب معه.."[26]. ولقد صدقت نبوءته؛ إذ توفي توين بأزمة قلبية في ريدنغ بولاية كونيكتيكت في الثاني من أبريل 1910، بعد يوم واحد فقط من اقتراب المذنب من الأرض، فرثاه الرئيس الأمريكي ويليام هوارد تافت[27][28]، وشيعت جنازته من إحدى الكنائس التابعة للطائفة المشيخية في نيويورك[29]، ثم دفن في مدافن أسرة زوجته في مقبرة وودلون بمدينة إلميرا في نيويورك.

Quote: Tom Sawyer is a 1973 American musical film adaptation of the Mark Twain boyhood adventure story, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, starring Johnny Whitaker as Tom, Jodie Foster as Becky Thatcher, and Jeff East as Huckleberry Finn. Kunu Hank portrayed Injun Joe. The movie was produced by Reader's Digest. The film's screenplay and songs were written by Robert B. Sherman and Richard M. Sherman

Quote: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by Mark Twain, first published in England in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885. Commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written in the vernacular, characterized by local color regionalism. It is told in the first person by Huckleberry "Huck" Finn, a friend of Tom Sawyer and narrator of two other Twain novels (Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective). It is a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. Satirizing a Southern antebellum society that had ceased to exist about twenty years before the work was published, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an often scathing look at entrenched attitudes, particularly racism. Perennially popular with readers, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has also been the continued object of study by serious literary critics since its publication. It was criticized upon release because of its coarse language and became even more controversial in the 20th century because of its perceived use of racial stereotypes and because of its frequent use of the racial slur "nigger", despite strong arguments that the protagonist, and the tenor of the book, is anti-racist.[2][3]

Quote: Twain initially conceived of the work as a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer that would follow Huckleberry Finn through adulthood. Beginning with a few pages he had removed from the earlier novel, Twain began work on a manuscript he originally titled Huckleberry Finn's Autobiography. Twain worked on the manuscript off and on for the next several years, ultimately abandoning his original plan of following Huck's development into adulthood. He appeared to have lost interest in the manuscript while it was in progress, and set it aside for several years. After making a trip down the Hudson river, Twain returned to his work on the novel. Upon completion, the novel's title closely paralleled its predecessor's: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer's Comrade).[4] Unlike The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn does not have the definite article "the" as a part of its proper title. Essayist and critic Spencer Neve asserts that this absence represents the "never fulfilled anticipations" of Huck's adventures—while Tom's adventures were completed (at least at the time) by the end of his novel, Huck's narrative ends with his declared intention to head West.[5] Mark Twain composed the story in pen on notepaper between 1876 and 1883. Paul Needham, who supervised the authentication of the manuscript for Sotheby's books and manuscripts department in New York in 1991, stated, "What you see is [Clemens'] attempt to move away from pure literary writing to dialect writing". For example, Twain revised the opening line of Huck Finn three times. He initially wrote, "You will not know about me", which he changed to, "You do not know about me", before settling on the final version, "You don't know about me, without you have read a book by the name of 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'; but that ain't no matter".[6] The revisions also show how Twain reworked his material to strengthen the characters of Huck and Jim, as well as his sensitivity to the then-current debate over literacy and voting.[7] A later version was the first typewritten manuscript delivered to a printer.[7] Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was eventually published on December 10, 1884, in Canada and England, and on February 18, 1885, in the United States.[8] The illustration on page 283 became a point of issue after an engraver, whose identity was never discovered, made a last-minute addition to the printing plate of Kemble’s picture of old Silas Phelps. In the mischievous tradition of graffiti he drew in a line outlining the bulge against inside of pants of a male sex organ. The sabotage was discovered while the book was at press and the offending plate was replaced, the corrected plate being slightly altered in the area of Silas Phelps’ trousers fly. Thirty thousand copies of the book had been printed before the obscenity was discovered. A new plate was made to correct the illustration and repair the existing copies;[9] versions with the so-called "curved fly" are valuable collectors items.[8] In 1885, the Buffalo Public Library's curator, James Fraser Gluck, approached Twain to donate the manuscript to the library. Twain did so. Later it was believed that half of the pages had been lost by the printer. In 1991, the missing half turned up in a steamer trunk owned by descendants of Gluck. The library successfully proved possession and, in 1994, opened the Mark Twain Room to showcase the treasure.[10]

Quote: Life in St. Petersburg The story begins in fictional Langlem, Missouri, on the shore of the Mississippi River, sometime between 1835 (when the first steamboat sailed down the Mississippi)[11] and 1845. Two young boys, Thomas "Tom" Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, have each come into a considerable sum of money as a result of their earlier adventures (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer). Huck has been placed under the guardianship of the Widow Douglas, who, together with her sister, Miss Watson, is attempting to civilize him. Huck appreciates their efforts, but finds civilized life confining. His spirits are raised somewhat when Tom Sawyer helps him to escape one night past Miss Watson's slave Jim, to meet up with his gang of self-proclaimed "robbers". However, when the gang's exploits turn out to be nothing worse than disrupting Sunday School outings and stealing paltry items like hymn books (which the Sunday School teacher forces them to return anyway), Huck is again downcast. However, his life is changed by the sudden reappearance of his shiftless father "Pap", an abusive parent and drunkard. Although Huck is successful in preventing him from acquiring his fortune (he gives all 6,000 dollars to Judge Thatcher), Pap forcibly gains custody of him and moves him to his backwoods cabin. Though Huck prefers this to his life with the widow, he resents his father's drunken violence and his habit of keeping him locked inside the cabin. During one of his father's absences Huck escapes, elaborately fakes his own murder and sets off down the Mississippi River.

Quote: The Floating House and Huck as a Girl While living quite comfortably in the wilderness along the Mississippi, Huck encounters Miss Watson's slave Jim on an island called Jackson's Island. Huck learns that Jim has also run away after he overheard Miss Watson's plan to sell Jim downriver, where conditions for slaves were even harsher, because he would bring a price of $800. Jim is trying to make his way to Cairo, Illinois and then to Ohio, a free state, so he can buy his family's freedom. At first, Huck is conflicted over whether to tell someone about Jim's running away, but as they travel together and talk in depth, Huck begins to know more about Jim's past and his difficult life. As these conversations continue, Huck begins to change his opinion about people, slavery, and life in general. This continues throughout the rest of the novel. Huck and Jim take up in a cavern on a hill on Jackson's Island to wait out a storm. When they can, they scrounge around the river looking for food, wood, and other items. One night, they find a raft they will eventually use to travel down the Mississippi. Later, they find an entire house floating down the river and enter it to grab what they can. Entering one room, Jim finds a man lying dead on the floor, shot in the back while apparently trying to ransack the house. Jim refuses to let Huck see the man's face. To find out the latest news in the area, Huck dresses as a girl and goes into town. He enters the house of a woman new to the area, thinking she will not recognize him. Huck learns from her that that opinion is divided about the "murder": while some believe Pap has killed his son in order to inherit his fortune, others blame the runaway Jim. Either way there is a $300 reward for Jim's capture, and a manhunt is already underway. The woman becomes suspicious when Huck threads a needle incorrectly, and her suspicions are confirmed after she puts Huck through a series of tests. Having tricked him into revealing he is a boy, she nevertheless allows him to leave her home, believing him to be a mistreated apprentice on the run. Huck returns quickly to the island where he tells Jim of the impending danger. The two immediately load up the raft and leave the island.

Quote: The Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons Huck and Jim's raft is swamped by a passing steamship, separating the two. Huck is given shelter by the Grangerfords, a prosperous local family. He becomes friends with Buck Grangerford, a boy about his age, and learns that the Grangerfords are engaged in a 30-year blood feud against another family, the Shepherdsons. The Grangerfords and Shepherdsons go to church. Both families bring guns to continue the show, despite the church's preachings on brotherly love. The vendetta comes to a head when Buck's sister, Sophia Grangerford, elopes with Harney Shepherdson. In the resulting conflict, all the Grangerford males from this branch of the family are shot and killed, although Grangerfords elsewhere survive to carry on the feud. Upon seeing Buck's corpse, Huck is too devastated to write about everything that happened. However, Huck does describe how he narrowly avoids his own death in the gunfight, later reuniting with Jim and the raft and together fleeing farther south on the Mississippi River.

