RANDOM THOUGHTS ON ‘HUCKLEBERRY FINN’

Acclaimed as one of the greatest American novels, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn has attracted, deservedly, a multitude of critical comment — rendering the task of examining it from a new perspective very difficult.

I had intended to discuss the use of Huck as a narrative persona with the consequent elimination of the author as an intruding presence. But in an essay titled A Sound Heart and A Deformed Conscience, Henry Nash Smith writes about ‘previously unsuspecting literary potentialities in the vernacular perspective’, and says all that needs to be said about that topic, so that idea was dashed.

Mind you, I would contend that such a novel approach, while technically triumphant, created for Twain a new problem: what had begun as a comic story developed incipiently tragic implications which contradicted the premise of comedy.

So to the language in the novel. I feel Twain has succeeded more than admirably in revealing the demoralising power of language to dull and control the human mind. Consider the appalling power of the Duke and the King over riverside townships! What was the secret of their power? Language! Their success lay in their ability to exploit the the fatal human preference to be gulled by words, to live by moral rhetoric alone, rather than the moralising experiences of life.

As for the structure of the novel, it offers essayists a significant opportunity to comment, and indeed, there are multiple discourses on the topic, albeit disprate and often contradictory. Perhaps Frank Baldanza is closer to the mark when he asserts that the structure of Huckleberry Finn is ‘determined by the interplay of sets of symbols — civilisation and the frontier, gentility and barbarism, freedom and bondage….’ yet, ultimately abandons them to rely on the simple structure of flight, social satire, and the characterisation of Huck.

There are three elements to the novel which are worthy of discuusion.

The most obvious, and conspicuous, is the adventure story of Huck and Jim’s flight to freedom. Jim is running away from actual slavery — an act which has enormous implications for Huck. On the other hand, Huck is running away from the well-intentioned ‘civilising’ ministrations of Miss Watson and Widow Douglas and from routine respectability in general.

The second is the social satire of the towns along the river. The satire is often transcendently humorous, especially in episodes involving the rascally Duke and King, but it can also deal in appalling violence as in the Grangerford-Shepherdson feud, or Colonel Sherburn’s murder of the hapless, drunken Boggs.

And the third, perhaps major element is, as I said earlier, the developing growth and characterisation of Huck.

Concentrating on any one of those three elements would dilute their significance though, because the greatness of the novel lies in its total interrelation of parts, its basic coherence.

But a general consideration of all three is nevertheless required.

The flight from St. Petersburg obviously sets the theme of vernacular protest. The fact that they have no way of fighting back against the predictable forces that threaten them, but can only run away, is accounted for in part by the conventions of backwoods humour. The inferior social status of the vernacular character placed him in in an ostensibly weak position.

It also reflects Twain’s awareness of his own flimsy ground in challenging the established values system.

Superficially, Huck and Jim succeed, but Jim’s freedom has been brought about by such an implausible device that it detracts from the believability of the story.

But a flight it is. Not only a flight from specific trappings but institutionalism as a whole. Gladys Bellamy in her excellent essay, ‘Roads to Freedom’ asserts that the three main characters — Huck, Jim, and Tom Sawyer — represent three gradations of thought and three levels of civilisation:

• Tom portrays life as a pretence according to a set pattern. Although on the highest level in the sense of being civilised, he nevertheless represents a mawkish, romantic, artificial civilisation;
• Jim is the primitive, and Twain infuses him with a dark knowledge that is in his blood and every fibre of his body;
• while Huck is in the middle — the ‘natural’ man. Whereas Tom and Jim are always sure they are right within the boundaries of their individual institutionalism, Huck, free as he is, is tormented by doubts. When he is with one of the others, he abides by their rules, but alone, he follows the dictates of his heart and soul.

How does Twain achieve this?

Via the river — the means of escape, and it is the river that assumes the utmost importance in the novel.

In the structural sense, it allows Twain to maintain unity, although still enabling him to satirise, categorise, and characterise.

Needless to say, the river is perhaps the most striking feature in the book — and the analogy drawn between it and Huck’s journey into life has attracted voluminous comment.

