17
/1e1
ORALITY, LITERACY, AND HEROISM
IN HUCKLEBERRY FINN
THESIS
Presented
to the Graduate Council
North Texas
State University
Fulfillment
For
of the
of
in Partial
Requirements
the Degree of
MASTER OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
By
William David Barrow,
Denton,
August,
Texas
1986
the
III,
B.A.
Barrow,
Huckleberry
1986,
William David
Finn.
105 pp.,
Master
III,
of
bibliography,
Orality,
Arts and
Literacy,
Sciences
and Heroism in
(English),
August,
19 titles.
This work re-assesses the heroic character of Huckleberry
Finn in light of
the inherent problems
of discourse.
Ong's insights into the differences
between oral and
consciousnesses,
concept
and
Stanley
communities" are applied
characters,
Fish's
the need for a viable
by enlisting the ideas of Ernest
community
finds its
the consciousness
dynamic
discourse community.
Becker,
source in the most
of death.
Further established,
is that this need for
fundamental human problem,
The study concludes that the
is neither the artistic failure,
be.
prob-
with the theme of
nor the cynical
pronouncement on the human race that so many critics
to
the other
of his character,
lematic ending of Twain's novel is consistent
community and
literate
of "interpretive
to Huck's interactions with
revealing the underlying
Walter
have seen it
@1987
WILLIAM DAVID BARROW III
All Rights Reserved
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter
I.
II.
III.
IV.
INTRODUCTION ...
............
"Tramp--tramp--tramp
"You can't learn
.
.
."
.
.
1
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
32
a nigger to argue"
.
.
.
.
.
.
52
.
THE ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE CHILD OF
STRENGTH -....
BIBLIOGRAPHY
........................
...
...... . . ....
..
.
.84
.
102
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
This work on The
Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn
initially grew out of my interest in
the
problematic ending
of the book and my conviction
that the ending was neither
the obvious artistic
nor
failure,
the bleak verdict on the
fate of the human race that so many critics
be (See for instance,
123-24,
mines,
Murphy 385-386).
but
complex
Smith
deciding exactly
task which the
from the once
common
More
book leaves
Most
183;
under-
the reader after
have
is the
he has
moved
away
contention that Twain undermined himnodded
in the final
chapters
modern critics is the theory
the dupe of a playful but bitter
who has created one of the great heroic characters
literature for the purpose of dismantling
eyes,
to
Carrington
the ending
modern critics
popular among
that the reader is
Cox
what has been undermined
inadvertently and simply
(Marx 341).
137;
Unmistakably,
turned the final page.
self
129,
have found it
him
Twain
of
before our
and with him the values which allowed us to sympathize
with him in the first
Huckleberry Finn,
place.
George
C.
In The Dramatic Unity of
Carrington writes:
One psychological
traditional
satisfaction of the
quest-action lies
in seeing how the
synthesis of the final triumph arises
1
logically
2
from the thesis and antithesis of earlier
sections.
The disgust felt by
the end of Huckleberry Finn
realizing
while reading
arises from slowly
that Twain is parodying this agreeable
conclusion
of the quest-action,
and unmercifully,
Similarly,
many
and is basing
is doing so openly
it all
on the
reader's
blind voluntary commitment to Huck
earlier
in
the
book.
in MarkTwain:
(123)
The Fate of Humor James M. Cox
writes:
To see that
Tom is
have been doing
doing at the ending what we
throughout the
to understanding
book is essential
what the book has
meant to us.
For when Tom proclaims to the assembled throng who
have
witnessed
his performance that Jim "is as
free as any cretur
an exposed
that walks this
embodiment
earth," he
of the complacent
is
moral
sentiment on which the reader has relied
throughout
the book.
And to the extent
has indulged the complacency he will
by the ending.
the reader
be disturbed
(175)
As an alternative to these two views of the undermining
quality of the ending,
I am
positing the
Twain has intentionally undermined
as artist,
his own art and himself
and in so doing has addressed
human discourse at its
possibility that
the problem of
most fundamental level.
3
The work of the written word is
of
frozen meaning,
to create the illusion
to remove meaning from the unpredictable
realm of memory, and in keeping with this,
of
the artist
which, like
has traditionally
a rock ina
been to create an object
stream, can seem
erosive forces of time which surround
to withstand the
it.
writing is that it can create contingent
exist
physically apart from
the ultimate task
The power of
realities which can
the human consciousness.
the literate consciousness,
the choice is no
For
longer between
meaninglessness and
meaning,
oral consciousness,
but between one meaning and a host of
others.
But the
as it must be for the purely
written artifact must in some sense be
always at odds with itself.
If the technology of writing
answers a need for a permanent and stable reality,
multiplicity of realities
implies
the
which
contingent
writing makes
nature of
those
possible
realities.
The problem facing any artist who would state
truth is that
in stating
it he or
she must defy
is why much of modern literature is openly and
ambiguous.
Hemingway's
"Hills Like
troubled
couple's predicament,
of decrying all value systems,
it,
such a
and this
artfully
White Elephants" stops
short of adopting a value system which would
the
the
but
make sense of
it stops short,
for that would imply that
Hemingway had either written his story without reason,
else
was
unaware of the truth he
reality is contingent
upon
too,
or
had demonstrated--that
the individual consciousness
that
4
perceives it.
The
effect is a gridlock of options
which can
only be resolved by the bald imposition on the text
reader's
own values.
crediting
Curious,
The Adventures
then,
that Hemingway,
of Huckleberry Finn
went on to dismiss
"cheating"
ending
for
in the
of
the
while
as the source
of all American literature,
(22),
of the
novel
the ending
as
Twain
pioneers the territory that Hemingway would later exploit to
its fullest.
a modern
from
Hemingway's
What in
theme is in Huckleberry Finn
the conventional
view of
of his romantic predecessors,
replace
one set of values
artistically
the
cult
story
is a reiteration of
a radical departure
literature.
If,
which
with another,
capable of doing so.
he was certainly
But Twain in
of art in the ending of his book.
must be
sought both in and
The Denial of Death,
ficance
of
this
the vein
Twain had intended merely to
Ernest Becker
fact defied
His refusal
leave us with an unambiguous hero is a gesture,
of
in
the
to
meaning
beyond the novel.
In
helps clarify the signi-
gesture:
The key
to the creative
type is that he is
separated out of the common pool of shared
meanings.
