Historical and Biographical Approaches

1. Historical and Biographical Approaches Mark Twain�s Huckleberry Finn

2. Historical and cultural background of Huckleberry Finn This was part of frontier America in the 1840 and 1850s, a violent and bloody time. It was the era of Jim Bowie, of gunslingers like Jack Slade, of Indian fighters like Dave Crockett and Sam Houston.

3. The shooting of Old Boggs by Colonel Sherburn is drawn from the killing of one �Uncle Sam� Smarr by William Owsley on the streets of Hannibal on January 24, 1845. Characters and events in Huckleberry Finn are based upon actual happenings and persons

4. During the summer of 1847 Benson Blankenship, older brother of the prototype Huck, secretly aided a runaway slave by taking food to him at his hideout on an island across the river from Hannibal. Benson resolutely refused to be enticed into betraying the man for the reward offered for his capture.

5. This is undoubtedly the historical source of Huck�s loyalty to Jim that finally resulted in his electing to �go to Hell� in defiance of law, society, and religion rather than turn in his friend.

6. The performance of the �Royal Nonesuch� in Bricksville, Arkansas, where the King prances about the stage on all fours as the �cameleopard� was based on some of the bowdier male entertainments of the old Southwest.

7. The detailed description of the Grangerford house with its implied yet hilarious assessment of the nineteenth-century culture may be traced to a chapter from Life on the Mississippi entitled �The House Beautiful.�

8. Mark Twain�s vast knowledge of Negro superstitions was acquired from slaves in Hannibal, and on the farm of his uncle, John Quarles, prototype of Silas Phelps. Jim is modeled after Uncle Dan�l, a slave on the Quarles place.

9. Huck was in real life Tom Blankenship, a boyhood chum of Twain�s who possessed most of the trait Twain gave him as a fictional character.

10. Although young Blankenship�s real-life father was ornery enough, Twain modeled Huck�s father on another Hannibal citizen, Jimmy Finn, the town drunk.

11. Like Canterbury Tales, where Dryden found �God�s plenty,� Huckleberry Finn gives its readers a portrait gallery of the times. Scarcely a class is omitted.

12. Related Sources about Mark Twain Budd, Louis J, ed. Critical Essays on Mark Twain, 1910-1980. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1983. Sundquist, Eric J, ed. Mark Twain: a Collection of Critical Essays. N.J: Prentice Hall,1994. Anderson, Frederick, ed. Mark Twain: the Critical Heritage. London: Routledge,1997. Bloom, Harold, ed. and Intro. Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York :Chelsea House P,1986.