Quote: The Duke and the King Further down the river, Jim and Huck rescue two cunning grifters, who join Huck and Jim on the raft. The younger of the two swindlers, a man of about thirty, introduces himself as a son of an English duke (the Duke of Bridgewater) and his father's rightful successor. The older one, about seventy, then trumps the Duke's claim by alleging that he is the Lost Dauphin, the son of Louis XVI and rightful King of France. He continually mispronounces the duke's title as "Bilgewater" in conversation. The Duke and the King then join Jim and Huck on the raft, committing a series of confidence schemes on the way south. To allow for Jim's presence, they print fake bills for an escaped slave; and later they paint him up entirely in blue and call him the "Sick Arab". On one occasion they arrive in a town and advertise a three-night engagement of a play which they call "The Royal Nonesuch". The play turns out to be only a couple of minutes of hysterical cavorting, not worth anywhere near the 50 cents the townsmen were charged to see it. On the afternoon of the first performance, a drunk called Boggs arrives in town and makes a nuisance of himself by going around threatening a southern gentleman by the name of Colonel Sherburn. Sherburn comes out and warns Boggs that he can continue threatening him up until exactly one o'clock. At one o'clock, Boggs continues and Colonel Sherburn kills him. Somebody in the crowd, whom Sherburn later identifies as Buck Harkness, cries out that Sherburn should be lynched. They all head up to Colonel Sherburn's gate, where they are met by Sherburn, who is standing on his porch carrying a loaded shotgun and his three legged dalmation. He causes them to back down, by making a defiant speech telling them about the essential cowardice of "Southern justice". The only lynching to be done here, says Sherburn, will be in the dark, by men wearing masks. By the third night of "The Royal Nonesuch", the townspeople are ready to take their revenge; but the Duke and the King have already skipped town, and together with Huck and Jim, they continue down the river. Once they are far enough away, the two grifters test the next town, and decide to impersonate two brothers of Peter Wilks, a recently deceased man of property. Using an absurd English accent, the King manages to convince nearly all the townspeople that he is one of the brothers, a preacher just arrived from England, while the Duke pretends to be a deaf-mute to match accounts of the other brother. One man in town is certain that they are a fraud and confronts them on the matter, but the crowd refuses to support him. Afterwards, the Duke, out of fear, suggests to the King that they should cut and run. The King boldly states his intention to continue to liquidate Wilks' estate, saying, "Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain't that a big enough majority in any town?" Huck likes Wilks' daughters, who treat him with kindness and courtesy, so he tries to thwart the grifters' plans by stealing back the inheritance money. When he is in danger of being discovered, he has to hide it in Wilks' coffin, which is buried the next morning without Huck knowing whether the money has been found or not. The arrival of two new men who seem to be the real brothers throws everything into confusion when none of their signatures match the one on record. (The deaf-mute brother, who is said to do the correspondence, has his arm in a sling and cannot currently write.) The townspeople devise a test, which requires digging up the coffin to check. When the money is found in Wilks' coffin, the Duke and the King are able to escape in the confusion. They manage to rejoin Huck and Jim on the raft to Huck's despair, since he had thought he had escaped them.

Quote: The Duke and the King Further down the river, Jim and Huck rescue two cunning grifters, who join Huck and Jim on the raft. The younger of the two swindlers, a man of about thirty, introduces himself as a son of an English duke (the Duke of Bridgewater) and his father's rightful successor. The older one, about seventy, then trumps the Duke's claim by alleging that he is the Lost Dauphin, the son of Louis XVI and rightful King of France. He continually mispronounces the duke's title as "Bilgewater" in conversation. The Duke and the King then join Jim and Huck on the raft, committing a series of confidence schemes on the way south. To allow for Jim's presence, they print fake bills for an escaped slave; and later they paint him up entirely in blue and call him the "Sick Arab". On one occasion they arrive in a town and advertise a three-night engagement of a play which they call "The Royal Nonesuch". The play turns out to be only a couple of minutes of hysterical cavorting, not worth anywhere near the 50 cents the townsmen were charged to see it. On the afternoon of the first performance, a drunk called Boggs arrives in town and makes a nuisance of himself by going around threatening a southern gentleman by the name of Colonel Sherburn. Sherburn comes out and warns Boggs that he can continue threatening him up until exactly one o'clock. At one o'clock, Boggs continues and Colonel Sherburn kills him. Somebody in the crowd, whom Sherburn later identifies as Buck Harkness, cries out that Sherburn should be lynched. They all head up to Colonel Sherburn's gate, where they are met by Sherburn, who is standing on his porch carrying a loaded shotgun and his three legged dalmation. He causes them to back down, by making a defiant speech telling them about the essential cowardice of "Southern justice". The only lynching to be done here, says Sherburn, will be in the dark, by men wearing masks. By the third night of "The Royal Nonesuch", the townspeople are ready to take their revenge; but the Duke and the King have already skipped town, and together with Huck and Jim, they continue down the river. Once they are far enough away, the two grifters test the next town, and decide to impersonate two brothers of Peter Wilks, a recently deceased man of property. Using an absurd English accent, the King manages to convince nearly all the townspeople that he is one of the brothers, a preacher just arrived from England, while the Duke pretends to be a deaf-mute to match accounts of the other brother. One man in town is certain that they are a fraud and confronts them on the matter, but the crowd refuses to support him. Afterwards, the Duke, out of fear, suggests to the King that they should cut and run. The King boldly states his intention to continue to liquidate Wilks' estate, saying, "Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain't that a big enough majority in any town?" Huck likes Wilks' daughters, who treat him with kindness and courtesy, so he tries to thwart the grifters' plans by stealing back the inheritance money. When he is in danger of being discovered, he has to hide it in Wilks' coffin, which is buried the next morning without Huck knowing whether the money has been found or not. The arrival of two new men who seem to be the real brothers throws everything into confusion when none of their signatures match the one on record. (The deaf-mute brother, who is said to do the correspondence, has his arm in a sling and cannot currently write.) The townspeople devise a test, which requires digging up the coffin to check. When the money is found in Wilks' coffin, the Duke and the King are able to escape in the confusion. They manage to rejoin Huck and Jim on the raft to Huck's despair, since he had thought he had escaped them.

