The novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is adjacent to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: it has the same characters and the same time of action. But this thing shows a more mature position of the author, richer covers all aspects of human experience and has a deeper generalizing meaning. The writer’s purely artistic evolution is equally evident. Twain’s style, already well established in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as one of the best in American literature, light, sharp, and sensitive to dialectal nuances, has now moved to a new quality.

The writer returned here to his favorite and time-honored form of first-person narration and made the narrator hero not Tom, a boy from a bourgeois family, but Huck, a homeless vagabond, a child of the people. This had a double effect. First, masterfully reproduced, strong and colorful, truly folk language, which is written in the book, gives a picture of American life a special plastic expressiveness, creates the impression of speaking “without intermediary” – as if through his own voice spoke about himself America. Secondly, it enabled a fuller and deeper disclosure of the character, which was only briefly outlined in “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” to show the formation of his personality.

Huck’s mind is free of romantic clichés, and his character is shaped by reality. He has no outwardly ostentatious virtues, but he possesses all the essential virtues. Nature has given him a strong loyal heart, open to all who are humiliated and rejecting insolent power in whatever form it may take. Huck possesses a sense of inner independence that compels him to flee from the contentment and comfort that his widow Douglas offers him into the wide, formidable world. His free-spiritedness is a rejection of sanctimony, bourgeois welfare, and legalized lies.

Compared with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a new and very significant characteristic appears in Huck’s character: civic courage. From the very first chapters, Twain makes Huck an active participant in the social conflict. He is the protector and harborer of a runaway slave. Moreover, by rescuing Jim from the slave traders, he risks losing his own freedom. But Twain emphasizes that the need to fight for Jim’s freedom is as inherent in Huck as is the hatred of everything that constrains him. Though not fully realized, Huck’s struggle for social justice gives his rebellion a much deeper social meaning than in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

The character of Huck is given a development, and this development is convincingly motivated. Huck grew up in the South, where slavery stamped its mark on the thinking of every white man. He struggles long and hard to wade through the thicket of slave prejudice in his own mind, until the man finally overcomes the Southerner in him, until he finally decides to stay true to Jim. Twain does not for a moment detach the hero from the milieu that raised him, and at the same time shows him in a state of incessant struggle with the prejudices of that milieu. The dialectical contradiction underlying the image makes it particularly lively and dynamic, gives it a psychological authenticity.

It is symptomatic that in the novel Huck, the pariah of society, still stands in the eyes of those around him on a higher rung of the social ladder than the Negro. But just as Huck surpasses Tom in courage and mental qualities, Negro Jim surpasses Huck in loyalty and natural courage. To portray the black man as the noblest man in the novel, to paint a picture of a friendship between a white man and a Negro, a friendship that gave much to both, required great courage and audacity in 1880s America.

It took no less courage and boldness on the part of Twain the artist to break the accepted norms of literary language so defiantly for the sake of the truth of life. How innovative this work was, evidenced by the fierce controversy that developed around the novel after its publication. The zealots of fine literature, who demanded a flawlessly smooth syllable, a flawlessly virtuous hero, and necessarily “good manners,” branded the book “obscene, vulgar, and rude. In Concord, Massachusetts, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was removed from city libraries as “garbage fit only for landfill.

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In his story “How Fear Appears” before the drought, all feuds, quarrels, and all grievances must be forgotten. It is strictly forbidden to hunt near water, and those who violate this prohibition deserve to be punished. In times of drought, the jungle is like one family that helps each other, even the animals understand the importance of a truce of predators and mammals. Rudyard Kipling uses this example to show how people should live in times of world catastrophe.

We see the human disrespect for the laws of life in the story “The King’s Rod. In one civilization, where conquered wealth was accumulated and beautiful gems were honored, bad times came. No amount of money and riches saved the developing civilization from ruin, but instead led to the collapse of an entire nation. Mowgli, brought up according to the laws of the jungle, does not perceive any riches, jewels have no meaning for him except as a simple word. Seeing the image of Mowgli, we understand how far from the ideal humanity is, he does not need any rank or privileged position, he does not dream of fabulous riches. Rather, Kipling was trying to show us how far we are from a common brotherhood, a universal harmony, where the meaning of life is good.

In Kipling’s next story, “The Tiger Tiger,” I had a bifurcated opinion. Mowgli’s return to the people did not turn out to be the return of the prodigal son home, but on the contrary, society did not accept him. Mowgli, brought up by the just laws of the jungle, did not fit into a society full of deceit and betrayal, where the notion of justice and equality is absent. When faced with aggression and injustice, Mowgli responded to the laws of the jungle, he took revenge and lived by the right of the strongest. In the story “The Jungle Attack,” Mowgli attacks and destroys a human settlement based on the jungle law of the right of the strongest. In general, we see a lack of jungle law where Mowgli commits a crime, but in his understanding he acts correctly. In this episode, Kipling sharpened his focus on the problems of society and shows us all the injustices and lapses in the laws. We see that most laws are made for a certain circle of people who do not act for the good of all people. It is these shortcomings that lead to divisions and wars.