There
experience that
problem;
out of it.
is something
makes him take in the world as a
as a result
. . .
needs an ideal
in his life
he has to make personal sense
Existence
answer;
accept the collective
becomes
a problem
that
but when you no longer
solution to
the problem of
5
your own.
then you must fashion
existence,
His creative work is
.
. . the expression
heroism and the justification of
sooner have we said this
problem that it
justify
his own heroism?
.
The
if
whole
advance.
.
No
can one
He would have to be as
down
to this paradox:
to be a hero then you
to the society in
you give the gift that
must give a
you give
your
which you live,
society specifies
If you are an artist
and
in
you fashion
a
peculiarly personal gift,
the justification
your own heroic identity,
which means that it is
always aimed at
Becker's
that it fails
reasoning,
(171-172)
we
can
to justify his heroic
It speaks not of
of
least partly over the heads
of your fellow men.
so.
How
If you are the average man
heroic gift
Following
poses.
thing boils
you are going
gift.
.
.
.
.
than we can see the
immense
God.
it.
his
of
say
of
Twain's "gift"
identity,
a particular heroism,
but designedly
but
to the
problem of heroism itself--the impossibility of justifying
one's
own context.
impulse
which,
and so it
according
world;
the novel
to Becker,
becomes a true gift,
of self-validation.
the
In so doing,
undermines
prompted
the
its creation,
one given without the motive
Twain has offered
he has offered self.
more
than a novel
Unlike Twain's
to
character,
6
Colonel Sherburn,
futility
who was incapable of recognizing the
of his power in the face of the mortality
with the people of Bricksville,
of its own inability
he shared
Twain's power speaks
finally
to overcome the terror of existence.
Twain thus accomplishes something which Becker argues even
Freud,
"s.
in his intense
. .the
self-awareness,
combination
of
fullest
was
incapable of
self-expression
and
renun-
ciation" (173).
The importance of
been treated at
literacy in Twain's
some length
"Illiterate's Progress:
The
in Kevin
Descent
novel has
Murphy's
into
already
monograph,
Literacy,
in
Huckleberry Finn" and although Murphy ignores the question
of
orality,
which
is an excellent
I believe is equally significant,
guide to those episodes
plays a pivotal role.
conclusions about
the
acknowledge that on
already
broken.
qualities
Although
we come
of literacy
is very similar,
an integral
we are entirely
significance
of
this act
My aim in this
I must
the fragmenting
but I do not take
that Murphy apparently
though Murphy and
writing of the novel is
the book,
literacy,
occasion I work ground that Murphy has
Our understanding of
Furthermore,
literacy
to quite different
meaning of Huck's
literacy for the unqualified evil
does.
in which
his work
I agree
part of the action of
at odds in our
to Huck's
that Huck's
evaluations of
the
character.
study is to understand the broadest
possible context within which
the actions of Twain's
novel
7
can be evaluated,
and I
much as any
other factor
conclusions
that Murphy
material.
Drawing on
of Huck's
in scope as
accounts for the widely divergent
and I draw
from
much of
the ideas in Walter J.
Orality and Literacy,
course
think the difference
I attempt not merely
the same
Ong's work
to track the
literacy through the novel,
but to
place
that literacy within the larger context of all human
discourse.
By opposing
knowledging that the
possible
literacy to orality and
former grows out of the latter,
to separate the inevitable
the evolution of Huck's character,
we
may then
by ac-
from
the potential
and from
evaluate Huck's choices as
this high
such.
with clarity,
defined
within the limits
Because
the context
the
forces
this context,
meaning, must be
that
ground
such
applies
for Huck's heroism
within which Twain's
made is a literate one,
give the book its
of
in
Only from
a vantage point can the concept of heroism as it
Huck be discussed
it is
to
must
mold his
be
world.
gesture has been
above all others
examined for what it
that
is.
Nothing more clearly demonstrates the extent to which
Murphy and
I come to different conclusions about Huck's
burgeoning
literacy than
of the pivotal
go to hell
a comparison of our
interpretations
episode in the novel in which Huck decides to
rather
than betray Jim to Miss Watson.
regard
to the note Huck writes revealing Jim's
Murphy
writes:
Huck's
literacy,
the skill
he has
With
whereabouts,
used at
times
8
throughout the novel
here
to get out of
tight spots,
the very agent of execution for Jim.
Huck,
holding his breath,
right,
[sic]
I'll
letter we feel
won.
Alas,
.
go to hell,"
When
"All
and rips
up the
that some major moral ground has
.
been
finally says,
is
as many readers have exclaimed,
the novel ended here.
earlier parallel
But as
if only
should be clear from
incidents, Huck's moral
illumination and resolve are both temporary and
susceptible
to outside influence,
that influence coincides with his
especially when
own deep
yearning for acceptance and for an end
lonesomeness.
To fault Huck,
as
moral victory
for all
characteristic
right
this
(377-78)
Murphy does,
time is
cemented
his
to decry the very
For all the comfort
that Huck receives
the illusion that his written message will set things
permanently, he has nevertheless
sense of
permanence as
Huck's "moral illumination
wish,
for not having
which has enabled Huck to tear up the note in
the first place.
from
to his
moreover,
that the
illusion.
To wish,
and resolve" were
book had
decision,
is to succumb
avoided.
In this connection
apparently
been able to identify
then,
that
permanent,
to
ended with Huck's
to the very literate bias Huck has
without irony,
it
might be noted
Murphy has
that,
used the word "alas,"
9
which only a few pages earlier
"Emmelinesque,"
language
he has identified as
in reference
of the Duke
to the literate,
but
(373).
This leads us to the problem of literate
general,
and
empty,
to its antidote,
bias in
the understanding
of
orality.
The emergence of the literate
Huck is accompanied by the
suppression of the oral Huck,
and only by accounting
way for
he has
what Huck has given
gained in grasping
Literacy
.
.
.
up can we accurately assess
his literate
is absolutely
destiny.
Ong
necessary
for the
development not only of science
history,
philosophy,
itself.
is
powers
notes:
understanding
(including oral speech)
culture or a
oral culture left in the
world today
not somehow aware of the vast complex
forever
This awareness
primary
inaccessible
without
literacy.
is
persons
rooted
orality,
agony
of
indeed for the
There is hardly an oral
predominantly
that
language
and
what
but also of
explicative
literature and of any art,
explanation of
in some
for
of
in
who want literacy passionately
but who also know very well that moving into the
exciting
world of literacy means leaving behind
much that was exciting and deeply
earlier oral world.
living.