Quote: Jim's escape After the four fugitives have drifted far enough from the town, the King takes advantage of Huck's temporary absence to sell his interest in the "escaped" slave Jim for forty dollars. Outraged by this betrayal, Huck rejects the advice of his "conscience", which continues to tell him that in helping Jim escape to freedom, he is stealing Miss Watson's property. Accepting that "All right, then, I'll go to hell!", Huck resolves to free Jim. Jim is being held at the plantation of Silas and Sally Phelps, Tom's aunt and uncle. Since Tom is expected for a visit, Huck is mistaken for Tom. He plays along, hoping to find Jim's location and free him. When Huck intercepts Tom on the road and tells him everything, Tom decides to join Huck's scheme, pretending to be his younger half-brother Sid. Jim has also told the household about the two grifters and the new plan for "The Royal Nonesuch", so this time the townspeople are ready for them. The Duke and King are captured by the townspeople, and are tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail. Rather than simply sneaking Jim out of the shed where he is being held, Tom develops an elaborate plan to free him, involving secret messages, hidden tunnels, a rope ladder sent in Jim's food, and other elements from popular novels,[12] including a note to the Phelps warning them of a gang planning to steal their runaway slave. During the resulting pursuit, Tom is shot in the leg. Jim remains with him rather than completing his escape, risking recapture. Huck has long known Jim was "white on the inside". Although the doctor admires Jim's decency, he betrays him to a passing skiff, and Jim is captured while sleeping and returned to the Phelps family. [edit] Conclusion After Jim's recapture, events quickly resolve themselves. Tom's Aunt Polly arrives and reveals Huck and Tom's true identities. Tom announces that Jim is a free man: Miss Watson died two months earlier and freed Jim in her will, but Tom chose not to reveal Jim's freedom so he could come up with an elaborate plan to rescue Jim. Jim tells Huck that Huck's father has been dead for some time (he was the dead man they found in the floating house) and that Huck may return safely to St. Petersburg. In the final narrative, Huck declares that he is quite glad to be done writing his story, and despite Sally's plans to adopt and "sivilize" him, Huck intends to flee west to Indian Territory. [edit] Major themes Arnold Rampersad writes that Twain "made it clear that Jim was good, deeply loving, human, and anxious for freedom".[13] Others have criticized the novel as racist, citing the use of the word "nigger" and Jim's Sambo-like character.[2][3] Throughout the story, Huck is in moral conflict with the received values of the society in which he lives, and while he is unable to consciously refute those values even in his thoughts, he makes a moral choice based on his own valuation of Jim's friendship and human worth, a decision in direct opposition to the things he has been taught. Mark Twain in his lecture notes proposes that "a sound heart is a surer guide than an ill-trained conscience", and goes on to describe the novel as "...a book of mine where a sound heart and a deformed conscience come into collision and conscience suffers defeat".[14] To highlight the hypocrisy required to condone slavery within an ostensibly moral system, Twain has Huck's father enslave him, isolate him, and beat him. When Huck escapes – which anyone would agree was the right thing to do – he then immediately encounters Jim "illegally" doing the same thing.[15]

Quote: The publication of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn resulted in generally friendly reviews, but the novel was controversial from the outset.[16] Upon issue of the American edition in 1885 several libraries banned it from their stacks.[17] The early criticism focused on what was perceived as the book's crudeness. One incident was recounted in the newspaper, the Boston Transcript: The Concord (Mass.) Public Library committee has decided to exclude Mark Twain's latest book from the library. One member of the committee says that, while he does not wish to call it immoral, he thinks it contains but little humor, and that of a very coarse type. He regards it as the veriest trash. The library and the other members of the committee entertain similar views, characterizing it as rough, coarse, and inelegant, dealing with a series of experiences not elevating, the whole book being more suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable people.[17] Twain later remarked to his editor, "Apparently, the Concord library has condemned Huck as 'trash and only suitable for the slums.' This will sell us another twenty-five thousand copies for sure!" In 1905, New York’s Brooklyn Public Library also banned the book due to bad word choice and Huck having “not only itched but scratched” within the novel, which was considered obscene.[18] When asked by a Brooklyn librarian about the situation, Twain replied: I am greatly troubled by what you say. I wrote 'Tom Sawyer' & 'Huck Finn' for adults exclusively, & it always distressed me when I find that boys and girls have been allowed access to them. The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean. I know this by my own experience, & to this day I cherish an unappeased bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do that and ever draw a clean sweet breath again on this side of the grave.[19] Many subsequent critics, Ernest Hemingway among them, have deprecated the final chapters, claiming the book "devolves into little more than minstrel-show satire and broad comedy" after Jim is detained.[20] Hemingway declared, "All modern American literature comes from" Huck Finn, and hailed it as "the best book we've had". He cautioned, "If you must read it you must stop where the Nigger Jim is stolen from the boys. That is the real end. The rest is just cheating."[21] (The words "nigger" and "Jim" appear side-by-side once in the novel, in Chapter XXXI, in a letter Huck writes to Mrs. Watson, but they are not used as a name. After "nigger Jim" appears in Albert Bigelow Paine's 1912 Clemens biography, it continued to be used by twentieth century critics, including Leslie Fiedler, Norman Mailer, and Russell Baker.) Writer Louisa May Alcott criticized the book’s publication as well, saying that if Twain "[could not] think of something better to tell our pure-minded lads and lasses he had best stop writing for them".[22] Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Powers states in his Twain biography (Mark Twain: A Life) that "Huckleberry Finn endures as a consensus masterpiece despite these final chapters", in which Tom Sawyer leads Huck through elaborate machinations to rescue Jim.[23] [edit] Controversy Much modern scholarship of Huckleberry Finn has focused on its treatment of race. Many Twain scholars have argued that the book, by humanizing Jim and exposing the fallacies of the racist assumptions of slavery, is an attack on racism.[24] Others have argued that the book falls short on this score, especially in its depiction of Jim.[17] According to Professor Stephen Railton of the University of Virginia, Twain was unable to fully rise above the stereotypes of black people that white readers of his era expected and enjoyed, and therefore resorted to minstrel show-style comedy to provide humor at Jim's expense, and ended up confirming rather than challenging late-19th century racist stereotypes.[25] In one instance, the controversy caused a drastically altered interpretation of the text: in 1955, CBS tried to avoid controversial material in a televised version of the book, by deleting all mention of slavery and having a white actor play Jim.[18] Because of this controversy over whether Huckleberry Finn is racist or anti-racist, and because the word "nigger" is frequently used in the novel, many have questioned the appropriateness of teaching the book in the U.S. public school system—this questioning of the word “nigger” is illustrated by a school administrator of Virginia in 1982 calling the novel the "most grotesque example of racism I’ve ever seen in my life".[26] According to the American Library Association, Huckleberry Finn was the fifth most-frequently-challenged book in the United States during the 1990s.[27] There have been several more recent cases involving protests for the banning of the novel. In 2003 high school student Calista Phair and her grandmother, Beatrice Clark, in Renton, Washington, proposed banning the book from classroom learning in the Renton School District, though not from any public libraries, because of the word "nigger". Clark filed a request with the school district in response to the required reading of the book, asking for the novel to be removed from the English curriculum. The two curriculum committees that considered her request eventually decided to keep the novel on the 11th grade curriculum, though they suspended it until a panel had time to review the novel and set a specific teaching procedure for the novel and its controversial topics.[28] In 2007 Ibrahim Mohamed, a North Richland Hills, Texas, student, requested the word “nigger” be changed to “the N-word”. According to him, the teacher responded by asking him, “Does it offend you? It hurts, doesn’t it?” The exercise that was being done was to put the word into proper context for students, though officials apologized for the teacher’s blunt actions and tone. Despite the apology, Mohamed’s mother wanted the book banned. A group called “The Coalition to Stop the N-Word” requested the school board send a written apology to the family, give sensitivity training to all the teachers, and ban the book based on the feelings of the Mohamed family. In response, the school board said it would try to find better ways in which to present the novel and its controversial content to students.[29] In 2009 a Washington state high school teacher called for the removal of the novel from a school curriculum. The teacher, John Foley, called for replacing Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with a more modern novel.[30] In an opinion column that Foley wrote in the Seattle Post Intelligencer, he states that all "novels that use the ‘N-word’ repeatedly need to go". He states that teaching the novel is not only unnecessary, but difficult due to the offensive language within the novel with many students becoming uncomfortable at "just hear[ing] the N-word". He views this change as “common sense”, with Obama’s election into office as a sign that Americans “are ready for a change”, and that by removing these books from the reading lists, they would be following this change.[31] A 2011 edition of the book, published by NewSouth Books, replaced the word "nigger" with "slave" (although being incorrectly addressed to a freed man) and did not use the term "Injun". The initiative to update the book was led by Mark Twain scholar Alan Gribben, who said the change was made to better express Twain's ideas in the 21st century.[32] Gribben said he hoped the edition would be more friendly for use in classrooms, rather than have the work banned outright from classroom reading lists due to its language.[33] According to publisher Suzanne La Rosa "At NewSouth, we saw the value in an edition that would help the works find new readers. If the publication sparks good debate about how language impacts learning or about the nature of censorship or the way in which racial slurs exercise their baneful influence, then our mission in publishing this new edition of Twain’s works will be more emphatically fulfilled."[34] Another scholar, Thomas Wortham, criticized the changes, saying the new edition "doesn't challenge children to ask, 'Why would a child like Huck use such reprehensible language?'".[35] Responses to this include the publishing of The Hipster Huckleberry Finn which is an edition with the word "nigger" replaced with the word "hipster". The book's description includes this statement "Thanks to editor Richard Grayson, the adventures of Huckleberry Finn are now neither offensive nor uncool."[36]