Kipling portrayed deeply and accurately the dark side of society in the monkeys. Monkeys lead bad lives, live one moment at a time, do not seek to develop community, and do not want to work for the good of the whole jungle. Although the monkeys do nothing wrong, they are of no use, they think only of themselves, satisfy their instincts, and want to do nothing else. Thus, the author ridicules people who do not work and live only for one day, yes they are not bad, but they are useless. These people do not deserve respect and it is unlikely that they will ever create anything.

Mowgli acquires his peak strength and mightiness in his battle with the red dogs. The battle with the red dogs shows man’s victory over nature, Mowgli defeats them for the well-being of the jungle. The red dogs have kept the whole jungle in fear, they have achieved dominance, but the man raised by the wolves repays his brothers and engages in battle with the threat hanging over the jungle. Kipling paints this moment so that Mowgli, thanks to his human qualities, intelligence and agility, unites the pack and defeats the red dogs.

Kipling’s last story in the Mowgli book is “Spring Run. Mowgli is now seventeen years old, and he has become even bigger and stronger, his way of life has only helped him gain strength. Now the animals are not only afraid of Mowgli’s intelligence, but also of his strength, which was evident. He becomes cramped in the jungle, and even the fact that he feels in charge does not soothe him. He can do nothing about the feeling that pulls him toward the people, and unable to fight anymore he returns home. Again we see the law – man always goes to man – and which Mowgli can no longer defeat. How Mowgli settled down and took root among people, whether he was able to overcome his old upbringing, the author is silent about it.

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The unusual tale, which for many years has echoed in millions of hearts around the world, was written by the French writer in the midst of World War II, in 1942.
In 1935, while flying from Paris to Saigon, Saint-Exupery had a plane crash. The accident occurred in the Libyan desert and left a deep mark on Saint-Exupéry’s soul. Late memories of this incident, as well as deep feelings about the fate of the world at the mercy of fascism, resulted in a story-tale, the main character of which was a little boy.
During this period, the writer in the pages of his diary shared his innermost thoughts about the future of mankind. He was worried about the generation that had received material goods, but had lost its spiritual content. Saint-Exupery set himself the difficult task of returning to the world the lost mercy and reminding people of their responsibility for the Earth.
The work was first published in 1943 in the United States and was dedicated to a friend of the writer – Leon Vert, the famous Jewish journalist and literary critic who endured endless persecution during the war. Thus Antoine de Saint-Exupery wanted to support his friend and express his active civic position against anti-Semitism and Nazism.

It is noteworthy that all the drawings in the story were made by the writer himself, which further emphasizes his ideas set forth in the book.

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In addition to unusual characters and paradoxical logic, several philosophical concepts can be found in this text that allow us to understand the workings of language and human thinking. Which ones? Let’s take a look.

A few words about the book

“Alice in Wonderland” is the work of the English mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll. An Oxford teacher, clergyman, and amateur photographer, Carroll was a rather reserved and shy man, uncomfortable around adults.

Carroll felt much freer in the company of children, to whom he dedicated his few literary masterpieces. “Alice in Wonderland” was written for a particular Alice, a girl of 11, the daughter of the vice-chancellor of Oxford. Carroll loved walking with her and telling her absurd tales, which she once asked her to write down. And so Alice in Wonderland appeared.

Seven years later Carroll would write a sequel, Alice in Wonderland, where Alice’s journey would continue in an equally surreal world. We will use examples from both books, as Carroll builds them on a similar principle.

How to read “Alice”?

Before we go directly to “Alice,” we need to understand exactly how we can read books. The Italian philosopher Umberto Eco distinguished two kinds of reader: the empirical reader and the ideal reader. The ideal reader is one who treats a book as a text: understands how it is arranged, what the writer is doing, and the ways in which it evokes certain feelings and emotions in us. That is, the ideal reader sees how the text is created. The empirical reader, on the other hand, is completely immersed in the work and follows the plot without being aware of exactly how it is constructed.

As children, we tend to read Alice in Wonderland as an empirical reader, fully immersed in the surreal world of the tale. I, on the other hand, propose to look at this text as an ideal reader. And here is where Alice in Wonderland truly unfolds for us.

The Paradoxes of Meaning

Lewis Carroll is a professor of mathematical logic, and the main point of Alice lies precisely in the area of logical paradoxes. On the face of it, it seems simple: Carroll creates a magical world in which complete absurdity is at work. But let’s take a closer look at it.

The world of this fairy tale is not just different from our own, not just externally, but internally. And it’s not just talking animals and strange games, the fact that it does not work the laws of our logic. But this does not mean that this world is completely mired in chaos. There is certainly logic within this world, just not the same logic that we have. For example, the Hatter’s clock there always shows the day of the week because he always has 6 p.m. This is his punishment for trying to “kill time,” and Time is offended by it.

Carroll was not interested in simply inventing a magical world; he thought thoroughly about its paradoxical logic, which is not like ours, but is internally consistent.

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