The agony
loved in the
We have to die
to continue
(Orality 14-15)
which Ong refers
to accounts,
I believe,
for a
10
great deal of the loneliness
Finn
throughout his novel.
and guilt which plague Huck
In chapter II,
within a few
lines of the private reading lesson he has received
Miss
Watson,
from
Huck says:
I felt
so lonesome I most wished I was dead.
stars
was shining, and the leaves
The
rustled in
the
woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl away
off,
a
who-whooing
whippowill
about somebody
and a dog crying about somebody
was going to die;
whisper
something
what it
was,
over me.
and the wind was trying
to
I couldn't
make
make
a ghost makes when it
something
itself
that's on
understood,
and
grieving.
I did wish
emerging artist
I had
some company.
"Out of
the
Cradle
(1.
178),
self-
a world from
he is to describe
the poet's birth in a single
that hour,"
and
(4)
Whereas the economy of Whitman's poem can give us
from
way
become the alienated and
must become differentiated if
awaked
rest
I got so down-hearted
of Whitman's
Huck has
wants
so can't
conscious interpreter of the world of nature,
songs
run
its mind and
every night
experience of
out
made the cold shivers
grave and has to go about that
Endlessly Rocking,"
which he
that
to
easy in its
scared,
and
Then away out in the woods I heard that
to tell about
Like the
me and
and so it
kind of a sound that
can't
that was dead,
line,
Twain's
the
"My
prose
own
it.
11
equivalent describes
flective,
both
the atrophying
of the unre-
oral Huck and the tentativeness with which the
reflective,
literate Huck abandons
one consciousness
for
another.
To understand that The
is
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
as much about the death of the oral
the birth
of the literate
Huck is
which Huck's actions can have
many critics,
to create
In Murphy's
words,
of
the tale
the book is
a context within
he has
told
us"
(385).
evolved
But the implications
from the
succumbed.
roots,
strange
by
that is,
to us,
we
Sawyer is,
message
of
by a hero who has
society,
and
in his
later
are
to which Huck has presumably
product of
books and
we might well judge his
but
by acknowledging
the
I would argue, have
If Huck were as clearly the
these criteria,
out,
to which Murphy refers
grounded and,
same pressures
education that Tom
actions
The
for Twain's decline into cynicism
themselves culturally
Sawyer
not understood the impli-
not been able to transcend the pressures of
writings.
so
to turn Jim in to Miss
thus rendered deterministic
stage is set
Like
out of the moral
"In this bottoming
realize that the narrator has
cations
about
Murphy sees Huck's acquiescence to Tom
he has gained when he refuses
Watson.
is
moral significance.
in the end of the novel as a selling
victory
Huck as it
by looking to Huck's oral
a world
which,
is nonetheless an undeniable
though
source of
12
meaning for Huck, we can see that
Huck has made choices
which presuppose
heroic.
freedom and are
In his preface
to Fighting
for Life,
Ong writes:
My body resembles the bodies of my parents and
earlier ancestors.
to
when
parents
But
I say "I," is no
than to anyone
constitution.
And even
particular culture,
different
it is
real
more related
else.
"dialectical
it
from any other self
from any other
or imaginable.
complement
genetic
relating to others,
self in any other
culture
close you are.
(10-11)
no
I which Ong
human freedom"
as
culture,
not you,
the
of
is as completely
I am simply
of
to the
still floats free
in my own
To get at the "I" of Huckleberry Finn,
the
to my
It has no
The "I" that I say
matter who or how
I refer
though it is embedded in a
and even to itself,
its culture.
what
which provides it with its
characteristic ways of
world,
my own self,
calls
(Fighting
11),
we must range wherever possible beneath the cultural context
of
the novel and seek out those peculiarly
from which Huck draws his meanings.
text,
then,
tance
in decoding the
It
is
contexts
The largely oral con-
from which Huck emerges is of paramount impor-
necessary
regarding orality and
oral
personal
character of Huck
here
to clarify Ong's terminology
literacy.
culture as one "with
Finn.
Ong
describes a primary
no knowledge whatsoever
of writing
13
of the possibility
or even
is no
of
(Orality 30).
writing"
such culture in Huckleberry Finn,
necessary to refer
it will
to the concept of primary
about the nature of
my assertions
clarify
but
There
be
to
orality
orality in general
and to draw distinctions between the oral and literate
Ong's
consciousness.
directly
lem
applicable
term
to Twain's novel,
orality"
but
here
person (or culture)
orality refers to that
read or write,
residual orality may refer
residual
who,
and noetic devices.
Clearly,
it
will
of oral
but
exists,
but
for
without
Pap is cerand Twain.
Tom,
the
most part,
paper to speak in terms
persons that do not read and
write and
whose consciousnesses are in most instances primary
persons,
literacy.
I avoid,
as Ong does,
and "preliterate" to describe
As Ong
points out,
oral,
persons who do read and write and
whose consciousnesses are dominated by
of
to
writing of
is then meaningless
serve the purposes of this
and literate
or
To characterize a person
so are Huck,
a complex continuum
persons,
he
is influenced
reference to the amount of residue involved.
residually oral,
though
to the persistence in
or culture as residually oral
tainly
prob-
another
In its broadest sense,
by this knowledge.
oral mnemonic
more
has some knowledge of literate
consciousness and whose own consciousness
some degree
is
In its narrowest sense,
presents itself.
she cannot
"residual
the
the
the internalization
terms "illiterate"
predominantly
this "presents orality--the
oral
person.
'primary
14
modeling
system'--as an
'secondary modeling
anachronistic
system'
Further complicating
that
followed
from
in the novel is
in the direction of
much
wave which,
though
orality as
by its
Grangerfords,
literacy in
of science
super
of the novel.
for instance,
their hands is
device
servatism
This
of
that though
Since
well as
they are literate,
but rather
which has defined
Ong
as
not the self-reflexive
is a perversion of
orality.
upon the
burgeoning literacy.
instrument
a sort of
and frozen for all
time the abstractions which give meaning to
existence.
that
We might say of the
and art described by Ong,
mnemonic
Ong's
is characterized as
These dialectic forces are played out within,
among the characters
13).
it breaks inevitably
universal literacy,
by its residual
of
the fact
cultures described in Huckleberry Finn sit
crest of a dialectic
the
it" (Orality
the direct application
terminology to the characters
the
deviant
their brutal
the inherent con-
writes:
in a primary oral culture con-
ceptualized knowledge
soon vanishes,
that is not
oral societies
repeated aloud
must invest great
energy in saying over and over again what has been
learned
arduously over the ages.
