| Full Title | The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn |
| Author | Mark Twain (pseudonym for Samuel Clemens) |
| Type of Work | Novel |
| Genre | Picaresque (episodic, colorful, often has quest or journey structure); satire of popular adventure and romance novels; bildungsroman (novel of education or moral development) |
| Language | English (frequently makes use of Southern and black dialects) |
| Time and place written | Begun in 1876 as a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; Twain set it aside and returned to it several times, finally finishing it in 1883; written mostly in Hartford, Connecticut, and Elmira, New York |
| Date of First Publication | 1885 |
| Publisher | Charles L. Webster & Co. |
| Narrator | Huckleberry Finn |
| Climax | The major climax of the novel occurs when Huck and Tom try to free Jim and Tom is shot in the leg. Two moral climaxes: in Chapter XVI when Huck lies to some men who are out hunting fugitive slaves by saying that the man on the raft with him is his father, who has smallpox; in Chapter XXXI, when Huck is considering writing Miss Watson to tell her the Phelps family has Jim. In both instances Huck follows his conscience instead of the prevailing morality of the day. |
| Protagonist | Huck Finn, and to a lesser extent, Jim |
| Antagonist | Society in general, which may take the form of the Widow Douglas, Pap, the Duke and Dauphin, or a slave trader |
| Setting (time) | Before the Civil War; roughly 1835-1845; Twain said the novel was set forty to fifty years before the time of its publication |
| Setting (place) | The novel opens in the Mississippi River town of St. Petersburg, Missouri, then Huck and Jim travel down the river through Arkansas |
| Point of View | Huck's point of view, although Twain occasionally indulges in a digression in which he shows off his ironic wit |
| Falling Action | Tom Sawyer's aunt Polly appears at the Phelpses, revealing that Jim has been set free by Miss Watson's will. Tom recovers from being shot, and Huck "lights out for the territory" in the West. |
| Tense | Immediate past; that is, real-time narration |
| Foreshadowing | The novel relies more on parallels and juxtapositions than on foreshadowing: Huck's plight and eventual escape and Jim's plight and eventual escape are continually compared. For example, both are kept prisoner in a cabin and eventually escape through a hole in the floor or wall. |
| Tone | Frequently ironic or mocking, particularly concerning adventure novels and romances; always contemplative to some extent, as Huck seeks to decipher the world around him; sometimes boyish and exuberant. |
| Symbols | The river, storms, floods, shipwrecks, the natural world (snakes, rats, etc.). Huck Finn does not that rely heavily on symbols. |
| Themes | Racism; the injustices and hypocrisy of society; social breakdown mirrored in family breakdown; education and intelligence; growing up and maturing; learning to think and reason morally for oneself; faith and received knowledge versus learning experience; deciphering the truth in the face of lies |
| Motifs | Light and dark, or black and white; drunkenness; ineffectual attempts at reform; spoofing of popular forms like romance novels; dialect and unique forms of speech; substitutes for parents; childhood and disillusionment; superstitions and folk beliefs |