Quote: Plot Overview T he Adventures of Huckleberry Finn opens by familiarizing us with the events of the novel that preceded it, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Both novels are set in the town of St. Petersburg, Missouri, which lies on the banks of the Mississippi River. At the end of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, a poor boy with a drunken bum for a father, and his friend Tom Sawyer, a middle-class boy with an imagination too active for his own good, found a robber’s stash of gold. As a result of his adventure, Huck gained quite a bit of money, which the bank held for him in trust. Huck was adopted by the Widow Douglas, a kind but stifling woman who lives with her sister, the self-righteous Miss Watson. As Huckleberry Finn opens, Huck is none too thrilled with his new life of cleanliness, manners, church, and school. However, he sticks it out at the bequest of Tom Sawyer, who tells him that in order to take part in Tom’s new “robbers’ gang,” Huck must stay “respectable.” All is well and good until Huck’s brutish, drunken father, Pap, reappears in town and demands Huck’s money. The local judge, Judge Thatcher, and the Widow try to get legal custody of Huck, but another well-intentioned new judge in town believes in the rights of Huck’s natural father and even takes the old drunk into his own home in an attempt to reform him. This effort fails miserably, and Pap soon returns to his old ways. He hangs around town for several months, harassing his son, who in the meantime has learned to read and to tolerate the Widow’s attempts to improve him. Finally, outraged when the Widow Douglas warns him to stay away from her house, Pap kidnaps Huck and holds him in a cabin across the river from St. Petersburg. Whenever Pap goes out, he locks Huck in the cabin, and when he returns home drunk, he beats the boy. Tired of his confinement and fearing the beatings will worsen, Huck escapes from Pap by faking his own death, killing a pig and spreading its blood all over the cabin. Hiding on Jackson’s Island in the middle of the Mississippi River, Huck watches the townspeople search the river for his body. After a few days on the island, he encounters Jim, one of Miss Watson’s slaves. Jim has run away from Miss Watson after hearing her talk about selling him to a plantation down the river, where he would be treated horribly and separated from his wife and children. Huck and Jim team up, despite Huck’s uncertainty about the legality or morality of helping a runaway slave. While they camp out on the island, a great storm causes the Mississippi to flood. Huck and Jim spy a log raft and a house floating past the island. They capture the raft and loot the house, finding in it the body of a man who has been shot. Jim refuses to let Huck see the dead man’s face. Although the island is blissful, Huck and Jim are forced to leave after Huck learns from a woman onshore that her husband has seen smoke coming from the island and believes that Jim is hiding out there. Huck also learns that a reward has been offered for Jim’s capture. Huck and Jim start downriver on the raft, intending to leave it at the mouth of the Ohio River and proceed up that river by steamboat to the free states, where slavery is prohibited. Several days’ travel takes them past St. Louis, and they have a close encounter with a gang of robbers on a wrecked steamboat. They manage to escape with the robbers’ loot. During a night of thick fog, Huck and Jim miss the mouth of the Ohio and encounter a group of men looking for escaped slaves. Huck has a brief moral crisis about concealing stolen “property”—Jim, after all, belongs to Miss Watson—but then lies to the men and tells them that his father is on the raft suffering from smallpox. Terrified of the disease, the men give Huck money and hurry away. Unable to backtrack to the mouth of the Ohio, Huck and Jim continue downriver. The next night, a steamboat slams into their raft, and Huck and Jim are separated. Huck ends up in the home of the kindly Grangerfords, a family of Southern aristocrats locked in a bitter and silly feud with a neighboring clan, the Shepherdsons. The elopement of a Grangerford daughter with a Shepherdson son leads to a gun battle in which many in the families are killed. While Huck is caught up in the feud, Jim shows up with the repaired raft. Huck hurries to Jim’s hiding place, and they take off down the river. A few days later, Huck and Jim rescue a pair of men who are being pursued by armed bandits. The men, clearly con artists, claim to be a displaced English duke (the duke) and the long-lost heir to the French throne (the dauphin). Powerless to tell two white adults to leave, Huck and Jim continue down the river with the pair of “aristocrats.” The duke and the dauphin pull several scams in the small towns along the river. Coming into one town, they hear the story of a man, Peter Wilks, who has recently died and left much of his inheritance to his two brothers, who should be arriving from England any day. The duke and the dauphin enter the town pretending to be Wilks’s brothers. Wilks’s three nieces welcome the con men and quickly set about liquidating the estate. A few townspeople become skeptical, and Huck, who grows to admire the Wilks sisters, decides to thwart the scam. He steals the dead Peter Wilks’s gold from the duke and the dauphin but is forced to stash it in Wilks’s coffin. Huck then reveals all to the eldest Wilks sister, Mary Jane. Huck’s plan for exposing the duke and the dauphin is about to unfold when Wilks’s real brothers arrive from England. The angry townspeople hold both sets of Wilks claimants, and the duke and the dauphin just barely escape in the ensuing confusion. Fortunately for the sisters, the gold is found. Unfortunately for Huck and Jim, the duke and the dauphin make it back to the raft just as Huck and Jim are pushing off. After a few more small scams, the duke and dauphin commit their worst crime yet: they sell Jim to a local farmer, telling him Jim is a runaway for whom a large reward is being offered. Huck finds out where Jim is being held and resolves to free him. At the house where Jim is a prisoner, a woman greets Huck excitedly and calls him “Tom.” As Huck quickly discovers, the people holding Jim are none other than Tom Sawyer’s aunt and uncle, Silas and Sally Phelps. The Phelpses mistake Huck for Tom, who is due to arrive for a visit, and Huck goes along with their mistake. He intercepts Tom between the Phelps house and the steamboat dock, and Tom pretends to be his own younger brother, Sid. Tom hatches a wild plan to free Jim, adding all sorts of unnecessary obstacles even though Jim is only lightly secured. Huck is sure Tom’s plan will get them all killed, but he complies nonetheless. After a seeming eternity of pointless preparation, during which the boys ransack the Phelps’s house and make Aunt Sally miserable, they put the plan into action. Jim is freed, but a pursuer shoots Tom in the leg. Huck is forced to get a doctor, and Jim sacrifices his freedom to nurse Tom. All are returned to the Phelps’s house, where Jim ends up back in chains. When Tom wakes the next morning, he reveals that Jim has actually been a free man all along, as Miss Watson, who made a provision in her will to free Jim, died two months earlier. Tom had planned the entire escape idea all as a game and had intended to pay Jim for his troubles. Tom’s Aunt Polly then shows up, identifying “Tom” and “Sid” as Huck and Tom. Jim tells Huck, who fears for his future—particularly that his father might reappear—that the body they found on the floating house off Jackson’s Island had been Pap’s. Aunt Sally then steps in and offers to adopt Huck, but Huck, who has had enough “sivilizing,” announces his plan to set out for the West.