This need
lishes
a highly traditionalist
set of
mind that with good reason inhibits
intellectual experimentation.
to come by and precious,
and
estab-
or conservative
Knowledge is hard
society regards
15
highly those wise old men and women who specialize
in conserving it,
stories
of
who know and can tell
the days of old.
outside the mind,
downgrade
the
By storing knowledge
writing and,
even more,
print
the figures of the wise old man and
old woman,
repeaters of the
past,
wise
in favor of
younger discoverers of something
(Orality
new.
41)
Secure
in their knowledge that the abstractions of right and
wrong,
honor and
the parlor
glory sit safely out of
library, the
Grangerfords
the line of fire
proceed with
slaughter of the human vessels that are no
for the
is
perpetuation of
meaning.
emblematic of the literally
Grangerford's literacy has
brought
even "the young discover of
of the
Emmeline's
Stephen
the very
serve.
"Ode
to
And
death
of
Dowling
And did
in Emmeline,
been
One need only
Bots,
poetry
the
Buck Grangerford
compare
to
Dec'd" to perceive
their literary creations
style,
Emmeline's
did young Stephen
And did
for
something new" has
different ends which
In both theme and
longer necessary
to which
them,
subordinated to the quest for stasis.
Huck's description
the
Emmeline's insipid
dead end
poetry
is static:
sicken,
young Stephen die?
the sad hearts thicken,
And
did the mourners
Huck's prose attends always to
in
cry?
the pressures
(139)
of a dynamic
16
reality:
The boys
jumped for the river--both of them hurt--
and as they swum down the current
along
the
bank
shooting
"Kill
them, kill
them!"
fell
out of the tree.
the men run
at them and
It
singing out,
made me so sick I most
I ain't
agoing to tell
all
that happened--it would make me sick again if I
was to do that.
Huck's literacy
(153)
must
ultimately
be
set apart from
literacy which pervades the Mississippi
novel.
Murphy
illiterate
argues
special
insight
River Valley of
that Huck's "transformation,
to literatus,
. . . does not grant Huck any
the fact that
the novel
those
predicament"
must
indeed be considered,
predicaments which society,
reader,
has created independently
while Huck has become literate,
literacy,
of him.
he is
In fact,
Huckleberry
there can be little
characters are victims
which controls their world.
apart
whose
from
might say that
not the product of
Grangerford,
and
read The
Finn.
of the novel is deterministic and
novel's
We
most of us who have read or ever will
Adventures of
being,
or even the socialized
as are Tom Sawyer and Emmeline
indeed,
But such
could be nothing
but the creation of an intensely self-reflexive
"own
the
from
into his own predicament" (385).
an argument ignores
the
question that the
backdrop
that
of
the majority
of the dialectical
Much critical inquiry
the
violence
into the
17
novel focuses on the extent
product
to which Huck is
of deterministic
forces,
himself the
and those critics who see
the message of the novel as overwhelmingly
point
to
novel.
Huck's
What
is
submission
to Tom's plans in
the end of
wanted,
seems,
profoundly
it
introspective Huck to suddenly
and overthrow
the powerful
is
by the ending of
superior
to
Tom's,
Tom Sawyer.
reverence for Tom's
above all, what
the novel
and
there
is
absorb
The
more of what
manipulating reality,
Denial
of Death,
..
This,
that Huck's
intellect
even evidence
that
from Tom
is
Huck's
but
is that Huck's
inward, Tom's inevitably
twist
is that Huck is able to
shields himself
while Tom,
from
it.
in
In The
Becker writes:
most of us--by
the time we
have repressed our vision of the
of creation.
changed it,
would
There can be no
is outside himself,
also
Ernest
lousness
however,
with Tom.
distinguishes Huck
toward others.
much
the
powers is frequently sarcastic;
powers are consistently turned
directed
for
the
take control of the situation
only cement Huck's identification
doubt
bleak inevitably
and no
leave childhood-primary miracu-
We have closed
longer perceive
is to raw experience.
Sometimes
it off,
the world
as it
we may recapture
this world by remembering some striking childhood
perceptions,
how suffused
wonder--how
a favorite
one's
love
first
they were
grandfather
in his early
in emotion
looked,
teens.
or
We change
and
18
these heavily emotional
perceptions
precisely
because we need to move about in the world with
some kind of equanimity,
directness;
some kind of strength
we can't keep
gaping with our
our mouth,
greedily sucking up with our
everything
great and
The great
heart in
eyes
powerful that strikes
boon of repression
is
that
and
it
us.
makes it
possible to live decisively in an overwhelmingly
miraculous and incomprehensible world,
full of
beauty,
majesty,
animals perceived
to act.
Huck's nausea
approaching
at
it all they
the death of
the Phelp's
duke,
all
speak eloquently of Huck's
for some readers,
is fundamentally
of a deterministic world.
others
and
in that he must somehow
the king and
to
Huck's willingness
of others
he
at
cope with an "overwhelmingly
indicated,
existence,
menting
repression is a fact of human
and
those
who fault
Huck
the possibility of
an
unrepressed
has
a
for experi-
with the repressions of others must posit,
alternative,
mercy
is precisely like
As Becker
for action,
to share
the
miraculous and incomprehensible world."
necessity
ex-
is damning proof
that is,
indeed,
on
sense of
vulnerability
like others,
And
his dread
even his
of his enemies,
to some degree in the repressions
that he
would be paralyzed
Buck Grangerford,
plantation,
in viewing the plight
But
that if
(50)
guilt
perience.
and terror
a world so
as an
existence.
19
James
Cox says of Huck that
His instinct
pain if
is neither to give nor to receive
he can avoid
it.
The prime danger to his identity
moment he chooses the developing
conscience.
right,
This
then,
moment,
I'll
go to
comes at the
inner or Northern
when Huck says "All
hell,"
is
character-
istically the moment we fatally approve,
approve morally.
the
moment at
But
it is with
equal fatality
which Huck's identity is most pre-
cariously threatened.
In the very act of
to go to hell he has surrendered to
a principle
and
of right
and
wrong.
choosing
the notion of
He has
forsaken
the world of pleasure to make a moral choice.
