101 Books, Number 5

Favorite Books Throughout My Life

5: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1885, by Mark Twain (1835–1910)

I can’t believe I could forget

This wrenching novel that is set

In times we really can’t forget.

The novel stirs emotions strong—

In that, there’s really nothing wrong—

To read good books you must be strong.

It’s slavery at issue here—

And Twain’s position is so clear:

We cannot have such evil here.

His speaker is but just a boy

Whose language can, we know, annoy.

But he grows up, this orphan boy.

He comes to see Jim as a man—

That hadn’t been his boyhood plan,

To see a slave and see a man.

But near the end, the novel breaks—

The best of writers make mistakes—

And even finest china breaks.

The message, though, is firm and clear:

We all are humans living here;

We need to scrub all bias clear.

We need the death of slavery—

We need to make all people free.

If not? Then we’re in slavery.

We’re chained to ignorance and hate—

Those things must go (there’s no debate).

For life’s too short to stew in hate.