I loved the ending. Endings are supposed to solve or at least address all the conflicts in the story, and this one does that not only for the plot issues but for the one conflict that people seem to ignore (you did it less so, but I feel this deserves more emphasis). The book begins with Huck in Tom's gang where they act out robber stories, with Tom as the charismatic leader with all the plans. Every boy in town seems to follow his lead on these adventures, and Huck not only admires Tom's education and privilege but also the fact that he always has a plan, a way to get out of trouble so when Huck goes on his quest and encounters actual trouble he constantly wishes Tom were there or that he was Tom both inwardly and out-loud so the smart but woefully ignorant Jim ends up believing the praise Huck gives Tom, so I understood Huck's relief to see Tom and get his input on the break out, and I am happy to point out that it says in the book Huck was horrified by Tom's ideas, and Jim recognized the impracticality, yet both believed wholeheartedly that Tom knew best because he is the alpha personality ideas man so they went along with it. I saw the bit with Tom as Huck's final ascension, Huck only started trying to be civilized in the beginning because he wanted to be like Tom, and realizing Tom's sociopathic betrayal was the final straw that finally inspired Huck to reject civilization "I been there before." Therefore, Tom is civilization itself and Huck finally sees how overrated and below him it is, and at the same time the audience is shown how far Huck has come because Tom is a stupid kid as well as a sociopath while Huck has become a Man.

The ending is outrageous and rough to read, but I think that's the point. Twain provides a glimpse of how dehumanizing slavery is. He intends us to be angry at Tom's pranks and identify with Jim. Basically, he's trying to get the same emotional response out of the reader that Huck has to Jim and it works.

I see the ending of the novel to be a satire towards the Jim Crow Laws. Even after Jim is technically free, he is forced to go through unnecessary procedures by Tom. This shows how white people controlled blacks even after they were free through the Jim Crow laws. The fact that Tom threw rats and bugs into the shed with Jim shows how white people believed that blacks were "dirty" and it was "okay" for them to suffer. Along with this, the problem could be so easily solved (they could steal the key and free him) but Tom decides that it is okay to control him purely for his own amusement.

To me the ending serves two purposes 1. Show how much Huck had changed during the story, at the beginning he wouldn't have seen any problem with Tom's plan, by the end he realizes that Tom is very immature. 2. Show how easy it is to fall back to prejudice attitudes, and very quickly. When he first shows up he tells a story about an explosion on the boat. When asked if anyone was hurt he said "No, kilt a n*****", a phrase I have a hard time convincing myself he would have said a few days earlier on the raft.

If any of y'all have the opportunity, you should look into George Saunders' essay on this book. The key paragraph: " …Tom and Huck represent two viable models of the American character. They exist side by side in every American and every American action. America is, and always has been, undecided about whether it will be the United States of Tom or the United States of Huck. The United States of Tom looks at misery and says: Hey, I didn’t do it. It looks at inequity and says: All my life I have busted my butt to get where I am, so don’t come crying to me. Tom likes kings, codified nobility, unquestioned privilege. Huck likes people, fair play, spreading the truck around. Whereas Tom knows, Huck wonders. Whereas Huck hopes, Tom presumes. Whereas Huck cares, Tom denies. These two parts of the American Psyche have been at war since the beginning of the nation, and come to think of it, these two parts of the World Psyche have been at war since the beginning of the world, and the hope of the nation and the world is to embrace the Huck part and send the Tom part back up the river, where it belongs. "

Did you know that Mark Twain also wrote the ending to Mass Effect 3.

The "Safe travels, Huck godspeed" gave me the feels because reading it is one of my fondest childhood memories.

The ending is so funny to me because Tom sees Huck when he gets to the farm and is like "oh no it's a ghost!" but if I remember correctly aunt Polly gets to the farm and sees Huck and she's just like "I should have freaking known."

Every discussion I have ever heard about the ending of Huck Finn has always chalked up the ending to the fact that Twain sat on the manuscript for years unsure how to finish it. Your point that it might simply be Twain taking his trademark cynical view of human nature is very interesting ... in a "why didn't I think of this before" way.

Waiting for Crash Course Music Theory.

I'm really loving all the little improvements in this edition of crash course, especially in the thought bubble. Tom and Huck talking via emojis was perfect. XD I also honestly can't wait to see John's interpretation of Lord of the Flies. It was the worst book I've ever been forced to read. Keep up the amazing work, John!

This is hands down my favorite series on KZfaq.

Man, that crash course was an awesome one! I'd love to see even more videos on the topic. I feel like initiating a discussion group! Already got myself the ebook of hucks adventures, thanks John!