Precisely
here is
himself--where,
actually
Sawyer
section
where Huck is
with an act of positive
commits
which
himself to play
book.
To commit
idea, the morality of freeing
Here again
and the ending,
of Huck's act
sequences.
virtue,
he
the role of Tom
he has to assume in the closing
of the
Tom Sawyer.
about to negate
far
oneself
Jim, is
to
the
to become
is the irony of
the book,
from evading the consequences
of rebellion,
realizes
those
con-
(180)
I quote Cox at length here because he clearly
possibility of an unrepressed Huck,
implies
the
or at the very least,
he
20
implies that the inevitability of repression
and,
again,
Becker's
some sort
deterministic
message
message of the
novel.
is precisely that repression
of option which,
could resist.
is the grim
if
calls "the
per se
is
not
we only had the strength,
He devotes an entire section of
debunking what he
But
impossible
we
his book
to
heroism," or the
notion that man can somehow overcome the repression of
reality.
Becker's
insight
the repressed character,
. ..
is
but of
not a result
reality
self-conscious
be the
strength of
not a creature.
of his
that's
all
meet this
time:
there
is
reality.
a god;
and there
Wherever
basic fact that we
guilt
is
is
(261-62)
world.
reaction
of much
to
(265)
of
criticism
liberty
we
overwhelming-
those he calls the
unrepression"
the
we turn
the objects in the
major
Cox's assertion that "freedom for Huck
political
the
must repeat one final
a function of real
child's
of
The child denies
to it.
majesty of
"revolutionaries
of
adult
world as miracle and as terror;
ness, the stark
Becker's
terms
of infantile
way to overcome creature anxiety unless one is
a god and
shortcoming
is
is no strength that can overcome guilt
unless it
no
human character
that
guilt
fantasy
There
is that the
but
points
to a
profound
of Twain's
is
in terms
not
realized
of pleasure"
novel.
in
(178),
21
and
his subsequent conclusion
the heart
reading
it"
attempted
at
as Becker
merges
(179),
reveal
to impose the
the
expense
writes,
wholly
"to
the extent
ideology of
of Huck's
talk about a
with his body is
to Huckleberry Finn seek
by which the
lies
transcendence
of
to
nor
self
man'
on
the
Indeed,
ego
a subhuman
Too often,
critical
to undermine the
in the possibility
through
or conversely,
miss the
Cox has
whose
about
of
tension
for the heroic
in triumph of some imagined,
characterize Huck as
cratic repression
and
'new
at
of any
character.
one" (263).
neither
unrepressed self,
unrepression,
which
character of Huck is defined,
of Huck
pleasure
unrepression
to talk
responses
a superhuman
to
complex
not
To
of
wish to ascribe to the experience
creature,
beauty
the "logic
of the book must also be at the heart
'positive' value we may
novel
that
of Huck's
the repression
of choice.
either a failed
a failed hero
point that it
hero of
of some
is to confuse potentiality
permanent
idiosyn-
with actuality
is precisely Huck's ability to
exist with some equanimity between these
tempting though
illusory
options that constitutes his heroic
attitude.
No
critic more nearly understands this than
Henry Nash Smith;
and
in
The
yet Smith,
too,
implies a sort of
his final pronouncement
Development
of a Writer,
on Twain's
guilt by association
novel.
Smith writes:
Colonel Sherburn's cold-blooded
Boggs,
In Mark Twain:
his failure to experience
murder
of
remorse after the
22
act,
and his withering scorn of the townspeople
are disquieting portents for
Twain,
had
like Huck,
was
the future.
sickened by the
brutality he
witnessed in the society along the river.
he had an adult
character.
aggressiveness
At a certain
endure the anguish of
His imagination
foreign
being a passive
sought
suffering by
cruelty,
longer
observer.
refuge in the image of an
being devoid of
could denounce
But
to Huck's
point he could no
alternative persona who was protected
and
Mark
against
pity or guilt,
yet
the human race for its cowardice
perhaps
The appearance of
even take action
against it.
Sherburn in Huckleberry Finn is
ominous because a writer who shares his attitude
toward human beings
imaginative
.
.
Colonel
Twain's
is in danger of
insight for
moralistic
Sherburn would
dark angel.
that of Tom Sawyer,
His
abandoning
invective.
prove to be Mark
part in the novel,
and
are flaws in a work that
otherwise approaches perfection as an embodiment
of American experience in a radically new
appropriate
The "flaws" which
are in
professor
fact the resistance
can take
its most definite
ominous about
literary
mode.
Smith identifies
and
(137)
in the novel
against which Huck's character
shape.
the mere appearance
There can be nothing
of Sherburn
in the novel,
23
and to suppose that Twain has spoken
message
is
he could not speak through Huck
is
Huck who relates
closing
words on the matter,
if
to forget that it
the Sherburn incident and who,
the cowardly mob,
staid,
through Sherburn a
but
passes judgement not only on
on Sherburn as
I'd a wanted to,
in his
well.
"I could a
but I didn't want to" (191),
says
Huck.
If
power,
of
Sherburn has given Huck a lesson
in
he has also
this powerful
revealed
its limits,
for
man to find contemptible
within his power.
The index of Sherburn's
only the weakness of the
the use of
Bricksville mob,
it is
all
the curse
that lies
power is finally
and in choosing
to
stay among those who cannot find
the courage to hang him, he
is surely fleeing the thing he
cannot control, the inevitability of his own
death.
His calling out
of the
mob,
however effective in demonstrating
his power over the
living, only reiterates his inability
to call out death
itself.
Boggs cannot answer for the stark
meaninglessness of
Sherburn's
own
mortality,
transcendent act,
desperate.
control,
strength,
really
but
but rather,
Boggs is
a drunken,
he is killed anyway--not
one
which is
the emblem of all
profoundly
that Sherburn cannot
reeling reality that in weakness,
must be done away
be lost on Huck,
with.
And can all of
who has faced,
more threatening drunk than
Boggs and
in a
this
gun in hand,
yet stayed
not
the
a much
24
trigger?
nearly
For,
indeed,
took Huck's
it was Pap who
life.
And
in a drunken fit
yet when Huck
the opportunity of killing Pap,
he was
was
faced
with
unwilling to accept
it.
