Novel Summaries Analysis
About the authors, overview, setting, themes and characters of novels
Literary Qualities
The mid-19th century produced a number of books dealing with boys rebelling against conventional society, such as Thomas Bailey Aldrich's Story of a Bad Boy (1869). While Twain's book is a powerful and original addition to literature about young people, it retains some of the "literary" language of 19th-century fiction. Twain abandons these conventions in Huckleberry Finn, in which he permits the title character to tell the story.
The novel contains many qualities of the adventure story: villains menace the innocent, hide treasures in caves, and inhabit haunted houses; heroes rescue helpless victims, discover buried treasure, and gain recognition from the women they love and from their community. Twain also employs conventions of frontier literature, in which pranks disrupt the order of the church and school, and the ominous Native American seeks revenge.
Related titles on this novel:
Themes and Characters
Topics for Discussion
Ideas for Reports and Papers
Related Titles and Adaptations
A & P
A Day of Pleasure:Stories of a Boy Growing Up in Warsaw
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
A Yellow Raft in Blue Water
Abe Lincoln Grows Up
All the King's Men
Animal Dreams
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
Bless Me Ultima
Breathing Lessons
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Cry the Beloved Country
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Ethan Frome
Flowers for Algernon
Gulliver's Travels
Hearth of Darkness
House Made of Dawn
I Am the Cheese
Like Water for Chocolate
Madame Curie
Mrs Dalloway
My Antonia
My Life in Dog Years
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
The Chocolate War
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
The House on Mango Street
The Kitchen God's Wife
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
The Once and Future King
The Power and the Glory
The Red Badge of Courage
The Red-Headed League
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
The Snows of Kilimanjaro
The Sun Also Rises
Thoreau of Walden Pond
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Watership Down
Where Are You Going Where Have You Been?