I’ve never found the ending odd. I guess as an adult, I can see where the thematic differences lie, but when I read this as a kid, I just saw an adventure ending and reality starting again. Which makes sense to kid’s brain. The river was a pipe dream and almost a fantastical adventure that had to end sometime. The end of the book was just reality setting back in, adventure time over.

Thank you for helping me understand this novel in a much more complex way - can't wait for the sonnets next week! :)

10:14 "Safe Travels Huck, and Godspeed,". Poetic, from a poet, about one.

Great analysis of the book and at perfect time to contemplate these thoughts.

I've been waiting for this episode!

You should do Of Mice and Men.

Do 1984!

Great interpretation! I remember reading this & Tom Sawyer in middle school and being thoroughly bored. Thanks for making it exciting again!

The ending is the Civil War. The Civil War was the "adventure" to free Jim, AKA the slaves. Remember, Mark Twain fought in the Civil War for two weeks before deserting. Tom knowing that Jim was already free was a basic Northerner knowledge, however Mark Twain decides to satirize the "escape." The disruption in Aunt Sally's house, the missing sheets and the missing spoons, represents the damage done to the South during the war, and Tom being shot by the mob was representing how brothers, neighbors and friends were turned against each other. You may think that Mark Twain, the man who criticized his own homeland, wouldn't do the same to the North, but you have to remember that Mark Twain was a satirist and he would have criticized anyone, mostly if he went against his own region. Another thing worth noting is Huck lighting out for Indian Territory, which would be Oklahoma. He would be going west, which coincides with Mark Twain deserting the Confederate army after serving for two weeks and going west to his brother. It took Twain only two weeks in the war to unveil the hypocrisy of the North and South, and realizing how he didn't want to be "sivilized." This is my theory of the ending. I based most of it off of Mark Twain's life himself.

Why would Huck follow Tom at the end? Because kids have leaders and followers. It's a matter of charisma, and I saw it happen in my own childhood all the time. Some kids just dominate, because they seem to know best, have all the answers, etc. And kids like Tom don't usually think ethically. I remember some of the nasty things these kids did to me just for fun. This part of the book rings true for me. Remember, they're kids not adults, so they don't have the same developed conscience that adults have, well at least some adults.

Thanks John Green ! This course is so interesting .

I always felt that the ending was to showcase just how far Huck had come, how much he'd grown up, by putting him side by side with Tom, who is behaving childishly and cruelly. Huck still has more growing up to do, as the line about heading west and his complacency in the face of Tom's scheming show, but he has made progress.

I think you nailed the ending pretty well. Individuals may manage to find ways of transcending socially ingrained prejudices, but eventually they have to come back to that same society, and there individual progress is not sufficient to change conditions. Ultimately I think it's a rejection of the American myth of the individual (or a small scrappy band) to better their condition as a solution to wider systemic problems.

You were the first host I came to watch through Crash Course, John. We have a lot of history. :D get it?

I love these sections you add on. Wishing I could back to college.

I just see the ending as an old Twain staple: cynicism.

Perhaps the ending was a way a satirist might bring back down to Earth the reader's perspective of a now open future. Maybe it's Twain's way to remind the reader that though the world might change its ideals in small ways, change is not that simple. Human nature (the way Huck makes moral decisions) will not change quickly, and in fact most people are not entirely free from the influence of the opinions of others they envy or admire. Society will not change that easily, it has too much inertia to, realistically, change over the little time that the book takes place. This "going back" on the principles he discussed are evidence of a world and a person that is just beginning to change, or thinking about changing, but for whom the world won't let them off that easily.

I love the David Foster Wallace-esque response to the you-from-the-past interjection

It's good that there's cliff-notes like this, so that I can get a glimpse of what society finds important about literature. Most of the time I try to read fiction, I'll be like, "Wait, that's the end already? What happened? I saw people who went places and said things to other people, but I didn't really get the plot." When I tried this title at age 11, I think I might have gotten hung up on the vernacular speech. And my comprehension for fiction hasn't improved much since then. So I get my Lit credits on KZfaq now.

I'm of the camp that Twain used the ending of Huckleberry Finn to show no matter how a few people can grow and change, society can still feel more like the same. We see that during reconstruction in which there's a brief period of African-Americans holding office in the South, gaining equal footing with their white counterparts, but as Twain saw, and we see in history, deep rooted racism that goes back to our foundation of what it meant to be "civilized" in the 19th century made it difficult and nigh impossible for African-Americans to attain true equality at the time. In essence, I think Twain's ending doesn't work as a good ending for a book, but it does make good on commenting on the times, in which he was known very much to do so.

Anyone else really want to see some Lovecraft on Crash Course Literature?