Huck's
great
insight
is that
this world cannot be eliminated,
the Boggses
and Paps
of
that they rise up from
within as reminders of the meaninglessness that must be
confronted,
but
an outcast,
Huck nonetheless has at his
tool,
can never
one which he
be controlled.
shares with
illusion of an ordered and
despised
Though
a boy and
disposal a potent
Sherburn,
for creating
controllable reality.
world of Bricksville,
Within the
Sherburn's literate
con-
sciousness allows him the illusion of supreme power,
a
source of static meaning separate from the community,
more
powerful
And yet,
still
is
Huck
Huck has not attempted
within
the world
the
but
of his novel.
to reform reality
in his
novel.
The circus
scene that
follows so closely
of the Sherburn confrontation reveals with
cision
Huck's attitude toward
confronted
reality
of
reveals,
horse,
was all of
we are
whose repression
in its transparentness,
Huck
wonderful con-
Again,
with the image of the drunk,
all repression.
circus
reality.
on the heels
the
ineffectuality
When
the drunk attempts to ride
says,
"it
a tremble to
mankind sits astride
warn't
funny
see his danger"
a runaway horse,
to
of
me,
(193).
the
though;
To Huck,
I
all
thinking it can con-
25
trol the uncontrollable.
His
reveals Buck's understanding
persons,
genuine fear
speaks of far
science is
to destruction,
himself from
to him because it
drunk,
the possibility of
Huck's own
pap,
is
and his
Huck's con-
reaches for its
to the fundamental horror of human existence,
ness of
the boy's
paradigm
source
the conscious-
meaninglessness and
helplessness in the face of
drunk
the show in the ring
more than mere boyish naivete.
a terror
the
of the dilemma which faces all
that they are subject
inability to alienate
for
death.
for
The
human
an overwhelming reality.
Without an understanding of this paradigm,
we are
likely to judge Huck harshly for the seeming inconstancy of
his resolve.
As T. S. Eliot
has said of Huck,
has not imagination,
in the sense in which Tom has
it:
vision.
he has,
world:
Huck's vision,
instead,
itself.
to the bamboozled
of all
is
(as Huck believes)
I reckon.
had
got up that
let
to
Why,
it extends
transas well
ringmaster:
he see how he had been
and was the sickest
see,
which he is
that
Then the ring-master
fooled,
allows it
extends both to the helpless
drunk and to the dazzling acrobat into
but most telling
the real
(329)
his empathy,
never
He sees
and he does not judge it--he
judge
formed,
he
it
joke all
on to nobody.
ring-master
you
was one of his own
ever
men!
out of his own head,
Well,
I
felt
sheepish
He
and
26
enough,
that
to be took in so, but I wouldn't a been in
ring-master's place,
dollars.
not for a thousand
(194)
The trade-off for Huck's
expansive vision is that he
never act with the confidence of Tom
Sherburn.
Sawyer or Colonel
The circus act confirms for him
of controlling events
actions.
The
the impossibility
and predicting the outcome
transcendent vision
can
of
of the drunkard's
one's
metamor-
phosis is immediately tempered by the ringmaster's apparent
humiliation.
character,
Herein
lies the compelling
ambiguity of Huck's
and the source of so much discomfort
in his
readers.
Ong
tied
is
notes
that
"sustained thought in an oral culture is
to communication"
at
the heart
(Orality
of Huck and Jim's
more clearly illustrates
Huck's
subsequent attempt
dreamed the events of
understood
34),
and
such
relationship.
this than the fog
to convince
Jim
the previous night.
that Huck's
prank
communication
is the
mind when he compares Huck's actions
No episode
passage and
that he
has
Kevin Murphy has
product of a literate
to those of Tom Sawyer:
In playing a gratuitous prank
on Jim,
that
Jim must have been
there
dreaming,
was no fog and that
pretending
Huck recapitulates exactly Tom's earlier
prank on Jim at the beginning of the novel when
Tom puts Jim's hat up in the tree.
Indeed,
Huck flexes
(368)
his literate consciousness,
and in
so
27
violates the communicative
doing,
Jim.
As
Murphy
(369)
bond between himself and
and other critics
Huck's apology to Jim for having
represents a recognition
negotiated
of Jim's humanity by Huck,
the fundamental
consciousness and Jim's.
the fog of reality,
each
sustaining
written
are behind them, so too is
Jim in the
by Huck,
is
fog.
Huck and Jim
the possibility
of
An example from
the passage,
his way
fog:
I'll run into
it won't
do to paddle;
the bank or a tow-head
I got to set still and float,
fidgety
business to have
at such
a
night
as
itself evidence of Huck's ability to
Thinks I,
Jim's
have
Huck fares considerably
think literately and analytically as he works
through the
difference
of freedom as they have
their oral community.
better than
but also
in his own way, and
surely as Cairo and the possibility
imagined it
pointed out,
played a prank on him
implicit is Huck's recognition of
between his own
have
is
time.
I got all
callin' for you,
mos'
something;
it's mighty
to hold your hands still
hellish:
wore out wid work, en wid de
en went
to sleep,
broke bekase you wuz
no mo' what become
Without Huck,
or
(99-100)
comparatively
"When
and yet
first I know
los',
my heart wuz
en I didn' k'yer
er me en de raf." (105)
we sense that Jim is lost,
the anchor of his oral community,
and indeed,
Jim is ill-equipped
without
to
28
face
reality
alone.
Ong
notes:
In the absence of elaborate analytic
categories that depend on writing
to structure
knowledge at a distance from lived experience,
oral cultures
knowledge
must conceptualize and verbalize
with
more or less close reference
human lifeworld,
assimilating
world to the more immediate,
of human
But we
have
beings.
(Orality
no such fears
of his ability to function
the alien,
familiar
all
to the
objective
interaction
42)
for Huck.
Huck's recognition
without Jim's help
is the sine
qua non of the moral implication
of his decision not to turn
Jim
over
attack
not
the regression that
natural
found
to Miss Watson.
Murphy sees
of
(369),
"conscience"
but
rather
consequence of Huck's new understanding
differences
Huck's
vision
between
is
tempered
of course,
but a literate
fortunately,
the
pro-
the product
of a
of its
oral
that
literacy,
oral antecedents and,
though it consumes
unless
monitored,
even destroys
infinitely
adaptable.
too.
the
consciousness
by the experience of and the loss
Ong points out
of
is
himself and Jim.
finally,
literate consciousness,
source.
