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Like a road trip but wetter....

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A lot of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn take place on me the [River discussing Huckleberry Finn]

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Mississippi River there's plenty of action along the way scoundrels, thieves

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and slave hunters to dodge but what are we really doing out here besides all [Jim and Finn standing on a raft]

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that well we're on what literary types like to refer to as the road trip motif

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just when you thought road trips were all about spring break in the wide world [Man in a swimming pool and his trunks float away]

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of storytelling the road trip serves several purposes first and foremost it's

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a way of using the hero's journey archetype which stories have used since

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stories first started being a you know a thing think odysseus, Star Wars, the Bible

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or even Batman well the hero's journey follows a basic

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formula the hero gets a call to adventure they meet up with a mentor or [Adventure calling a cell phone]

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guardian encounter challenges all along the way undergo some sort of

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transformation usually a spiritual one then they go back home the end clearly [Woman exits a taxi and walks towards home]

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Twain made use of this classic archetype when writing Huck Finn, Hucks the hero

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Jim and the civilized folks are the mentors the river journey is the action

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and the Dukan King business along with the feuding families certainly caused

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conflict and Huck has his crisis of conscience when he realizes that the [Huck gasps as Jim fades travels away on a raft]

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right thing to do is let Jim be a free man and then they go back home nope that

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part doesn't happen no one said the archetype has to stick to its formula

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like chaw on your shoe.. Twain deviates from the traditional hero's journey by

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letting Huck ride you know float off into the sunset instead of [Huck and Jim floating into sunset]

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returning home to his hateful abusive father also Pap, his father's dead now

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well that wouldn't really work anyway would it? Twain also used the road trip

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slash hero's journey idea as a tool of characterization

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think about it the United States is a big place and different types of

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people live in different regions of the country like you know Eskimos in Alaska [Group of eskimos in Alaska]

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beach bums in Florida and farmers Midwest well not only do people believe

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in slightly different things or wear different clothes they speak in

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different ways as well so as Huck and Jim travel downstream on [Huck and Jim travelling downstream on a raft]

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the mighty Mississippi they encounter different folks with different lives and

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way different ways of speaking like these choice phrases from chapter 12 and

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what? come again this isn't nonsense it's what [Mississippi river discussing book]

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we like to call dialect language that you'll only hear in a certain part of

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the world or spoken by a specific set of people

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here's another....

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Well first of all only those civilized folks call

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Huck by his full first name that tells us something about who's speaking here

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we can also tell that's character speaking is an authority figure since [Miss Watson appears]

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they're throwing down commands like nobody's business and the character has

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something of an education because Twain didn't write them by using a specific

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dialect what we're reading is more or less basic English dialect is a fun

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little way to characterize a character's because it lets the reader know all [Person picks up Huckleberry Finn book]

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sorts of traits about them without the author coming right out and saying these

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things... In those delightful first passages above the characters are

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lowdown murderous, thieving fools aka bad guys...Twain writes this dialogue in a

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dialect that shows they're uneducated and in this case they're clearly up to

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no good but just because these fools were foolish it doesn't mean that they [Image of man pointing a gun at a man on the floor]

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didn't also have some wise things to say being uneducated doesn't necessarily

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equate to being unwise and in the second example miss Watson is ordering Huck

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around using his full name to show that she means business..Here's a

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third example, this is the way Twain wrote Jim's dialect...

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....now when we know Jim's a slave

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which means he's not been allowed the chance to have any education..The other

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really important thing to note about the way Twain wrote the very dialect is that [Dialect floating in river]

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besides being a super effective tool of characterization it's also how he's

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created a voice for the books narrator Huck himself...

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Huck's a kid and he's been through some tough stuff in life these are factors

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which shape how he sees the world around him and how he tells the tale of his

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experiences were an older more civilized narrator the telling this story it would

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have to be written in a totally different way probably like how much [Miss Watson appears as Huck is sitting at a table with a bowl of food]

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Watson speaks we lose a lot of the characterization as it stands now so

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it's a good thing Twain opted to write this story in the way that he did even

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though Twain differentiates the characters through dialect his

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underlying commentary and a major theme in this book is that people are alike [Girl flicking through a book]

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everywhere we made different thoughts morals, molars and the way we speak

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everyone lets their own preconceptions color their approach to the world the [Girl wearing 3D glasses in a movie theater]

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road trip or river trip more accurately here

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let's Twain show us that people are alike all over they never look past

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their front yard as the king so eloquently says...

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What he means is that fools are everywhere no [Man sits down on a train and a clown appears]

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matter where you go..they're they are... well above all the road trip story

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is very American it takes a hero's journey but puts a

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very red white and blue spin on it America is a big country lots of roads [Cars travelling down a highway]

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lots of rivers lots of things to see we spent most of the 19th century

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stampeding madly towards California in what's known as a national road trip

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that took up a huge chunk of our history it's no wonder that Twain used it as a

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blueprint to talk about American life and values you know for

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better or worse tons of other writers have done the same in fact you can

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probably find a road trip story to fit every mood

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Steinbeck did it with The Grapes of Wrath and travels with Charlie... Kerouac [Road trip book examples appear]

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did it with on the road you can even go with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or

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the electric kool-aid acid test if drug abuse by proxy is your thing all of them

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took at least some of their cues and inspiration from Huck Finn not just

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because it's a seriously great story but because here on the Mississippi we do [Mississippi river transforms into a hypnotic trance]

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trippin' in the right way

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