Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1884). Hemingway proclaimed, “All modern American literature comes from . . . ‘Huckleberry Finn.’ ” But one can read it simply as a straightforward adventure story in which two comrades of conve nience, the parentally abused rascal Huck and fugitive slave Jim, escape the laws and conventions of society on a raft trip down the Mississippi. Alternatively, it’s a subversive satire in which Twain uses the only superficially naïve Huck to comment bitingly on the evils of racial bigotry, religious hypocrisy, and capitalist greed he observes in a host of other largely unsympathetic characters. Huck’s climactic decision to “light out for the Territory ahead of the rest” rather than submit to the starched standards of “civilization” reflects a uniquely American strain of individualism and nonconformity stretching from Daniel Boone to Easy Rider.
Total Points: 136 (LKA 9) (KA 2) (RB 8) (MSB 2) (CB 3) (FC 3) (CE 7) (PE 8) (AGold 1) (BH 5) (KH 5) (CH 9) (JHUMP 9) (HK 4) (SK 9) (WK 2) (WL 6) (BAM 4) (JCO 1) (RBP 7) (JR 3) (LDR 1) (GS 9) (CS 4) (MSimp 1) (SS 7) (SV 7)