Huckleberry Finn Context
- Created by: PsychoMunchkin
- Created on: 18-04-22 19:28
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- Huckleberry Finn Context
- Author
- Samuel Langhorne Clemens
- born 30 November 1835
- This was the night of Halley's comet (appears approx. every 75 years)
- died 21 April 1910 (when Halley's comet appeared again)
- born 30 November 1835
- grew up along the Mississippi River
- quit school at 12
- At age 24 he returned to the Mississippi and became a river boat pilot. It is from this experience that he took the name Mark Twain, derived from the call for safe water.
- Moved to Hannibal, Missouri at age 4.
- During this time he lost a younger brother and sister as well as his father.?
- He witnessed slavery, violence, economic disparity and river culture along the Mississippi.
- He briefly served as a confederate soldier during the American Civil War before deserting.
- Samuel Langhorne Clemens
- Social
- the white majority oppressed the black minority
- Jim Crow Laws of 1876
- institutionalised racial segregation
- African Americans' opportunities for education and employment were severely limited
- The Ku Klux Klan, first formed in the 1860s, became the arm of racist violence throughout the rest of the 19th century and into the 20th. ?
- Novel was banned from a library in Massachusetts whom branded the subject of the novel ‘tawdry’ and its narrative ‘coarse’ and ‘ignorant.’
- Similarly other libraries banned the book and so began the controversy that surrounded the novel until long after Twain’s death in 1910. ?
- In the 1950s African American groups disapproved of the book's portrayal of black characters despite Twain’s intention of the novel which was to criticise racism and slaver
- Historical
- First slaves brought to America in 1619.
- estimated that 6 to 7 million slaves were imported to the New World during the 18th century alone.?
- After the American Revolution (1775-83), the new US Constitution counted each slave as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of taxation
- The domestic slave trade continued to flourish and by 1860 the slave population had reached nearly 4 million, with more than half living in the cotton-producing states of the south.
- Slaves constituted about one-third of the southern population.
- American Civil War - 1861-1865
- South vs North about slavery
- South supported slavery as it had the slave plantations (tobacco, cotton etc)
- North did not support and helped saves escape
- Anti-slavery northerners began helping fugitive slaves escape to the north via a loose network of safe houses in the late 18th century
- Underground Railroad
- helped anywhere from 40,000 to 100,000 slaves reach freedom.
- Anti-slavery northerners began helping fugitive slaves escape to the north via a loose network of safe houses in the late 18th century
- Emancipation Proclaimation
- Freedom for slaves
- On September 22, 1862 President Lincoln issued a preliminary emancipation proclamation stating that all slaves “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”
- The Thirteenth Amendment was ratified by December 18, 1865 which ensured that forever after “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude … shall exist within the United States.”
- First slaves brought to America in 1619.
- set during the 1840s where slavery was not abolished
- Written during the Reconstruction Era
- Huck Finn was published in 1885 which is remembered as ‘ The Lost Cause Years’
- Written during the Reconstruction Era
- Author
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