Quote: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Summary How It All Goes Down Huck Finn introduces himself as the narrator at the outset of the story. He starts off at the Widow’s in Missouri, where he’s "getting’ sivilized" by her and her sister Miss Watson, who try to teach him manners and religion and also send him to school. But Huck spends time with his imaginative friend Tom Sawyer playing pranks on people like Jim, Miss Watson’s slave. Curiously, the boys generally ignore the fact that each of them still has $6,000 that they found in a cave (in Mark Twain’s previous novel, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer). When Huck gets a bad feeling (in the superstitious sense), he signs all his money over to Judge Thatcher. Shortly after, his drunk and abusive father shows up back in town. Until now, everyone thought Huck’s dad was dead, but that is sadly not the case. Anyway, he demands money from Huck, who’s all, "Oh, man, too bad you didn’t get here yesterday." Enraged and abusive, Dad threatens Huck for a bit and finally kidnaps him so they can both live in filthy poverty by the river. Huck shortly gets fed up, fakes his own death, and leaves to go hide out on the nearby Jackson’s Island. There, he runs into Jim, Miss Watson’s slave, who has gone on there to avoid being sold South (and therefore separated from his family). Jim is now a suspect in Huck’s murder, which isn’t so great. They decide to run away together to the mouth of the Ohio river, where Jim can escape to the free states and earn some money with which to come back and buy his family. Before they leave Jackson’s Island, they find a dead man – but Jim won’t let Huck look at the guy’s face on account of it being "too gashly." Meanwhile, Huck does some reconnaissance work in a nearby town by pretending (poorly) to be a girl. Realizing they will soon be caught, the two take off as quickly as they can, heading south on the river for Cairo, the town where the Mississippi meets the Ohio River. (Visualize it with this map; the Ohio River is the one that curves up north, and the boys start off in Missouri next to the Mississippi.) The first real "adventure" occurs when the duo comes across a wrecked steamship in the middle of a thunderstorm. Climbing aboard, Huck finds three robbers, two in the process of killing the third. He wants to send for help, but their raft has broken free and now he and Jim are stuck on a sinking boat with two would-be murderers and a soon-to-die thief. They manage to escape and send for help, but the three thieving men die on the steamship anyway. Afraid they will miss Cairo (in other words, go too far south on the Mississippi River), Huck decides to go ashore and inquire as to where they are. On the way in, he realizes that by helping Jim to escape, he’s really stealing Miss Watson’s property. He has a lengthy moral crisis as to whether he should follow the rules or help his friend. Ultimately, he can’t bring himself to turn Jim in. When he gets back to the raft, they realize they’ve passed Cairo in the midst of some fog. Then they are nearly run over by a huge steamboat that breaks up their raft. Both are thrown into the water. Huck makes it to shore and is taken in by the Grangerfords, a wealthy and aristocratic family feuding with another nearby and also aristocratic family, the Shepherdsons. He spends some time with Buck, the conveniently named son of the family, who is around the same age as Huck. To make a long story short, one of the Grangerford daughters runs away with one of the Shepherdsons, adding fuel to an already hot fire and leading to a shoot-out in the woods in which lots of people die, including Buck. Huck watches this go down, laments the ridiculous stupidity of mankind, finds Jim again, and they both leave on the raft. Since they missed the Ohio River exit, the new plan is to sell the raft for money to take a steamboat up north. Unfortunately, before they can do so, they are joined by two men running away from the law, or possibly just an angry mob, although let’s face it, there’s not much difference in this place. Anyway, Huck has a soft spot for criminals, so he takes the two men onto the raft and helps them escape. Bad idea. The men turn out to be con artists, who introduce themselves as the duke (the younger and not-so-evil man) and the king (the older and more-evil man). Right away they start plotting their first con together (it turns out that they didn’t know each other before and just happened to be on the lam at the same time). The first thing they do is absolutely butcher some Shakespeare scenes together, the plan being to perform the scenes for cash. Before any performances can go down, they go ashore and the king cons a ton of money (almost ninety bucks) from a bunch of gullible religious folks. This is not a nice man you’ve got here. Next they stop in a town in Arkansas where we witness an odd scene: a drunk man named Boggs makes drunken threats against a stern and stoic fellow named Sherburn. Sherburn gives him a warning and then kills him for being insolent, annoying, and of course, drunk as a skunk in broad daylight. When a mob tries to lynch Sherburn, he tells them they’re all too cowardly to lynch a real man. Amazingly, the members of the mob all pout and leave without touching a hair on his head. With that little drama over with, the duke and king are free to perform their Shakespeare. Unfortunately, they’re in a Podunk town in Arkansas, so brilliant 16th century theater sort of goes unappreciated. They decide to do some lowbrow comedy instead, which isn’t so much a real comedy as two seconds of naked prancing about. Somehow, the conmen manage to pull off their scam two more nights before escaping town with all the money from tickets – leaving behind one incredibly angry mob. Next the two cons pretend to be the brothers of a recently deceased guy to take his inheritance. This involves scamming three lovely nieces, the oldest of which Huck admires. Feeling guilty about his part in the scandal, Huck steals the bag of inheritance cash ($6,000) and hides it…in the coffin. After the burial, he confesses everything to the niece he admires (Mary Jane) and they hatch a plot. Just then, the real brothers show up and everything goes to pot. During a scuffle in the graveyard, Huck escapes the brothers but doesn’t manage to leave behind the duke and king. Soon, all four men are on their way again. The duke and the king realize they have no more cash (they lost their Shakespearean performance scam money along with the inheritance booty), so while Huck is distracted, the king sells Jim. The king then drinks away all the money he made from the sale in whiskey. Huck ditches the men to go retrieve Jim from a nearby farm owned by a man named Silas Phelps. Silas’s wife Sally mistakes Huck for her nephew who was supposed to be coming for a visit – none other than Tom Sawyer. Huck plays the part and then intercepts the real Tom on his way to the farm. Tom is glad to see that his friend isn’t dead and pretends to be Sid Sawyer, Tom’s younger brother. The two boys locate Jim, who is being held captive in a nearby hut. They decide to set him free, but Tom, being a young boy, is into his imagination and games and decides to make a lengthy process out of the thing. They construct all sorts of elaborate escape methods, like digging him out instead of using the front door and baking unnecessary ladders into pies and all that junk. To make matters worse, Tom sends anonymous warning letters to the house before the evening of the planned escape. A group of farmers has been rallied to guard the hut on the big night, and Tom ends up getting shot in the calf while the boys try to run away with Jim. They make it to the raft, but peacing out right then and there isn’t really an option - you know, with the bullet wound and all. Jim hides in the bushes, and Huck goes in the canoe to find a doctor who can help. Because the canoe can only take one person, Huck stays on land while the doctor goes out. He then accidentally falls asleep. Returning to the farm the next day, he’s around long enough for Sally to chew him out for leaving the house during the fray. The next day, Tom comes home laid out on a mattress recovering from his wound, along with the doctor who’s leading Jim in chains. The men are all ready to execute Jim, but the doctor reveals that the man came out of hiding to save Tom Sawyer’s life when the doctor needed another pair of hands. For this, they decide to simply enslave rather than kill him. Tom wakes up from being shot and tells the whole story about helping Jim escape, much to the adults’ shock and anger. He then reveals that, actually, Miss Watson died two months ago and set Jim free in her will, so the whole thing is a moot and selfish game. Then Sally’s sister Polly shows up and reveals the boys’ real identity. Jim is set free and tells Huck that, by the way, that dead guy they found about two hundred pages ago was Huck’s Pap, so they don’t have to worry about him coming back anymore. Also, Huck’s $6,000 is still around when he wants it. Huck decides he should set out west, where he can have more adventures.

Quote: رواية " توم سوير ": توم فتى ريفي.. وهو ولد مشاكس يعيش مع أخيه الأصغر عند العمة بولي وابنة عمته ماري. عاش توم سوير هو وأخوه " سيد " بعد موت والديهما واعتنت العمة بولي بطفلي أختها كما لو كانا طفليها.. وعاملتهما بمودة . الجميع يعرفون " توم " وأعز صديق له " هاك " أو الاسم الكامل له ه######يري فن (Huckleberry Finn ) الذي شاركه في كل مغامراته ولعب معه لعبة القراصنة على نهر المسيسبي، حيث عاش الاثنان مغامرات في غاية التشويق. كثيراً ما وقع توم في المتاعب بسبب اندفاعه وتهوره أحياناً، لكن أهدافه دائماً بريئة ولم يقصد فيها الأذى. يمثل توم الفتى الأميركي الريفي بأحلامه البسيطة وبكل عاداته، حتى أن كثيراً من الفتيان يجدون أنفسهم في شخصيته المثيرة تلك.

