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The language of Huck Finn [UPDATED]
Published 9:22am Friday, February 10, 2012 Updated 11:23am Friday, February 10, 2012Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” has been influencing American culture since its first United States publication in 1885. The Fergus Falls Reads committee chose Huck Finn as the community read this year.
Twain was born Samuel Clemens in Florida, Mo., in 1835.
The focus of this column is to discuss the use of dialect in Huck Finn, and how Twain was able to place his readers in the middle of an America that was already seen as ancient history when it was published. First some background:
Twain’s life was probably typical of anyone born at that time and in that place, but from the perspective of midwest America in 2012, it was brutal.
Two of John and Jane Clemens’s children died from disease. Twain witnessed a street shooting in Hannibal, Mo., the town to which the family moved when he was four. He once found a dead body in his father’s justice of the peace office. Twain lost a friend to drowning in the Mississippi River. He and friends came across the body of a murdered slave while fishing. The river town of Hannibal was continually visited by all sorts of criminals and odd characters making their way up and down the waterway.
This is the stuff that can influence a writer with a sense of place and with a particular talent to set their readers in the middle of it. One way to place readers in a story is to influence their ears as they read.
Twain is often credited with being one of the first authors to attempt to spell out phonetically how his characters would sound in the real world. Scholarly opinions point to a varying number of dialects, or that Twain didn’t really pay all that much attention to dialect and just randomly threw spelling variations around.
It seems clear that Twain was not random and that he did expend effort making his dialects accurate and (mostly) consistent.
The fact that he grew up in a river town exposed him to accents and dialects from a wide area and from all levels of society.
Twain’s preface to Huckleberry Finn refers to seven dialects or shadings contained within the story: Missouri “Negro,” South-Western, Pike County, and four other variations of Pike County.
David Carkeet’s 1979 analysis of dialect in Huckleberry Finn provides a clear breakdown of what character speaks in each dialect. Carkeet also points out some inconsistencies in Twain’s ability to keep the dialects straight.
It should be noted that Twain wrote the novel over a period of years from 1876 to 1883 so some variations in non-standard spelling of dialects could be expected.
Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” uses dialect as a way to place readers in a certain environment. His abilities as an observer of these variations in speech is proof of a real talent.
As you read Huck Finn this month take time to notice the dialects and see if you can pick out who is speaking which variation.
Find out more about Huck Finn, Mark Twain and all of the Fergus Falls Reads events we have planned for the month of February by joining Fergus Falls Reads on Facebook or Twitter or check the library’s website at www.fergusfalls.lib.mn.us.
Roy Anderson is the School Media Specialist and a Fergus Falls Reads committee member.