Huck's
(Orality
it is carefully
their memory,
It can
its own
is also
restore their
memory,
15)
This restoration is for Huck more
than an
intellectual,
or
29
even artistic,
deepest
exercise.
need,
to create
fractured by
return
Huck's
a meaningful
the written word.
the bond
To
he has
with
fully understand
community
the
the
and unrelenting
the characters
pathetic.
perpetual
Entirely
in
community
and
for
world
in a world
source
of
himself
than
that
the book,
he
Huck's
need
the victim
faced
Pap is
of a fog
by Jim and Huck.
surely
Pap
the
most
must find reality
lacks his sons
ability
which has risen around
to deal
him,
and
the literate
oral
community as he may have had has died before him.
one day return
hope,
is
a world
finally
effectiveness
which any
St. Petersburg in the hope that
to his community,
which he cannot
the evil against
of all
meaningful
is
for
with
While Jim may flee
can
yet the standard
meaning of community
without community,
torture,
his
Jim.
we must turn to Pap,
more dense
Of all
shared
to answer
Neither Huck nor society
finally to the idyllic raft,
against which Huck must judge
a
book attempts
Pap Finn
which Huck must
remedies
heroism
and
its
without
This hopelessness
measure
the adversity
must take
he may
must flee,
understand.
such
the
against
shape.
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CHAPTER II
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"Tramp--tramp--tramp
Smith's treatment of Pap
Henry Nash
illustrates the problems
fails
relief
Finn (125-29)
well
of literacy biased interpretation
While Smith describes Pap as "a note
of an oral character.
of tragic
."
in a predominantly
comic
story"
he
(129),
to explain the nature of the tragedy and seems to
undermine his own assertion by allowing that Pap's actions
"may
be
And yet,
plain
without
loafing,
moral
significance"
Smith also describes Pap as a "vernacular
(128).
outcast"
(127), raising the question of whether Pap has withdrawn
from society or
ever,
through
has been cast out.
an analysis of
Pap's orality,
this inevitability
and that only
can Pap's words and actions,
their ultimate effect on Huck's own
with some objectivity
how-
that society and
Pap have inevitably diverged from each other,
against
clear,
It becomes
be evaluated
character,
by the literate
In his first exchange with Huck,
and
consciousness.
Pap refers explicitly
to his oral community:
"Your
mother couldn't
before
write,
nuther,
family
couldn't,
here
ain't
read,
and
she died.
before
man
to stand
32
it--you
couldn't
None of the
they died.
you're a-swelling yourself
the
she
up
I
can't;
like
hear?"
this.
(24)
and
I
33
We can only
speculate about the specific
but the emphasis
family,
demise
of
Pap's
public
schooling,
parents,
surrogate
and
causes for the
novel
in Twain's
on
the influence of
the community on the individual points with certainty toward
the
waning importance
unit
of
of the frontier
family as the primary
social organization in the Mississippi
Both as an individual and as a type,
emerging social
forces that
Smith notes that
Pap "is
Pap's,
in a sense a ghost the first
time
corpse has been found floating
. . ." (127).
but the
Pap is doomed by the
dominate in Twain's novel.
we see him, for his faceless
in the river
River Valley.
Of
course,
incident reiterates
good as dead in the eyes of
St.
the corpse
was not
the fact that Pap
Petersburg
society.
is as
He is
figuratively a drowning man from the time of his first
appearance
in the
novel.
In a discussion of
the real-life
Mark Twain and Huck Finn,
Pap is made
prototypes
Walter Blair
much
less
writes:
likable than
amusing counterparts were.
for Pap in
his somewhat
Soon he is to champion
attitudes appropriate
for such a loathsome
character--self-pity,
sentimentality,
learning,
Certainly,
Pap's
characterization
backdrop of
and
racial
attitudes are
of Pap must
the entire
novel
prejudices.
loathsome,
hatred
for
(108)
but
Twain's
be set against the
larger
if it is not to be
interpreted
as simple invective against a fellow
human
being.
Pap's
34
diatribe against the educated
professor,
slavery.
Pap,
after
all,
owns no
of the black
seething condemnation
By his
is packed
more to implicate St. Petersburg
do far
than Pap in the crime of
slaves.
instance,
for
while they do not exculpate Pap
with complex ironies which,
for his bigotry,
Negro,
merely voicing the feelings that Miss
Pap is
Watson and the Widow Douglas must repress if they are to
continue the
duplicity
Indeed, Pap is
piety.
of holding slaves
in many ways the embodiment of the
bald and unrepressed evils
Kurtz,
which haunt the
In this role
holding world.
while professing
Southern,
he is analogous to
slave-
Conrad's
a horrifying mirror from which polite society must
turn its eye to preserve its own
has willingly
cut himself
away its lies,
sanity. But
off from society
Pap simply has no access
whereas Kurtz
in order
to strip
to those lies.
Without an oral community to sustain him, and without the
ability to read and write, Pap is as effectively isolated in
the back alleys of
Petersburg
as Kurtz is at the end
And in perfect opposition to Pap,
the Congo River.
black
St.
professor has access
which, unlike Pap's backwater
by
the
allowed
he has risen,
oral community,
slaveholding
disenfranchisement
the
both to the literate community
and to the black oral community from which
preserved
of
society.
upon learning
self-
that the black man is even
to vote in his home state is the
of a man who has long since lost
Pap's
has been
all
pathetic defiance
power over his destiny,
35
of that which has already been taken:
a relinquishing
"It
was 'lection day,
and
vote,
there;
myself,
and
if I warn't too drunk
but when they told
out.
I says
the very words
country
I'll
I said;
may rot
as long as I live."
to get
let that nigger
never
vote
me--I'll
in
vote,
agin.
they all heard
for all
go
me there was a State
this country where they'd
drawed
I was just about to
I
Them's
me; and
the
never vote agin
(34)
Huck is the lone surviving member of Pap's oral
community, and yet he too has passed into
literate by the time Pap
finds him.
Pap's initial
finding
motive
fortune from him,
power
family
over his
Significantly,
Huck
is
to take
although
Huck's
their first conversation quickly comes to
focus on the issue
certainly Pap's
for
the ranks of the
of
Huck's
power over
fortune,
literacy.