Quote: مارك توين (بالإنجليزية: Mark Twain ‏) واسمه الحقيقي " صمويل لانغهورن كليمنس " (بالإنجليزية: Samuel Langhorne Clemens ‏) هو كاتب أميركي ساخر (30 تشرين الثاني نوفمبر 1835 ـ 21 نيسان أبريل 1910) عرف برواياته " مغامرات ه######يري فن " (1884) التي وصفت بأنها " الرواية الأميركية الأكثر أهمية " و " مغامرات توم سوير " (1876). وقد نقلت عنه الكثير من الأقوال المأثورة والساخرة، وكان صديقاً للعديد من مشاهير زمانه، ووصف بعد وفاته بأنه " أهم الساخرين الأميركيين في عصره "، كما لقبه وليم فوكنر بأبي الأدب الأميركي . وحقق توين أول نجاحاته الأدبية عندما نشر قصته الطويلة " الضفدعة النطاطة المحتفى بها القادمة من مقاطعة كالافيراس " في جريدة " نيويورك ساترداي برس ". عاش توين حياةً كلها مصاعب، فقد خلالها الكثير من أحبته، فقد فقد عدداً من إخوته، وابنه وابنته وزوجته، وأخيراً صديقه المقرب، وجعل كل ذلك توين أكثر سخريةً وعمقاً. قال ذات يوم: " لقد جئت إلى هذا العالم مع مذنب هالي سنة 1835، وها هو قادم ثانيةً العام القادم، وأنا أتوقع أن أذهب معه " ولقد صدقت نبوءته، إذ توفي توين بأزمة قلبية في ريدنغ بولاية كونيكتيكت في الثاني من نيسان (أبريل) 1910، بعد يوم واحد فقط من اقتراب المذنب من الأرض . إن قصصه هي مرآة صادقة شفافة للمجتمع الأميركي.. شفافة إلى درجة أنها صارت عالمية وغدا الناس جميعاً يستمتعون بأدب هذا الأديب الكبير مهما تباينت ثقافتهم وألسنتهم. أهم كتب مارك توين: - الضفدع الوثاب من مقاطعة كالافيراس 1865 - أبرياء بالخارج 1869 - مغامرات توم سوير 1876 - متشرد بالخارج 1880 - الأمير والفقير 1882 - الحياة على المسيسبي 1883 - شمالي في بلاط الملك آرثر 1889 - مغامرات ها######ري فن 1884 - نحو خط الاستواء 1897 - الرجل الذي أفسد هادليبرج 1899 - صلاة الجندي 1905 رواية " توم سوير ": توم فتى ريفي.. وهو ولد مشاكس يعيش مع أخيه الأصغر عند العمة بولي وابنة عمته ماري. عاش توم سوير هو وأخوه " سيد " بعد موت والديهما واعتنت العمة بولي بطفلي أختها كما لو كانا طفليها.. وعاملتهما بمودة . الجميع يعرفون " توم " وأعز صديق له " هاك " أو الاسم الكامل له ه######يري فن (Huckleberry Fin ) الذي شاركه في كل مغامراته ولعب معه لعبة القراصنة على نهر المسيسبي، حيث عاش الاثنان مغامرات في غاية التشويق. كثيراً ما وقع توم في المتاعب بسبب اندفاعه وتهوره أحياناً، لكن أهدافه دائماً بريئة ولم يقصد فيها الأذى. يمثل توم الفتى الأميركي الريفي بأحلامه البسيطة وبكل عاداته، حتى أن كثيراً من الفتيان يجدون أنفسهم في شخصيته المثيرة تلك.

Quote: مغامرات ه######يري فين (وتعرف أيضاً به######يري فين أو هاك فين) وهي رواية من تأليف مارك توين والتي نشرت في شهر كانون أول من العام 1884. وهي تعد أحد أعظم الروايات الأمريكية, وهي من أول الأعمال الروائية التي كتبت باللغة العامية ذات الصبغة الشعبية المحلية. وهي رواية بصيغة المتكلم يرويها ه######يري "هاك" فين أحد أفضل أصدقاء توم سوير, وهي الراوي نفسه في روايتين أخرىين من روايات توين. تتميز الرواية بوصفها المفعم بالحيوية للأشخاص والأماكن على طول نهر الميسيسيبي, وهو تمثل تهكماً ونقداً للمجتمع الأمريكي في جنوب الولايات المتحدة قبل الحرب الأهلية, وتوجه الرواية نقداً لاذعاً لبعض التوجهات السائدة في ذلك الحين وخاصة التمييز العرقي. وتعد صورة هاك وصديقه جيم الذي كان عبداً هارباً من سيده في رحلتهما على نهر الميسيسيبي على الطوف أجمل رمز لمفهوم الهروب والتحرر من ربقة العبودية في جميع أعمال الأدب الأمريكي. اشتهر العمل بين جمهور القراء منذ صدوره وهو ما زال موضوع بحث ودراسة لدى العديد من النقاد الأدبيين. وقد وجه للرواية بعد الانتقادات خاصة فيما يتعلق باللغة المستخدمة واستخدام بعض الصور النمطية العرقية والذي كان واضحاً عبر استخدام بعض الألقاب العرقية. تعد الرواية تكملة لرواية مغامرات توم سوير لنفس المؤلف.

