Huck Finn: A Rendition into Contemporary English

Alexis Woodbury

Description

Reads fast and smooth by taking out the cumbersome Mississippi River dialect so today's reader can get a feel for the ingenious plot, colorful characters, and moral dilemmas of Twain's classic.

Sujets

• Literary
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Outskirts Press
• Date de parution: 09 juillet 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781977201157
• Langue: English

Extrait

Huck Finn: A Rendition into Contemporary English
All Rights Reserved.
Copyright © 2018 Alexis Woodbury
v3.0

This is a work of fiction. The events and characters described herein are imaginary and are not intended to refer to specific places or living persons. The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.

This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Outskirts Press, Inc.
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ISBN: 978-1-9772-0115-7

Cover design by Chris Cook. Cover image public domain. All rights reserved - used with permission.

Outskirts Press and the “OP” logo are trademarks belonging to Outskirts Press, Inc.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


Acknowledgements
For their encouragement, many thanks to John and Joanne.
Cover design by Chris Cook.
Cover image by Eugene Iverd,
Used courtesy of the Dave Thomson Collection at Steamboats.com.
Image believed to be in public domain,
And I made a good faith donation to the Mark Twain Museum in Hannibal, Missouri.


Introduction
Huck Finn is a story I go back and forth on. Is it a deep, moral treatise? Or an episode of Seinfeld? Do Huck’s comments show Twain was anti-religion? Or was his critique a call for a more authentic engagement? Was Twain writing an abolitionist tract? Or giving an excuse for further mistreatment?
I first read Huckleberry Finn in my early twenties, after I had been active in the civil rights movement. I went to my first march in the summer of 1965, after turning eighteen. To me, Huck was a civil rights hero, the way he came to his decision about Jim. Which is why I was surprised when I heard, subsequently, that some people wanted to ban the book. On the one hand, I can see that it does make some critical comments about Black culture of that time. But, on the other hand, it also makes critical comments about White culture of that time. And didn’t the writer have a responsibility to paint an accurate picture of how racial interactions were taking place at that point in the American journey of both Blacks and Whites?
And there was Hemingway who said, “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn . American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.” What if he were right? What would the implications be? And what could we learn from that? Right off, several titles come to my mind, in no particular order: Catcher in the Rye , Strawberry Statement , Midnight Run . I’ll let Professors of Literature fill in some more.
But then Twain, ever the joker, said in his preface, “Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.” I can see what he means. It occurs to me that Twain, like Shakespeare, put in some stuff for the high brows and a lot of stuff for the low brows, too. I mean, look at the title: the “Adventures” of Huck Finn. So, we should expect lots of twists and turns and hijinks.
So, even if you want to find a solid reason why Huck Finn should be banned, you still have to read the book first, so you can see for yourself what kind of story it is and what its value might be for you.
One thing which made the reading difficult for me was the type of English it is written in. Twain said he wrote the book in the various dialects of the rural south of that time (1830). And he made a good joke about that, too, which you can read in his original. But the dialects are very hard to decipher these days. It makes the reading slow, tedious, and off-putting.
So, what I wanted to do was make a readable version of the story, by removing the dialects, so people could get the gist of the story. That way, contemporary readers could develop their own feel for Huck’s adventure.
Coming to the book again this year, when I’m seventy and retired, I see Huck doing a type of sifting known in Zen as “neti neti,” which means “not this, not that.” It refers to a process where you keep busting and denying things till you find something you can’t deny. You find what is, by identifying what isn’t. It’s a process Huck uses, and many young people in the course of their awakening. And maybe some older people, too, at midlife, or beyond.
One of the strongest things I see in the book is the development of what I call Huck’s “heart.” Who does he find a heart for, and on what basis? I recall what Martin Luther King Jr. said in his famous “I have a Dream” speech, how he looked forward to the day when his four little children “will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” On his journey, Huck does all kinds of character analysis and evaluation. The book could very well be seen as a study of that illusive thing we call “character.” And I think the book could be used productively in an ethics class, to look at the organic way Huck comes to his moral decisions and on what basis he makes them.
And the more I look at Huck, the more I see him as an abused, abandoned street kid, and I wonder how that affects the way he relates to people along his journey. Would it help account for his suspicious, critical nature? And I wonder how he will go about accomplishing some healing for his soul later in life.
Once you get the story of Huck Finn, you can decide for yourself if you think it’s a story worth getting. And hopefully you’ll have a better experience when you follow it up with a reading of the original. My text is a finger pointing to the moon. The moon is Twain, and I hope you’ll have a better chance at enjoying what he did.
Note: To convert the dollar amounts Twain mentions, to adjust for inflation, multiply by twenty-five. One dollar then equals twenty-five today. I used the inflation adjusted numbers in this text.
Also: I’ve heard there is a controversy about Twain’s use of what today is called the N-word. That’s a tough one because there are good values and intentions on each side of the argument.
Finally, anything I accidentally left out in my paraphrase, you can easily find and enjoy in the original. I did the best I could.


Alexis Woodbury, 2018


Chapter 1
T he way you know about me is a book called The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. And I’m OK with that. Mr. Twain told the truth, mainly. There were some things he exaggerated. But, everybody I know has done that a time or two, except Aunt Polly, the Widow Douglas, and maybe Mary. So, that book is mainly true, with some exaggerations. And I’m OK with that.
Now the way that story ends is Tom and I found the money the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got a finder’s fee from the bank in the amount of $150,000 each. So, Judge Thatcher took over guardianship of the money for us, put it in the bank, and we got interest payments of $25 a day, every day of the year. That was more money than we knew what to do with in our little country town.
The Widow Douglas adopted me and said she was going to civilize me. But she was OCD. And when I couldn’t take it anymore, I put on my jeans and hit the road and felt free and satisfied. But then Tom Sawyer found me and said he wanted to start his own gang of robbers and needed an inside man, and I could join his gang if I went back to the widow and pretended to be respectable. So, I did. There was a lot of drama. The widow called me a poor, lost lamb, and hugged me and cried. I knew she meant well.
But, the OCD life style started up again. I had to wear clean clothes again and felt cramped and sweaty all the time. When she rang the bell for supper, I had to come inside on time. And before I could sit down at the table, I had to wash my hands. And when I sat down, I couldn’t start eating right away but had to wait for the widow to lower her head and say some prayers over the food, though I didn’t see there was anything wrong with the food – it was cooked through and looked OK to me. After supper, she would get out a Bible and read to me about Moses and his adventure in the bulrushes, and I was really getting into it until she told me Moses had been dead for a long time. So, that took all the fun out of it.
Pretty soon, I wanted a smoke, but the widow wouldn’t let me. She said it was a dirty habit and I shouldn’t do it anymore. That’s the way with some people, they put things down when they haven’t even tried them for themselves. She took snuff, which she said was all right, but then she wouldn’t let me smoke. Go figure. And she was getting all excited about Moses, who was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, since he was dead.
Then her sister, Miss Watson, a skinny unmarried lady who wore glasses, pulled up a chair next to me and took out a spelling book and made me work on it for an hour, till the widow finally told her that was enough. So, we sat there doing nothing, and I got fidgety. Miss Watson kept saying, “Don’t put your feet up there!” and “Don’t scrunch up like that, sit up straight, Huckleberry!” and “Why don’t you try and behave, Huckleberry?”
Then she told me about hell, and I said I wished I was there right now. Then she got mad, and I said I didn’t mean any harm. I told her all I wanted was to go somewhere else. Anywhere. I wanted a change, and I wasn’t particular. She said I was evil to say that, and she