Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Huck fakes his own death to escape his father, and on an island in the Mississippi he meets Jim, who is escaping slavery before being sold down the river. Together they ride a raft through fog, feuds, frauds, and steamboats. At the moral center of the book, Huck writes a letter betraying Jim, believes he will go to hell for not sending it, and tears it up anyway.

Twain's argument is that a boy's untrained heart can be more moral than a whole society's trained conscience. Everything Huck was taught, church, law, respectability, tells him Jim is property. The river teaches him Jim is a man. The comedy is real, but it is built over the central obscenity of slavery, and Twain never lets the two fully separate.

It is argued over in America more than any other novel, which is a sign of life, not failure. Watch the ending closely, when Tom Sawyer's games return and Huck's hard won moral seriousness is bargained away. Readers have fought for generations over whether Twain flinched there.