Why, if Huck is trying to free Jim, does he take Jim further down the Mississippi? What
exactly happens in Cairo, Missouri? This colloquy will reread this American classic
paying attention to Mark Twain’s deep understanding of wronging and mistakes and
his unique relationship to the Mississippi River. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
published in the US in 1885, is fundamentally unlike its picaresque twin, The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer. We will study its singular achievement in the art of finding
escape velocity from broken families and broken systems.

Nan Da teaches literature and literary theory at Johns Hopkins University. Her
specialization is in nineteenth-century American literature and the history and praxis of
literary criticism.