Timeline of Notable Books in American History

Huckleberry Finn

    I had a less than enjoyable experience reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain. I guess I just can't handle the way that they talk in the old south, because fifty pages into this book I was about ready rip my hair out. Books don't normally reduce me to that. But Huckleberry Finn did. I can understand how this would have been a breakthrough in writing and how the characters talk in the book was very realistic in its time. I'm sure in one hundred years the slang we use today will be hard to understand even though it was realistic for our time.  Not really being able to understand a good portion of this book definitely took away from the experience.
    Huckleberry Finn was, however a good main character. He is imperfect. He is not well educated and comes from a very poor family, but he is naturally intelligent and clever. He manages to get himself out of many difficult situations with inspired solutions. He struggles with what he should do about Jim, a runaway slave who becomes his companion, as the rules of white society don't quite seem to be fair. Somehow Jim is the lowest of the low, even though he might just as educated as a very, very poor white man. He seems to make his own rules as he goes along, and sometimes his decisions seem questionable. I suppose that's okay because he is a kid.
   Though Huck Finn was a good character, the book was generally hard to understand and I wouldn't suggest it to anyone who wasn't prepared to read and re-read the text again and again until it makes sense. 

Slaughterhouse-Five

    Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, is the best piece of classic literature I have read to date. Though it is a bit more contemporary than most classic literature, it is still a classic. Published originally in 1968, this anti-war novel tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, a man who has become "unstuck" in time. The story is not in chronological or linear order as Billy jumps through time, reliving his experience as a solider in World War II, as a mildly broken man post WWII, and as a human on planet Tralfamadore, where he lives in a zoo. Billy is an unfit solider. His clothes are considered a mockery of the American Soldiers and his manner is meek, yet he still survives longer than many of the well prepared soldiers. He spends the majority of his time as soldier in prisoner of war camps in Europe, where he barely survived.
       When I first began reading the book I was confused as to why there was no order to the story. I figured out that Billy was time traveling through different points in his life. Though Billy seems to be an average guy and not all that special, the more you read about him the more wise he seems to be. He is mentally disturbed and has no fear of death; He even knows exactly when he dies, and is not afraid. Billy has learned to accept things the way they are, he can't change the past, the present, or the future. He believes all things will happen the way they are meant to, no matter what.
       Slaughterhouse-Five was written differently from most of the books I have read. The perspective switches from first person to third person, and Billy was the only developed character. There were many characters in the book, but they only exist for a short time while they directly encounter Billy. So, despite the many people that enter Billy's life, I couldn't help but feel he is alone and isolated from the world. He is just a lone observer through time.
     Because this had the aspect of time jumping, I found myself questioning what was reality and what were the delusions of a damaged man who had given up on living. I still don't know. At some points it seemed as though he was just having a flashback, but sometimes he knows what's going to happen to him in future. The science fiction twist in this book is another thing that sets it apart from other novels.
     This book was so good because of the unique concepts. The author took his personal experience as a prisoner of war and blended them with a little bit of science fiction, and came up with a wonderful book that has and will be enjoyed for generations to come.