Character Growth in "Huckleberry Finn"

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain almost defies categorization. In a way, it’s a sort of sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, except it takes on a much darker, serious, adult tone in contrast to Tom’s antics. Huck is essentially an orphan, and though starting at the end of Tom Sawyer and into the beginning of Huck Finn the Widow Douglas has sort of adopted him, Huck revolts against her attempts to civilize him and soon is on the run. 

Sounds like the making of more Sawyerian shenanigans, right? Maybe Huck will be able to attend his funeral again, right? 

Wrong. 

Little Old Ladies: Introduction

Stories are filled with archetypes and stereotypes of characters, which first oral storytellers and then professional writers plugged into their works in almost formulaic fashion. Sometimes this was deliberate, other times unconscious on the storyteller’s end. But these types of characters in turn serve a role in forming the opinions and preconceptions of us, the readers. For example, the stories of princesses who are fairest in the land create a subconscious ideal of blonde, blue-eyed beauty.  Character types aren’t always that simplistic.

Long Reviews of Short Stories: Charles Yu's "Third Class Superhero"

With names like "401(k)" and "32.05864991%" and “Two-Player Infinitely Iterated Simultaneous Semi-cooperative Game with Spite and Reputation Autobiographical Raw Material Unsuitable for the Mining of Fiction,” it is a fair guess in just perusing the table of contents of this short story collection that is both quirky and probably written by a former science major or something. And both inferences are accurate.

Though I’m not much of a short story fan, I was drawn to this colorful paperback’s cover and science-fiction-y title. I was not disappointed with the content. Short stories have a tendency for being minimalist, a bit ambiguous, and existential. Again, I was not disappointed. Some stories, like “Realism” are so bleak as to almost feel like a cliché of Bleakness. What Yu does differently with his writing than most other contemporary storytellers is incorporating technobabble almost seamlessly into his world-building.