Over the last month or so, I've been reading the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to my son. We'd read Tom Sawyer just before and he really enjoyed it so I figured we'd keep it up.
I hadn't read it for probably 30 years at least and, though I remembered bits and pieces of the story, I didn't remember the ending and was mostly discovering it anew and was invested as I was reading it to him.
As we read through it, I was reminded how different it was from Tom Sawyer; Tom Sawyer being a fun adventure book for kids and Huck Finn being a serious account of a particular time in our history. It was hard reading and there were a few bits that I had to stop and apologize because they were so difficult to get through subject-wise. Not remembering the ending, I was dreading it.
Then Tom re-enters the picture.
in the last few chapters, Tom takes over the narrative with how he wants things to play out. Then it's over and everyone is happy. All I could think about was this was the "and then I woke up" trope. It was like Mark Twain, after dealing with the darkest sides of humanity for the majority of the book, just wanted to be finished and gave up.
I'm still thinking about it days later and wonder if I'm missing something. Help me understand.
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