Episode 28: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) allows us to take up a crucial question -- is it a ship or a boat? Well, it’s actually a raft, on a river, but even Tristan doesn’t hold that against this blistering satire of Antebellum American society. We talk about the novel’s fraught racial politics, its scathing critiques of the plantation class, and its interesting (and troubling) commentary on nineteenth-century constructions of childhood. We also talk about the Mississippi River and how Twain understands it as a symbol of enslavement and freedom, capital, and liminality.

We read and recommend the Norton Critical Edition edited by Thomas Cooley. However, Toni Morrison’s introduction in the 1996 Oxford edition is a fantastic discussion of both the novel’s major themes and the broader debates about how Twain treats race and racism.

*Note to our listeners. Megan is on maternity leave, but she’ll be back next week!

Find us on Twitter and Instagram @betterreadpod, and email us nice things at [email protected]. Find Tristan on Twitter @tjschweiger, Katie @katiekrywo, and Megan @tuslersaurus.