Jan McCutcheon
English 48B
Journal for Twain

Author Quote: “After all this long journey, and after all we’d done for them scoundrels, here was it all come to nothing, everything all busted up and ruined, because they could have the heart to serve Jim such a trick as that, and make him a slave again all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty dollars.”


Internet Quote: "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called "Huckleberry Finn." all American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since." -- Ernest Hemingway

Summary: In chapter 35 of “Huckleberry Finn,” Huck and Jim fallen in with scam artists who go from town to town trying to swindle the locals. They sell Jim for $40 and Huck, first considers writing to Miss Watson telling her where she can find Jim. Then has second thoughts, considering that it wouldn’t be a very good outcome for either he or Jim. Instead he decides to go try to get Jim back.

“Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses” is Twain’s humorous criticism of The Deerslayer.


Response: “Huckleberry Finn” was published 20 years after the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment outlawing slavery. It’s hard to imagine people being bought and sold like cattle. Mark Twain was a strong supporter of the abolition of slavery.

In “Fenimor” Twain goes through The Deerslayer listing all of Cooper’s numerous literary offenses, claiming there he has scored “114 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115” (norton 295). The Deerslayer was published with Twain was 6 years old and he wrote the criticism when he was 50. Clearly something rubbed him the wrong way to get him to write in such detail about this book. Maybe he was tired of being compared to Cooper?