Chuckling with Huckleberry Finn

In general, mandatory reading assignments aren't my favorite thing. I find that being forced to read a book--much like being force-fed some kind of new food--makes the thought of the experience a bit less... appetizing.

That being said, however, I actually enjoyed Huck Finn more than most of the other required reading that I've had to do over the years. Once I began to pick up on the subtle jabs that Twain made toward literary cliches and social conventions of his time period, the novel become much more enjoyable to read.

Some memorable lines from the novel:
-"By-and-by they fetched the niggers in and had prayers, and then everybody was off to bed." (p. 5): That's just a little bit ironic. I suppose Christianity and slave ownership went hand-in-hand at the time. Makes perfect sense, of course. No contradictions at all there.
-"'Well,' says Buck, 'a feud is this way. A man has a quarrel with another man, and kills him; then that other man's brother kills him; then the other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another...'" (p. 127): Gotta love the classic feuding families. The guy's reasoning is spot-on, too. Killing people for a reason you don't quite remember? Normal.
-"To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin/ That makes calamity of so long life;/ For who would fardels bear, till Birnam Wood do come to Dunsinane" (p. 160): So I'm reading along, thinking it's a perfectly valid passage from Hamlet when--low and behold--Birnam Wood and Dunsi--wait. Isn't that from Macbeth? Cue the chuckling.
-"'And there ain't no other way, that ever I heard of, and I've read all the books that gives any information about these things. They always dig out with a case-knife--and not through dirt, mind you; generly it's through solid rock.'" (p. 283): Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we have a diehard Man in the Iron Mask fan on our hands. He has clearly done his research. And how hilarious he is.

Those lines are humorous for a reason that's hard to put into words, but their effect is a bit more obvious: laughing at society is just a less shocking way of accepting criticism of it, after all. Twain's humor gets to the heart of the matter, and everything is magnified through Huck's unique voice and dialect. With a few well-placed lines, Twain conveys the illogical and cruel nature of slavery and racism, the ease with which we're duped by others, and the laughable unoriginality of some of the stuff we read and then praise. Don't people say something about books that make people think being the good ones? Yeah. Well. That.