The only thing this has cleared up for me is that Huck and Tom are not the same person which is actually very helpful, so thank you.

Please cover the Mark Twain's The Mysterious Stranger. I'd love you for it so much, John! :D

I liked the ending. It showed how far Huck had come by placing him next to his friend he admired.

I really loved your channel. So now you have a new follower.

Loved the video John, thank you for doing what you do and making such thoughtful, well crafted content, you've inspired so much of my life. Keep doing what you're doing, Nerdfighterias behind you ! DFTBA

This was an amazing crash course and most of all have helped me so much! I was wondering if one could be done about Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. It's a great book but i want to see the deeper sides to the story. ps. Great work! Looking forward for many more

this was eye-opening

This is so useful.

I've always believed that the ending is symbolic of the civil war. Jim was freed (emancipation proclamation) but before that freeing had any effect, before he was free in reality, there had to be a struggle (the civil war.)

oh my Goddess! just found this KZfaq channel. Brilliant! love these wonderful reviews!

did you just wake up, John? comb that puff! :D

Episode 3, no 2, wait...gah! (Somebody did a number on us with the graphics :) But in all seriousness thanks for your in depth look at the book. I never thought about it this way. Thats the greatest gift you give me. To take something worn and known and show the marvelous depths I am overlooking. Thank you John. DTFBA and + for good comments :D

Nice review...

My MA thesis was about Twain's Huck Finn and that's exactly how I defended the book and criticized Hemingway's words. Twain wanted to show that no matter how genuine and truthful it is for a friendship to occur between a black and a white person during post civil war times, it can only exist outside of society and especially away from an antebellum setting, far from it, and also under the worst possible circumstances ever.

Not only is this really informative, but honestly the way that the script is written is simply put amazing. I really wish teachers at high schools could at least try to behave with a little more enthusiasm and compassion. Keep it up guys!

i do love me some good ol Mark Twain quotes

I kind of wish crash course would release a list of the books they are going to cover before hand so we could read them previous to watching these videos... just a thought :D

I need to read this book 😍📚

Actually, I enjoyed the ending. What I mean is ultimately on the river away from traditional civilization he can become a friend to Jim. Once back with Tom in the more civilized world this freedom collapses. It becomes a show of indignity. Traditional values overcome the liberation Huck and Jim had developed on their travels. Even Huck is overcome by the institutional racism found in their civilization. The novel ends where it begins in a moral round trip.

@crashcourse Minute 3:48 "You're gonna worship something" insert Bob Dylan song here. Best line in your literature series yet.

Nice David Foster Wallace allusion, John. :)

Twain must have written the ending to the last episode of Game of Thrones

this is the video you watch when you don't read the book and you have a paper due on it that night

I find John-from-the-past's comment on 'why can't it just be a river?' and present-John's answer quite interesting. It made me think quite a bit... See, I have the same reaction as past-John; I get quite annoyed by symbolism. My reaction is always "Seriously, it's a damn river! Pretty river and difficult river, but a river!" And then John says "You're gonna worship something". And I think we've hit the point. For me 'it's a damn river', because I worship facts, reality, Science. I may have missed the point here. I don't have much of a literature or philosophy oriented mind, but this was my immediate reaction, and I found it quite revealing about who I am as a person.

Hmmm... this video needed to come out... 11 years ago... So wish I had this when i did my GCSE English course

When I have a test on Huck Finn tomorrow, and I'm rewriting the notes while listening.

If there was a law that compelled the great writers to include a thesis at the end of their own works clearly explaining the themes and motives and such to be published, would you be For or Against that law? Why?

"You're going to worship something." To which I expect many would reply: I bow before nothing. Then I push them to their knees and yell: GROVEL BEFORE GRAVITY!

Yes. Someone already said it and yes, mispronunciation is kinda your thing; but the people here in Southern Illinois pronounce the city "Karo" like the syrup. Don't ask me why, I'm originally from "Chicawgo."

I'd always surmised that the ending simply meant that, no matter how well intentioned, people are largely fickle in the end. But that's just my fickle opinion. I'd like to hear your thoughts on Eudora Welty, "The Life You Save May be Your Own".

For me, the whole story had SOO many points. Some of them are mentioned in the video, and others are in my mind. About the ending chapters, it showed 2 things: 1. How 'educated' people are above 'intelligent' people, just because they think you have to 'go by the book', and define complex protocols for something, instead of just doing something right away, no matter how much it affects the others. 2. Even if blacks were already free (as a human being), and even if top white people knew it, they HAD to make them pass through terrible scenarios, and made them suffer, and do useless things (campaigns and votes etc), just to make some history out of it.