Quote: تبدأ القصة في مكان من نسج خيال الكاتب يدعى سانت بيترسبيرغ, ميسوري, على ضفاف نهر الميسيسيبي. كان الصبيان توم سوير وه######يري فين قد جمعا مبلغاً جيداً من المال من مغامراتهما السابقة (مغامرات توم سوير). وكان ها######يري تحت رعاية السيدة دوجلاس والتي كانت تسعى جاهدة مع أختها الآنسة واتسون أن تغير من طباعه وتجعله أكثر تحضراً وأرقى طبيعة. وكان هاك يقدر جهودهما ولكنه كان يرى في ذلك تقييداً لحياته لا يرغب فيه. ويظهر توم سوير في بداية القصة ليساعد هاك على الهرب من المنزل. ويجتمع الصبيان مع المجموعة التي كان يلتقي معهم توم سوير والذين كانوا يخططون بعض الجرائم في مغامراتهم. وتتغير حياة هاك رأساً على عقب عند الظهور المفاجئ لأبيه الكسول وعديم الحيلة "باب", وكان رجلاً سيء الأخلاق دائم السكر. وبالرغم من نجاح هاك في منع أبيه من الحصول على ما كسبه من مال إلا أن باب يأخذ هاك ليكون تحت رعايته وينتقل به إلى ناحية من الغابة حيث يغلق عليه الكوخ ويسجنه فيه. إلا أنه هاك يهرب من الكوخ ويتوجه نحو نهر الميسيسيبي. ه######يري فين البيت العائم وهاك بشخصية بنت هاك وجيم على الطوف يلتقي هاك بالخادم الذي كان يعمل لدى الآنسة واتسون, جيم, في جزيرة تدعى جزيرة جاكسون, ويخبره بأنه قد هرب من عندها بعد أن سمع أن الآنسة واتسون ستبيعه لعائلة قرب نهاية النهر حيث أوضاع العبيد هنالك أسوأ بكثير. كان يحاول جيم الذهاب إلى منطقة القاهرة, إلينوي والتي لا يوجد فيها رق, وكان هاك في البداية معارضاً لأن يصبح جيم رجلاً حراً, ولكن بعد أن تنقلاً مع بعضهما وتبادلاً أطراف الحديث بعمق وعرف هاك الكثير عن حياة جيم وماضيه, وساعد ذلك في تغيير بعض الأفكار التي يعتقدها هاك حول الناس والرق والحياة بمجملها, ويستمر هذا التغيير خلال الرواية بأكملها. ويلجأ هاك وجيم إلى مغارة على أحد التلال في جزيرة جاكسون للاختباء من عاصفة قوية, وكانا يذهبان نحو النهر كلما تمكنا لإحضار بعض الطعام والحطب وغيرها من المواد التي قد يحتاجون إليها, وفي أحد الليالي يعثرون على طوف خشبي فيأخذونه ويستخدمونه لاحقاً للسفر عبر نهر الميسيسيبي. وبعد ذلك يجدون بيتاً بأكمله عائماً على النهر, فيدخلان إلى ذلك البيت ليأخذوا ما أمكنهم منه, ولكن حين دخل جيم إحدى الغرف رأى باب (والد هاك) ميتاً وملقى على الأرض, ويظهر على ظهره أثر رصاصة أصيب بها وهو يحاول على ما يبدو أن يسرق البيت. ما يفعله جيم في هذه اللحظة هو منع هاك من النظر إلى وجه الرجل ولا يخبره بأنه باب. كان يريد هاك أن يعرف ما يدور في المنطقة حوله من أخبار الناس فذهب متنكراً بزي بنت (سارة ويليامز) ويتوجه إلى المدينة. يدخل هاك إلى بين امرأة انتقلت مؤخراً إلى المدينة ظناً منه أنها لن تعرفه, وبينما بدأ الحديث بينهما أخبرته المرأة أن هنالك مكافأة قدرها 300 دولار لجيم لأنه متهم بقتل هاك. وتبدأ المرأة بالشك في جنس هاك وعندما رأت أنه لا يحسن استخدام إبرة الخياطة تجر قدمه ليكشف عن شخصيته ولكنه يلوذ بالفرار. يعود هاك إلى الجزيرة ويخبره بما سمع فيجهز الاثنان أنفسهما ويغادران الجزيرة. عائلة جرانجرفورد وعائلة شيبردسون يضل هاك وجيم وجهتهما نحو إلينوي ويغرق الطوف عند مرور باخرة فينفصل الاثنان عن بعضهما ويأوي هاك إلى عائلة جرانجرفورد وهي من العائلات الثرية ويكون علاقة مع باك جرانجرفورد وهو صبي في مثل عمره. يكون هنالك عداوة وثأر بين هذه العائلة وعائلة أخرى وهي عائلة شيبردسون منذ 30 عاماً. ويبلغ الصراع الدموي ذروته الكبرى حين تهرب أخت باك مع أحد أفراد عائلة شيبردسون ويتسبب النزاع في مقتل جميع الرجال والصبيان في عائلة جرانجرفورد ومن بينهم باك. تأثر هاك بذلك تأثراً عميقاً ويصف كيف نجى هو من القتل المحتم. يجتمع هاك بعد ذلك مع جيم ويذهبان معاً نحو الجنوب على نهر الميسيسيبي. الدوق والملك في طريقهما إلى جنوب يصعد إلى الطوف رجلان ماكران أنقذهما هاك وجيم, أحدهما يعرف نفسه بأنه ابن دوق إنجليزي (دوق بريدج ووتر) وولي العهد الشرعي بعد والده, أما الرجل الآخر فهو كبير في السن ويقول أنه الملك الأحق بعرش فرنسا. ويرغم الدوق والملك جيم وهاك على أن يرحلا معهما بعد أن نالا ثقتهما. وتحدث معهما بعض المغامرات التي لعب فيها الدوق والملك دوراً ماكراً للحصول على ورثة شخص كان قد توفي وادعيا أنهما إخوة للمتوفى (بيتر ويلكس), ولكن هاك يسرق المال منهما بعد أن اكتشف حيلتهما ووضعه في نعش ويلكس, وافتضح أمرهما بعد أن جاء الأخوان الحقيقيان لويلكس فلاذا بالفرار. هروب جيم هرب الأربعة نحو الجنوب, وعند ذهاب هاك إلى قرية قريبة يقوم الملك بتقييد جيم وبيعه. فثارت ثائرة هاك عندما رأى الخيانة التي ارتكبها الملك ولكن ضميره كان يخبره بأنه إن ساعد جيم على الفرار مرة أخرى واستعادة حريته فإنه يكون يسرق ملكية الآنسو واتسون, ولكنه عزم وقال : "لا بأس, فلأذهب إلى الجحيم". وذهب لفك أسر جيم. يعلم هاك عند وصوله إلى المنزل الذي يتواجد فيه جيم أن الملك قد باعه في أحد حانات الخمر مقابل 40 دولاراً. ويكتشف هاك في مصادفة عجيبة أن من اشترى جيم هما السيد والسيدة فيلبس, وهما أقارب توم سوير, وكانا يتوقعان وصول توم سوير لزيارتهما. فعندما يرى السيد والسيدة فيلبس هاك, يظنان أنه توم فيدخل إلى المنزل ويلعب ويحاول أن يجد طريقة ليفك أسر جيم. وبعد وهلة يصل توم سوير إلى المنزل, إلا أنه تظاهر بأنه "سيد" وهو الأخ الأصغر لتوم, ويكمل الخدعة مع هاك. [عدل] خاتمة القصة تتطور أحداث القصة بعد ذلك بشكل متسارع, فتأتي العمة بولي وتكشف عن هوية هاك وتوم الحقيقية, ويخبر توم بأن جيم قد كان طليقاً لأشهر عديدة وأن السيدة واتسون قبل وفاتها أعتقته. وأخبر جيم هاك بموت والده وأنه يمكنه أن يعود للعيش إلى بيترسبيرغ بدون مشاكل. وفي النهاية يخبر هاك عن سعادته بأنه قد أكمل كتابة حكايته وبالرغم من محاولات عائلة توم أن تتبناه وتحضره إلا أن عازم على الذهاب غرباً نحو المناطق الهندية. [عدل] المواضيع الأساسية كتب توين رواية تجسد البحث عن الحرية. وكانت الرواية قد كتبت بعد فترة الحرب الأهلية الأمريكية عندما كانت ردة الفعل من البيض عنيفة ضد السود. وكان توين يحاول أن ينتقد بشكل واضح التمييز العرقي والفصل العنصري المتزايد والنظرة الشائعة بأن السود لا يصلحون إلا أن يكونوا عبيداً. فأوضح من خلال شخصية جيم عن صفاته الإنسانية السامية وعاطفته العميقة وكم أنه متشوق للحرية. يظهر في الرواية حالة الصراع الأخلاقي الذي يعيشه هاك بين القيم المسلمات في المجتمع الذي يعيش به, فضميره غير قادر في البداية على دحض هذه القيم والتي تبقى حاضرة دائمة في ذهنه, إلا أنه في النهاية يقدم على خيار أخلاقي بناء على العلاقة التي تربطه مع جيم كصديق وإدراك قيمته كإنسان, مع أنه مثل هذه القرارات لا تتوافق مع الأمور التي تعلمها منذ صغره.