T.S. Eliot saw the river as a ‘great brown god, and Huck and Jim, basically primeval, living by the taboos and observences intimately connected with life itself...’; others opined that the river was a medium by which Huck could evaluate society — contrasting the brutality, violence and hypocrisy that characterised ‘civilisation’ with life on the raft; the absolute opposition between the natural forces for good (represented by the river) and the human forces for evil (being civilisation).

Renowned author and critic, Lionel Trilling, put it best. ‘After every sally into social life of the shore, Huck returns to the river with relief and thanksgiving; and at each turn, regular and explicit as a Greek chorus, there is a hymn of praise to God’s beauty, mystery, and strength, and to his noble grandeur, in contrast with the pettiness of men.’

• after the murder of Buck, Chapter 18 ends with the words: ‘We said there wasn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smother, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and comfortable on a raft.’
• and Chapter 19 begins with one of those lyrical, almost rhapsodic hymns of praise: ‘Two or three days and nights went by; I reckon I might say they swum by, they slid along so quiet and smooth and lovely’

Life on the river was a physical and spiritual cleansing, and once refreshed, they move on again to face a life of human commitments.

But the importance of flight seems to come to an end after Chapter 16. Twain appears to take a new tack and adopted a different narrative path. The theme of flight fades as he launches into a satirical description of the society of post-Civil War society in the South.

Now, Huck is used primarily as a device to view his subject ironically — and Huck, the character, becomes superfluous. Structurally, the King and Duke serve as a plausible device to combine satire with the journey on the raft.

The satire of the towns along the banks of the river insists, again and again, that the dominant culture is decadent and perverted. It is a society where traditional values (if they ever existed) have gone to seed. With few exceptions, the townsfolk are at the mercy of scoundrels like the King and the Duke who know how to exploit their prejudices and delusions.

Douglas Grant, in Twain, discusses Huck’s ironic use of the word ‘right’ in Huck’s arguments for his decision to stand by Jim: ‘…Well then, says I, what’s the use of learning to do right when it’s troublesome to do right, and ain’t no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?’

The use of ‘right’ is a devastating comment on life ashore. The morality entrenched there condemns the association on the raft — the negro flying in the face of the law, undermining by his defiance, the God-determined order of society and the sanctified laws of property, for instance.

Yet, it tolerates, or at least condones, feuding, murder and mob-rule, bigotry, and selfishness in a succession of incidents, even as far back as Pap’s reaction to the negro voter, ‘…why, he wouldn’t ‘a’ give me the road if I hadn’t shoved him outa ‘ the way…’, to the sale of Jim by the King and Duke — a terrible comment on human depravity.

It is illuminating to realise that the falseness of the prevalent values finds expression in an almost universal tendency to make spurious claims to status. Like:

• Tom Sawyer’s plans to start a band of robbers
• Miss Watson adopting a mercenary conception of prayer
• the redemption from drunkeness by Pap Finn
• the comic relief during the feud when Twain dwells lovingly on Emmeline Grangerford’s pretensions to culture and
• the fraudulence of the King and Duke

Whether it be pretended or misguided piety and other perversions of Christianity, Twain’s indictment of the pre-Civil War South is most pronounced. Henry Nash Smith opines that it is religion that stands at the centre of values in the society of Twain’s fictional world, and by implication, in all societies.

S.E. Law, in a lecture titled ‘On Reading and Teaching Huckleberry Finn’ agrees. He regarded the novel as a ‘tremendous denunciation of contemporary urbanised Christian society’. I suspect he means that Christ’s teachings may be professed by many, but followed by fewer in such a society — as it is today, where pastors profess to being ‘Spirit-led’ but are generally just pale imitations of Christ.

Huck and Tom Sawyer are fair-minded, good-hearted and well-meaning, but are nevertheless corrupted, in some ways, irretrievably, by the society they inhabit. Intuitively, or subconsciously, both characters seem to be well aware of this. Tom retreats into schoolboy fantasy, while Huck chooses to ‘opt out’ of ‘civilising’ influences.

As for theme, it would be generally agreed that the essential theme of the novel is that of coming of age — that phase of experience through which all young people have to pass.