Please consider making video for Transit by Anna Seghers It took place during WWII!

...good shoe John Green..

To me, the ending explores the question: how do you free someone who is already free? A paradoxical question seeing how slaves were not truly free after the Civil War.

I've always felt that when Huck says "I knew then that Jim was white inside" at the end of the book as Huck realizing that there was no difference between himself and Jim, or by extension no difference between white people and black people. Not that it's a good way to say it, it's a terrible wording, but it might have been the only way Huck could think of how to articulate it. That is just my opinion though.

blimey, it's a bright shirt!

"I would argue that you're going to worship something. Maybe it'll be a god, maybe it'll be money or power or fame but there's going to be something that orients your humanness in a particular direction." ...what??? This needs elaboration.

We discussed this book (and its ending) in class, and the professor made this remarkable comment about the relationship between Huck and Tom being closely related to that of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Tom, like Don Quixote, loses himself through reading these adventurous novels while Huck/Sancho Panza is the guy who stays more down to earth and proposes more simple approaches to life, instead of losing himself in a fantasy. It's so cool when you think about it this way!

Tom Sawyer is a great book.

I've said it once, I'll say it again, John Greene is the best ever, period. I stand in awe of this man. Go Wimbledon!!!!

We must keep in mind the times. This was during realism in literature. Books were realistic and often showed romanticism as flawed and foolish. The end of Huck FInn does just this. It shows romanticism and the subsequent age of slavery are still prevalent in society, despite the massive efforts for society to change. Huck realizes that things aren't gonna change. "I been there before." Huck moves on from the entirety of society, realizing that it has no hope of changing and will inevitably repeat. Twain, being a cynic, was pointing out that no matter how much people try to change for the better, society will never not be deplorable. The only option is to leave society completely, or to be trapped in an endless cycle.

I didn't read the river as a god, but as the absence of one. By contrast the land is full of people and religion, and is a terrible place for it. I think arguing the river has to be god because their has to be something you worship (i.e. a god of some form) is circular reasoning.I'm not complaining though, I just think analysis of literature almost always reveals more about the reader and their beliefs than the text itself.

Is this the same John Green who wrote The Fault in our stars?

hey crash course! please analyse "no longer at ease" by chinua Achebe it is the continuation of "things fall apart"

It's generally progress and equity that have directed my life

i worship only two things: my fedora, and aggressively literal interpretations of abstract ideas

You should put the page numbers to the little passages you referred to...It would be helpful

I saw Love in the Time of Cholera on the desk! Please do Love in the Time of Cholera!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mr.Green can you please make a video on the story ''As you like it.''Soon my school exam will start and I don't want to fail.

But is Huck actually aware of what’s happening? To do something might be different from understanding what you’re doing. And so maybe he wouldn’t just change suddenly in all different aspect of his communication because what was hasn’t yet hit the other aspects of his characteristics? He is just a kid with his own understandings.

MrGreenMrGreen!!...Its Kay-row Illinois. DFTBA!

our travels are safer the sooner we remember we are not one, but all. together, we prosper and divided we fall.

Could you please put these videos in the CC Literature playlist?

YES!

Are you doing A Tale of Two Cities?

"me from the past" has a beard.

John green, just a strange idea about the end..... What if Twain was trying to say that the more things change, the more they stay the same? Just an idea

Do 'The Catcher in the Rye'! It has a lot 'theories' to talk about.

Can you do a discussion on huxleys Brave New World, please?

John, what is the name of a tiny elephant on your red shirt? Thanks.

Anyone know the two literary devices that are in the quote at 6:19 I can only find one

None of the new videos for cc literature are in the literature playlist!

But to be fair, the ending was hilarious when you actually read it. It's comedy ending, not a deep philosophical ending. All be it a cruel type of comedy.

Is Candide going to be read and analyzed?

I think the end also serves as a point to show us that civilized society ironically through it's intelligence is against the more primal state of morality shown in Huck. Huck realizes it's wrong while Tom's intelligence is what makes him more wry and willing to plot as he knows more and his knowledge makes him more powerful and undermining of the lesser knowing Finn and Jim who are ultimately helpless. I find a great mirror of this in both his time and ours where racial tension seems to be more common sense to the lesser person than those willing to gain something-- or aware of more facets of things to them as a result of their knowledge. A person lacking in knowledge seems to not gain anything at all-- as he knows not what he is to gain. Their ignorance is what leads to a mental state of equality-- and I think this is what Twain is saying as Jim and Finn seem to gain a sense of equality BEING AWAY from society and isolated from it in their journey confronting it everytime they escape the river that seems to allow introspection as they travel along it.

Do a video on the Brothers Karamazov