First Person Narrative Analysis

Summary The novel begins with Huck Finn introducing himself and referencing The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. "You don't know about me," Huck narrates, "without you have read a book by the name of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," but that ain't no matter." He tells readers that, for the most part, Twain told the truth in Tom Sawyer but that everyone tells some lies, even people like Aunt Polly and the Widow Douglas. Huck gives a brief summary of how he and Tom got six thousand dollars each at the end of Tom Sawyer. Judge Thatcher has taken Huck's money and invested it with a dollar of interest coming in each day, and Huck now lives with the Widow Douglas and her sister, Miss Watson. The sisters are, as Huck puts it, trying to "sivilize"
By using the first person narrative point of view, Twain carries on the southwestern humor tradition of vernacular language; that is, Huck sounds as a young, uneducated boy from Missouri should sound. This first sentence also alludes to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The allusion reminds the reader of a novel about boys and their adventures, the purpose of which, according to Twain, was to rekindle in adults memories "of how they felt and thought and talked, and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in." Then Huck — and Twain — dismiss the work with "But that ain't no matter." Although the boyish type adventure episodes tend to reappear as a plot motif in Huck Finn, especially in the sections including Tom, their primary purpose is more to communicate criticism of Twain's contemporary society than to evoke fond memories. This statement also makes clear that it does not matter whether readers have read Twain's earlier book or not. Huck Finn is Huck's story, and he will tell it from his natural, unsophisticated