An Archetypal Exploration Of Mark Twain’s The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain is a world-famous literary giant. As a prolific write, in his wholelife, he creates many brilliant novels and short stories. The Adventures of HuckleberryFinn is his magnum opus and is widely considered to be one of the most significantworks of the Western canon, and it is thus often included on lists of most influential orgreatest books. For more than one century, this classic has aroused great interest ofstudying. In Mark Twain’s this novel, archetypes are employed in a vivid andcomplicated and subtle way. These archetypes are not the “origin” of this novel, butalso an indisputable part of the charm the novel possesses. In this thesis, the presentauthor tries to analyze the characters, images and event from the perspective ofarchetypal criticism, and identifies the biblical and mythological archetypes embodiedin this great novel in order to reveal some human spirit and the profound meaning ofthe mythical words.This thesis focuses on studying the main archetypes from the perspective ofarchetypal criticism, and intends to find out the values of this work and Mark Twain’sown intentions by exploring the archetypes in this novel, such as the Mississippi River,Huck and Jim. The archetypal interpretation of this novel makes us see the deeparchetypes of the characters and images and brings great courage and self-confidenceto the readers. Exploring this novel from the perspective of archetypal criticism, thisthesis will make the readers deeply feel the heartquake and inspiration which thenovel brings. This thesis is divided into four chapters, the first chapter is an introduction tothe life of Mark Twain, the definitions, features of archetypes and the representativesof the theory of archetypal criticism and their theoretical ideas; the second chapterwill discuss the archetypal characters and images embodied in The Adventures ofHuckleberry Finn; the third chapter pays more attention to the archetypal eventsappeared in Twain’s this famous novel and the last chapter makes a conclusion of thisthesis.