The Compassionate Morality of a Perfect Sap-head
First published in 1884, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was seen as a wildly adventurous novel for children until the pioneering critical work of the American scholar, Lionel Trilling, who saw it for what it is: a bildungsroman that charted the moral and emotional growth to maturity of a young boy exposed to an evil and corrupt society. Throughout the novel Huck’s innocence and especially his naïve, innocent voice constantly subvert the values he observes in the society he comes into contact with on his and Jim’s epic voyage down the Mississippi. The novel’s use of offensive racist ...
