文档介绍：Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn: Journey of Initiation
I. Initiation Stories and Mark Twain’s Two Adventures
Initiation Stories
The word “initiation” originated from anthropology. It refers to, after a series of hardships and ordeals, the adolescent obtaining the knowledge, ability and confidence to face the society and the life independently, and therefore entering a new stage of life—adulthood. These hardships and ordeals are often some kinds of ceremonies. Especially in primitive tribes, when e to certain age, they must experience some ordeals on their bodies in order to be accepted as adults by their society, such as cutting some part of their bodies, catching and killing animals, pleting a task which usually only an adult can.
In the history of English literature, so far the name of “initiation story” has not been established. That is not because its amount is so small that it cannot e an independent subgenre of fiction, but, quite contrarily because there are large amounts of initiation stories, with different perspectives, then it is hard to express its broad literary vision and aesthetic scope with just a concise word. In addition, English critics have not made a profound study on it so that there are many names for it. Among them, the monly used ones are “initiation story” or “novel of initiation”, “growing-up novel”, “coming-of-age novel”, “novel of youth” or “novel of adolescence”, “novel of life”, etc.
For so many names for English initiation stories, there is no unanimous view in academic circles. Mordecai Marcus, in his article “What is an Initiation Story?”, offers a provisional working definition which contains the main elements in initiation story:
An initiation story may be said to show its young protagonist experiencing a significant change of knowledge about the world or himself, or a change of character, or of both, and this change must point or lead him towards an adult world. It may or may not contain some form of ritual, but it sh