The best work that Mark Twain ever produced is, as we noted earlier on, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It tells a story about the United States before the Civil War, around 1850, when the great Mississippi Valley was still being settled. Here lies an America, with its great national faults, full of violence and even cruelty, yet still retaining the virtues of ‘some simplicity, some innocence, and some peace.’ The story takes place along the Mississippi River, on both sides of which there was unpopulated wilderness and a dense forest. It relates the story of the escape of Jim from slavery and, more important, how Huck Finn, floating along with him and helping him as best he could, changes his mind, his prejudice about black people, and comes to accept Jim as a man and as a close friend as well.
At the heart of Twain’s achievement is his creation of Huck Finn, who embodies that mythic America, midway between the wilderness and the modern super state.