Three Ways to Improve Your Writing

Topic Sentences:

This sentence describes what the paragraph is about. It is the introduction to your paragraph. Every paragraph needs one somewhere, preferably at the beginning.

Sentence Continuity:

You need to connect your thoughts from sentence to sentence in order to stay on topic. There are three ways to do so:

1) Transitional phrases ("on the other hand," "not only...but also"), conjunctions, (as if, but, yet, while) and keywords (repeat words and phrases from the past sentence in the following sentence).

Paragraph Transitions:

You need to connect your thoughts from paragraph to paragraph with your topic sentence. Basically, you use the same tools that you employ for sentence continuity, but instead of staying on topic, you are switching to a new topic.

Here is an essay with no topic sentences, not-so-great sentence continuity, no paragraph transitions, and other problems too. But they are all easily fixed!

In his essay, "Born to Trouble: One Hundred Years of Huckleberiy Finn," Kaplan defends and justifies Twain's choice of language and characters by revealing the true nature of the story. People's negative reactions to Huck Finn are due to Twain's intention of presenting a satire. Society has discredited the book and attempted to limit its distribution. Justin Kaplan explains much of the misunderstanding of Mark Twain's book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a novel that has endured criticism and rejection to the point of being banned from schools, libraries, and even a whole state.

Kaplan argues that the main character, Huck, in terms of social etiquette, was definitely not a model adolescent. "Many readers found [the] great novel objectionable because it violated genteel standards of social and literary decorum" (Kaplan 354). Kaplan notes that the book was criticized for allegedly being racist. Some groups found such words as "nigger" as well as the portrayal of Jim, the runaway-slave, to be offensive.

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Numerous school councils, libraries, and even the state of Massachusetts banned the novel. Kaplan provides background for his essay by explaining that the main criticism that Twain's book suffered was that it dealt with foul language, poor morality, and basic filth.

It is not merely a story describing the "boyhood high-jinks" (Kaplan 355) of the young "hero" Huck, but rather a satire of the American society of the time that Twain writes about. One sees the raw ugliness and foolishness of people. Critics could only see and be offended by the superficial aspects of the book: the crude language and blasphemous concepts. Twain's intent was to slander people in such a way that caused an evaluation of one's self and society as a whole. "Offensive as they seemed at the time, these violations of decorum only screened a deeper lever of threat and affront" (354.) Twain explains the:

"central and constitutive irony [of the book]: 'A sound heart and a deformed conscience come into collision and conscience suffers defeat.' Huck's 'deformed conscience' is the internalized voice of public opinion, of a conventional wisdom that found nothing wrong in the institution of slavery and held as mortal sin any attempt to subvert it... conscience 'can be trained to approve any wild thing you want it to approve if you begin its education early and stick to it."' (Kaplan 354)

Kaplan's argument is that the book has basically been misunderstood by its critics. Huck learns to overlook the ideas of what he should do in dealing with certain

dilemmas that were installed in him through his upbringing (his ''conscience'') and eventually becomes more comfortable with going by what his heart tells him is right. He "rejects what he considers to be an unjust and immoral law. He also rejects the craving for social approval that, according to Twain, motivate the behavior of most of us" (Kaplan 355.) Kaplan's intention is to show that through becoming more of an individual thinker, Huck ultimately becomes a better person. He explains that beyond Twain's "hero's" roughness, there is a good example for the book's readers to follow. Kaplan maintains that the character of Huck, though seen as unkempt, lazy, impolite, and overall a naughty kid, is essentially the most "good" person in the story.

The potentially offensive words such as "nigger" by explaining were essential due to Twain's attempt to be authentic and true to the time in which the story is based. Twain

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is trying to show the ignorance and foolishness of American people living in the time during which slavery was common practice. Kaplan writes that "One has to be deliberately dense to miss the point Mark Twain is making here and to construe such passages as evidences of his 'racism."' (357). Twain was known by friends to have a poor opinion of racism and the abuse of basic human rights. Twain's intention was to offend people in such a way that caused them to question their own actions. Kaplan defends Twain's choice of language.

People who were able to read Twain's true meaning were unable to accept it and didn't want to see or admit to having understood it. Kaplan suggests that such reactions to the book as banning it were simply a "way of dealing with [its] profound affront." (355) Perhaps the book is indeed unsuitable for children, as some of its heavy ideas questioning social morals may be hard to understand at their level, but those who attempted to regulate and limit the distribution of the book should have themselves not taken Twain's message lightly. He basically says that those who criticized the novel for being crude and racist simply missed Twain's essential message.

Bibliography

Kaplan, Justin. "Born to Trouble: One Hundred Years of Huckleberry Finn." Mark

Twain 's Adventures ofHuckleberrv Finn: A Case Study in Critical Controversy.

Gerald Graff and James Phelan, eds. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995.348-

358.

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