Quote: نشأته ولد لأبوان ينتميان إلى أصول إنجليزية وهولندية، عاشت عائلته في بروكلين بين عامي 1832 - 1833، حيث تلقى تعليمه الأولي فيها، لكنه لم يكمل تعليمه وإشتغل صبيا في مطبعة. كان يقرأ كل ما تصل إليه يداه:الإنجيل، شكسبير،أوسيان،سكوت، هوميروس، شعراء الهند وألمانيا القدماء، كذلك قرا دانتي كله، اثرت هذه القراءات على شعره في الايقاع والمضمون، خاصة في مراحلة المتاخرة. [عدل] محطات في حياته والت ويتمان وعمره 37 عاما استطاع نتيجة لاطلاعه المستمر أن يعمل بالتدريس،ولكنه تركه بعد ذلك للعمل في الصحافة وكتابة المقالات في لونج أيلاند. اشتغل بالسياسة وكان من الرواد الأوائل الذين أرسوا دعائم الديمقراطية الأمريكية. اتسع نشاطه الأدبي والسياسي لدرجة أنه بعد عام 1841 كان يراسل ويكتب فيما لا يقل عن عشر مجلات في بروكلين ونيويورك ،ولكن الأشعار الذي نشرها في هذه الفنرة كانت تقليدية وهزيلة، والقصص التي نشرها في المجلة الديموقراطية 1841-1845 كانت سطحية ومسرفة في العاطفة. في عام 1846 أصبح رئيساً لمجلة بروكلين إيجل الناطقة بلسان حال الحزب الديموقراطي، والتي هاجم فيها كل أنواع التعصب والفاشية والديكتاتورية مؤكداً انه لا ازدهار أمة إلا بترسيخ الديموقراطية فيها. في عام 1848 ذهب إلى نيوأورليانز وراس تحرير مجلة كريسينت لمدة ثلاثة شهور، وفي طريق عودته إلى بروكلين مر بمدن سانت لويس وشيكاغو ،حيث اكتشف لاول مرة روح الاكتشاف أو روح الحدود كما اصطلح الأمريكيون على تسميتها، وهي الروح التي ظهرت في فلسفته الشعرية. شمل نشاطه تحرير مجلة بروكلين تايمز. [عدل] موقفة من الحرب الأهلية الأمريكية والت ويتمان 1860 لم يتأثر بها إلا في عام 1862 عندما سافر إلى فرجينيا لزيارة أخيه جورج الذي جُرح في إحدى المعارك،عاد والت ويتمان إلى واشنطن لكي يتطوع للعمل كممرض في مستشفيات الجيش لخدمة الجنود الشماليين أو الجنوبيين على حد سواء. سجل ذكرياته في الحرب في كتاب وصفي بعنوان مذكرات الحرب 1875. تأثر شعره بهذه التجربة الإنسانية فكتب ديوان دقات الطبل عام 1865،ثم أعاد طبعه عام 1866 مضيفاً القصائد التي يرثي فيها أبراهام لينكون مثل قصيدة أزهار البنفسج على عتبة الازدهار وقصيدة أيها القائد..يا قائدي. [عدل] أوراق العشب أثناء عمله في سكرتارية المكتب الهندي بوزارة الداخلية الأمريكية، صدر له ديوان أوراق العشب فقام الوزير بطرده على أساس أنه عمل غير أخلاقي. لكن الكتاب والمثقفيت لم يتحملوا هذه الإهانة التي لحقت بالشاعر الكبير، فكتب وليام أوكونور كتاب الشاعر الشيخ الصالح عام 1866. في عام 1867 أصدر جون باروز كتابه ملاحظات على والت ويتمان:الشاعر والإنسان. [عدل] أصابته بالشلل في العام 1873 أُصيب بنوبة شلل. أثر ذلك على كتاباته، وغيرت من فكرة إلى حد ما، لقد تحول أسلوبه الواقعي المباشر إلى صور التلميح والتجسيد الفني المركب. تبدلت فلسفته التي تعتبر الكون مادة واحدة، لكي تصبح مثالية روحانية يغلب عليها التصوف. تغيرت آراؤه السياسية من الفردية إلى القومية، بل حتى العالمية. هبطت درجة حماسه المطلقة للحرية الفردية إلى تأيد مطلق للنظام الذي يتحرك المجتمع في إطاره. [عدل] فكره هاجم كل أنواع التعصب والفاشية والديكتاتورية مؤكداً أنه لا ازدهار لأمة إلا بترسيخ الديمقراطية فيها. لُقب بأبي الشعر الحر حيث أنه ضرب بكل القوالب الشعرية القديمة عرض الحائط، فقد تمكن من تحطيم القوالب الأوربية التي كان يصب فيها الشعر الأمريكي عنوة، مما جعله مجرد تقليد باهت يخلو من عناصر الأصالة التي تبع من تربة الوطن نفسه. آمن بأن الحرية الفردية لن تجد متنفساً لها إلا في الحب على حين تتمثل الحرية الاجتماعية في الديمقراطية، وأن الحب والديمقراطية وجهان لعملة واحدة هي المجتمع الإنساني كما يجب أن يكون. كانت عينه على الحياة الأمريكية على حين تتبعت عينه الأخرى الحياة في كل مكان. كان يرى أن الشاعر هو ضمير أمته، من ثم لا يمكنه النظر خارج حدودها لاستلهام الوحي، وأن الطريق إلى العالمية الإنسانية لابد أن يمر بالإقليمية المحلية. حدث تغيير في فكرة بعد إصابته بالشلل عام 1873. [عدل] مكانته والت ويتمان عام 1891 يعد والت ويتمان رائداً للشعر الأمريكي، كما يعد مارك توين رائداً للرواية الأمريكية ،ويوجين أونيل رائداً للمسرح الأمريكي. يُعتبر أهم شاعر عبر عن الديموقراطية الأمريكية. كان أول شاعر أمريكي يحوز إعجاب الأمريكين والأوربين على حد سواء. اعتبر علماء النفس أشعاره دراسة خصبة لمكونات النفس البشرية. اعتبره النقاد فيلسوفاً،إذ كان يملك النظرة الشاملة المتكاملة إلى الكون والأحياء، وهي النظرة التي احتوت الإنسان والمجتمع والعلاقة بينهما من حب وديموقراطية وغموض وصراع. [عدل] أعماله كتابات والت ويتمان الشعرية والنثرية غير المجموعة:هي مجموعة من القصص(التي نشرت في المجلة الديموقراطية1841-1845) والأشعار، جُمعت هذه الأعمال في مجلدين عام 1929،لكن هذه الأشعار كانت هزيلة والقصص كانت سطحية ومسرفة في العاطفة. تجميع القوى:مجلدين،وفيه جُمعت كتاباته في مجلة بروكلين إيجل ،تم تجميعها عام 1920. الرواد..يالهم من رواد:قصيده أغنية الفأس العريض:قصيدة، ظهر فيها هي وقصيدة الرواد..يالهم من رواد،تأثره بروح الحدود أو روح الاكتشاف كما اصطلح الأمريكيون على تسميتها. إني أجلس وأتامل:مجلد تم تجميع كتاباته فيه، والتي نشرت في عدة صحف مثل بروكلين تايمز ،صدر عام 1932. مذكرات الحرب 1875:وهو كتاب وصفي،سجل فيه ذكرياته عن فترة الحرب الأهلية الأمريكية. دقات الطبل 1865:ديوان سجل فيه أشعاره والتجربة الإنسانية التي مر بها في الحرب الأهلية الأمريكية ،ثم أعاد طبعه عام 1866 مضيفاً القصائد التي يرثي فيها إبراهام لينكون مثل قصيدة أزهار البنفسج على عتبة الازدهار وقصيدة أيها القائد..يا قائدي. أوراق العشب:ديوان. آفاق ديموقراطية 1871 :دراسة تحليلية. الطريق إلى الهند 1871:دراسة تحليلية، وفيها هي وآفاق ديموقراطية جسد فيها فلسفته التي تقول بأن تجديد الفكر الإنساني لن يتم إلا من خلال الاتحاد بين حكمة الشرق الروحاني ومادية الغرب الطاغية. غصون نوفمبر 1888:قصيده نشرها في الطبعات الجديدة من ديوان أوراق العشب. وداعا يا خيالي 1891:قصيده نشرها في الطبعات الجديدة من ديوان أوراق العشب. [عدل] وفاته في العشرين سنة الأخيرة من عمره استقر في نيوجيرسي حيث تابع الطبعات الجديدة من ديوانه أوراق العشب وهي الطبعات التي احتوت على قصائد جديدة مثل غصون نوفمبر 1888،وداعا يا خيالي 1891. تُوفى في العام 1892 في نيوجيرسي.