Huck undoubtedly achieves a sense of maturity by the novel’s end, but like most of us, not yet complete adult maturity.

What he does do, is grow in moral insight.

Structurally, the moral climax comes at the end of the novel and the postponement of that dilemma allows us ample time to witness his maturation. His inherent, natural compassion and tolerance stand him in good stead in seemingly simple, yet sophisticated ways.

He refers to the twinkling stars of the night as ‘…where was sick folk, maybe’; worries about the murders on the sinking wreck and endangers his life and that of Jim’s by taking steps to rescue them, ‘I begun to think how dreadful it was, even for murderers to be in such a fix. I says to myself, there ain’t no telling but I might come to be a murderer myself yet, and then how would I like it?’

Consider his piety for the ‘drunken’ clown: ‘It was’t funny to me though; I was all a a tremble to see his danger’; his moral censure of the King and Duke after the Mary Jane incident: ’It was enough to make a body ashamed of the whole human race.’; and his Christian tolerance, forebearance and pity for them in their hour of retribution: ‘Well, it made me sick to see it; and I couldn’t even feel any hardness against them any more in the world. It was a dreadful thing to see. Human beings can be so awful cruel to one another.’

That this inherent decency can be conditioned by society in an adverse way is an indictment of society itself.

How adverse? Let Huck explain: ‘Well, if I ever struck anything like it. I’m a nigger.’ And then joins the mob of potential lynchers who slink away from Sherburn’s gaze.

Huck’s humble apology to Jim is perthaps the most striking evidence of his moral growth — a most poignant paragraph. But the apology leads naturally to the next chapter in which Huck is forced to face the fact that by helping Jim escape, he is breaking the law.

That moral dilemma is put off until Chapter 31, when Huck has matured sufficiently, growing emotionally and morally as he observes life. While he may make noteworthy observations, he is essentially free of internal conflict — until the inevitable, final decision has to be made

The emotional climax draws together the theme of the flight from bondage, the social satire, and Huck’s desperate attempt to steer clear of the perverted value systems of st. Petersburg.

The other elements are subordinate to the exploration of Huck’s psyche.

James Cox, in an overky pretentious work titled ‘Remarks on the Sad Initiates of Huckleberry Finn’ agrees that the entire novel revolves around one central theme — Huck’s initiation into respectable society. He aserts that, ‘…the tragic irony of the novel is Huck’s inner awareness that membership in the cult will involve the dissolution of his character and the denial of his values.’

Huck certainly matures, but the degree of his maturity is questionable. For example, his attitudes towards negroes seems wishy washy at best. He might resolve his moral dilemma in regards to Jim, but what about his prejudices?

True, he humbles himself in apologising to Jim, and this is reinforced by his realisation that ‘niggers’ do have feelings for one another. He is astonished that Jim ‘cared for’ his daughter, yet when Mary Jane’s nigger family is being split up and sold, he doesn’t interfere.

Hi apparent compassion lapses into irresponsibility when he cooperates with Tom Sawyer in the unconscionable treatment of Jim. He treats negroes as lesser mortals in the exchange with Mrs Phelps:

‘We blowed out a cylinder head.’

‘Good gracious! Anybody hurt?’

‘No ma’am. Killed a nigger.’

‘Well it’s lucky, because sometimes people do get hurt.’

Of course, we don’t really know if Huck is really committed to the attitudes here implied; he is telling a lie and like all good liars exploits the prejudices of his listeners.

For example, earlier, he is shocked to the core by Tom’s offer to help Jim escape: ‘...a boy as respectable, and swell brung up, and had a character to lose’…but later, to say, ‘and I’m bound to say Tom Sawyer fell considerable in my estimation. Only I couldn’t believe it. Tom Sawyer a nigger-stealer!’

Finally, although he has passed through the tests of initiation, he finds himself unable to exist in so-called civilisation, and he opts out.

Hardly a plausible action from a youth who pretends maturity.

(Don Tate is the author of a memoir, The War Within; historical works — Crucible: the Australians in Vietnam, and Anzacs Betrayed; and an allegory, In God’s Garden. All are available in the best libraries.)