Reading Song of Solomon and Huckleberry Finn through the Historical/Biographical lens has opened up new insights into the books for me. I had not noticed so many similarities between the books and the real world events surrounding the authors before reading through this lens. However while using a critical lens to read ones up new points of view and interpretations of the book one tends to focus on the lens and try and make connections to it from everything, which can often take away from the experience of just reading the book and cause one to miss other important points made by the author.
I learned many things about Mark Twain and Toni Morrison that I had not previously known and that I would not have learned had I not been reading through the Historical/Biographical lens. I learned where Mark Twain took his pen name from and I learned a lot about racial history in America.
Having read both of these books before, it was a new experience and a new way to look at them and it was certainly interesting. Both of the novels reflected the authors own experiences and views on race to a certain extent with Huckleberry Finn reflecting Mark Twain's life more then his views on race and Song of Solomon reflecting Toni Morrison's views on race more then her own life experiences. Toni Morrison is writing from the point of view of a black woman and thus has an inside perspective while Mark Twain is white and writing from the perspective of a white man who knows that the poor treatment of blacks is wrong. Their different perspectives are shown in the way each book talks about race. While it is a present topic in Huckleberry Finn, the theme of race is far more prevalent in Song of Solomon.
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