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principles hidden behind those wide arrays of humor so that we can have a comprehensive
understanding of Mark Twain’s seemingly disorderly humor.
Huck Finn, commonly known as the masterpiece of Mark Twain, one of the central
works of American literature and a worldwide bestseller, delivers its powerful message
through Huck’s narration. His rich language and humor remain fresh. Huck’s journey
down the river has become part of American mythology, and the issues of freedom and
responsibility he confronts still concern American culture. Readable, entertaining, and
significant, this novel deserves its status as a “classic”. Hemingway once said “All modern
American literatures came from one book written by Mark Twain called The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn”2
Huck Finn traces the moral education of a young boy whose conscience defeats his
self-interest and the negative forces of his culture. Huck, a homeless boy whose only
relative is his drunkard father, is adopted by a respectable widow who tries to educate him. She forces him to go to school, but Huck dislikes being so cooped up and “sivilized” like
the children from the well-off family. His father takes him away from the widow’s
adoption, and Huck prefers the freedom of his father’s hut to the constraint of more
genteel surroundings. Freed from civilizing influences and placed in the company of his
father, a vulgar man who boasts of his own illiteracy, Huck seems like a poor candidate for
moral growth. But when Pap Finn nearly kills the boy after drinking a lot one time, Huck
escapes and meets the runaway slave Jim. It is Jim who provides him with the opportunity
to make a significant moral choice. “Huck has been shaped not only by his father’s view
that one should act out of self-interest, but also by the dominant society’s belief that God’s
law legalizes slavery”3. As he protects Jim, Huck feels certain that he will go to hell.
Nonetheless, he transcends his upbringing and learns to value essential human bonds of trust beyond his own interest and the society’s prejudice that black slaves are inferior or
even not human beings. Throughout the novel the boy witnesses a variety of human
corruption, pretension, and violence, but maintains his integrity without being affected.
In this novel, humor greatly contributes to its popularity around the world. As humor
plays a significant role in making this novel successful, scholars or researchers involved in
the study of Huck Finn more or less have to study his humor. In this respect, there are a lot
of forerunners taking great interest in Mark Twain’s humor found everywhere in this novel.
However, the author of this paper finds that scholars have not exhausted exploration on
Mark Twain’s humor in Huck Finn. Although they have given solid explanations or
analysis about Mark Twain’s humor in Huck Finn from various perspectives and by
different approaches, they focus too much on the use of humor itself, paying little attention
to the theories of humor. In this case, we could not see an integrated picture of Mark
Twain’s humor. Thus, what is needed is a systematic or integrated exploration of the humor in Huck Finn. To offer an integrated picture of Mark Twain’s humor world, it is necessary to approach the h