Smith, H.N. ''Introduction to AHF" (pp 323-344)

"The new structural principle which supplants the original linear movement toward freedom is bipolar. It is a contrast between the raft--connoting freedom, security, happiness, and harmony with physical nature--and the society of the towns along the shore, connoting vulgarity and malice and fraud and greed and violence." (pg: 329)

"The implied denunciation of slavery in Huckleberry Finn is more damaging than the frontal attack delivered by Uncle Tom's Cabin because Jim is so much more convincing as a character than is Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom, who is almost an allegorical figure- a Black Christ." (Smith 324)

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/MeaganGemperlein/2009/10/so_maybe_thats_why_we_read_unc.html

Society as Slaves

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/KatieLantz/2009/10/free_at_last.html

"For not only does the River connote freedom; the Shore connotes slavery, bondage in a more general sense than the actual servitude of Jim" (Smith 329)

"In passages such as these, the polar opposition between the River and the Shore, between freedom and bondage, is restated as a division within Huck's own mind. The intuitive self, the spontaneous impulse from the deepest levels of the personality, is placed in opposition to the acquired conscience, the overlayer of prejudice and false valuation imposed upon all members of society in the name of religion, morality, law, and culture."
~page 333

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/JenniferPrex/2009/10/internal_tug_of_war.html

Huck's a bad boy and the shore is a bad influence

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/HeatherMourick/2009/10/there_is_something_to_be_said.html

"And at the last moment it is revealed that Jim was freed two months earlier before through the highly implausible deathbed repentance of his owner, Miss Watson" (324).

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/KaylaLesko/2009/10/what_happened_to_your_train_of.html

"And at the last moment it is revealed that Jim was freed two months before through the highly implausible deathbed repentance of his owner, Miss Watson. We feel as badly sold as did the audience for the Duke's and the King's presentation of the Royal Nonesuch" (Smith 324)

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/JamieGrace/2009/10/put_your_feet_in_their_shoes.html

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/DavidWilbanks/2009/10/tom_sawyers_degradation_of_jim.html

"In Huckleberry Finn as in Wordsworth's Lyrical ballads, the language of literature gains a new life by being violently torn loose from its established moorings." (Smith)

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/JeredJohnston/2009/10/intro_to_adventures_of_huck_fi.html

"A book so clearly great, yet with such evident defects, poses a difficult critical problem. There is little profit in making a checklist of faults and beauties." (p. 323)