"All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn” - Ernest Hemingway
“Understanding and explaining American history comes from two stories by Mark Twain: 'The Story of Huck and the Story of Jim' ” - Jim Francis The Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the individual stories of Jim, the runaway slave, and Huck, the runaway child, as well as Twain’s characterization of women, and the social classes with which Huck and Jim interacted combine to provide us with the means by which to understand, explain, and remember U.S. history from the colonial times through the Revolution and Civil War and into the twentieth century (and beyond?). The class will explore these truths within the novel and pose the question to the audience: “What did Twain understand about American society and politics that Americans want to avoid understanding?”