The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn And Homer s Odyssey

It is not difficult to at first dismiss the similarities of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Homer’s Odyssey as entirely superficial. Both are examples of the narrative pattern of The Hero’s Journey; the Odyssey presented as an epic that was so influential it birthed the entire western cannon of story telling and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn written in the tradition of the Great American Novel that defined the spirit of the age in the United States. Each respective hero embarks on a journey, encounters strange places and people, overcomes the odds they are confronted with, winning the day and ultimately returning home before their next adventure (Coupe). Beneath this pattern however, lie similarities so consistent, that one cannot help but wonder, did Twain use Homer’s Odyssey as a blueprint for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? By examining the story of Huck Finn’s trip down the Mississippi through the lens of the Odyssey , I endeavor to show how the deeper similarities between these two classics not only tie them together from centuries apart, but that the influence of Homer’s epic is alive and well in Twain’s novel. Perhaps the most important question to address first is whether evidence exists that Mark Twain ever read the Odyssey. In a piece by Patrick J. Deneen entitled â€Å"Was Huck Greek? The Odyssey of Mark Twain,† Deneen points out evidence that if Twain was not consciously aware of the similarities of between The Adventures of HuckleberryShow MoreRelatedThe Bronze And Iron Age Essay2093 Words   |  9 PagesQuestion: 1-What Can Homer tell us about the Bronze and Iron Age The Bronze and Iron Ages were 2 of the main periods in Greek History and Homer can tell us a lot about them. The Bronze Age was all about mixing copper with tin or arsenic to bronze hence it is called the Bronze Age. The Iron Age was when the whole of the east Mediterranean was in crisis. In central Anatolia, the collapse of the Hitties opened the gates to invaders who overran the country. Firstly, let’s talk about Homer- a lot of the worksRead MoreChildrens Literature13219 Words   |  53 Pagesnothing that could be considered a children’s book in the sense of a book written to give pleasure to a child. Because there were very few works composed for children, children borrowed from stories they enjoyed listening to such as the Iliad, the Odyssey, and Aesop’s Fables. Plato specifically mentions children’s education in Book VI of The Republic. Though he holds rather liberal views on education and directly states that children’s lessons should â€Å"take the form of play,† Plato held less liberal