At
his son,
but Pap's
and
stake
is
subsequently his
reference
to the
dead
members' inability to read or write and the vehemence
with which he warns Huck against continuing his schooling
betrays a fear of
something more
than material loss.
after Pap has secured a dollar from Huck for liquor,
takes time to admonish Huck to stay away from
When he had
got out on the shed,
in again, and cussed
trying
to be better
he
Even
he
school:
put his head
me for putting on
frills and
than him; and when I reckoned
he was gone, he come back and put his head in
36
again, and told
me to mind about
that school,
because he was going to lay for me and lick
I didn't
And Huck's
description
desperation
which
that of a dead
white,"
drop that.
and
of
(26)
Pap further
emphasizes
surrounds the old man.
thing,
"a tree-toad
his hair,
"all
me if
no
of
Pap's whiteness is
white,
black,
the air
a fish-belly
gray"
(23),
emphasizes
the morbid whiteness while simultaneously removing from the
reader's mind any
dignity.
Most
thought of age and its accompanying
telling of all,
Pap appears
since Huck last
saw him, to the extent that
directly evokes
fear in Huck.
this
that
that
has lost
about death,
be supposed from
for Huck, the in-
its terror.
Carrington argues that in writing
indirectly
he no longer
But it cannot
which Pap must represent
evitability of death,
to have declined
about Pap,
Huck succeeds in
George
and
thus
repressing death:
In and by this long description Huck triumphs
finally over
to master
words
like
where his
another
sick,
the
Huck's
threat of
defense
memory
"There warn't
face showed; it
is his
ability
of Pap with words,
no color in his face,
was white; not like
man's white, but a white to make a body
a white
tree-toad
to
white,
whiteness,
a body
Pap.
sick,"
make a
a
body's flesh
crawl--a
fish-belly white."
so Melvillean in its impact,
but Huck is
not just
The
can "make
"a body,"
37
anybody--he is an artist.
necesary virtuoso
celebrates
the
phrases he displays and
artist's
the greatest fear,
carries
in his
defense
the fear of
against
fear--here
the death that Pap
face.
In a sense,
at purgation;
the un-
With each of
then,
the novel is Huck's attempt
but because,
as Huck implies,
pur-
gation is impossible,
and because Huck lives
world where action
life
can
see
is
the novel as
defensive gesture.
Huck's drama,
and stasis
an action,
The novel is,
which not only
is
in a
death, we
Huck's action,
in other
his
words,
tells us about
his
impossible situation and his guilt but tells us
an organized
way--that
is,
artistically--so that
the impossible is put at arm's length and
bearable.
finger on the central
dynamic
of Huck's character,
see the
novel as essentially deterministic
on
a crucial
neither is he
nauseated
at
significantly,
completely
again,
fails
point.
Just as
he
sight of Buck
art
his predisposition
Huck
of becoming
fails
to circumvent the
to
has caused him
Huck does indeed
grow
Grangerford's death,
for
and
the incident
sick again.
answer
to
to
is not just "anybody,"
is unable to describe
for fear
Huck's
and yet
just any artist.
the
becomes
(118-19)
Here Carrington nearly places his
err
in
the
Time and time
"impossible,"
inevitability of death,
and
Huck
38
overcomes his fear
not Pap,
is
that which
knowledge of death
the Eden
of Pap because he discerns
of St.
to Huck
has
must
where death is
the magic of the
But to understand
brought this knowledge
be explored
seeks
brings the
to Huck,
of
Pap's
manner
Pap's oral
fellow man
and a major
the idea of
Pap
consciousness
alcoholic illiterate
But
is identified.
or to
oral
mind
orality,
pathos
that is,
knowledge in an oral community is limited
in formulae
members,
his
the
the need for the
Since
to that which can
important knowledge
which aid memory,
na-
replaces
empathy for
to inhibit changes in stored knowledge.
be remembered by its
the
The conservative nature of
mind has already been noted,
not
by approaching
wellspring of Huck's
oral
contained
in which
his son's fortune does
relationship to Huck.
character through
revulsion,
"at
in greater detail.
sway over his son and
Pap's
to
indeed placed
do justice either to Twain's characterization
ture
return
literate con-
fully the
Seeing Pap as merely a spiteful,
who
Pap
that precludes Huck's
Petersburg,
arms length" through
sciousness.
is to be feared.
that death,
must be
and any knowledge
which threatens these formulaic structures must be incorporated slowly and with great
entire
method of recall.
Of
care lest it threaten the
this necessity Ong writes:
Aides-memoire such as notched sticks or
a series of carefully
arranged objects
will not of
themselves retrieve a complicated series of
39
in fact,
How,
assertions.
analytic solution
a lengthy,
could
place?
An interlocutor is virtually essential:
is
to talk
hard
(Orality
Pap's conservatism
34)
is intensified
for he
by his isolation,
in the assimi-
His ossified and impoverished view
lation of new knowledge.
of reality is a matter of cognitive survival,
is
it
for hours on end.
to yourself
lacks even a single interlocuter to aid him
the real
first
ever be assembled in the
and indeed,
threat that unassimilated reality presents for Pap
frighteningly revealed in his alcoholic nightmare:
"Tramp--tramp--tramp;
tramp--tramp--tramp;
I
won't
don't!
poor
Death,
feeble
go--Oh,
devil
they're coming after
they're
here!
off--they're
hands
alone!"
cold;
for in
but
touch
me--
go--Oh,
let
don't
let
me;
a
(36)
meaninglessness itself,
defenses,
the dead;
that's
the absense
inevitably
pierces Pap's
of an oral community
Pap has
with which to create complex repressive structures,
come to depend almost wholly on the unreliable powers of
alchohol
to repress the unfathomable reality impinging upon
his world.
Becker puts the dilemma in more familiar terms:
Modern man is drinking and drugging himself
awareness,
is the same
or he spends his time shopping,
thing.
of heroic dedication
out of
which
As awareness calls for types
that his culture no
longer
40
provides for him,
society helps him forget.
(Orality 284)
Pap's one-sided
conversations with Huck reveal at
same time both his need for human
to
which his
Huck is
capacity for such
discourse and the extent
discourse has atrophied.
called upon only minimally by Pap to function as
interlocutor,
and he is
thus unable to achieve the sort of
viable oral community he will later form with Jim.
theless,
Pap's orations
consciousness
exhibit
Ong
Many of
these characteristics
revealing with regard to Pap's character,
they show that much of what Pap says,
he says
it,
lists a number of
thought and expression to which
discourse conforms.
particularly
None-
the structures of a
grounded in orality.
characteristics of oral
Pap's
the
are
for
and the way in which
is a function of his orality.
These
characteristics thus help distinguish between a character
who
is innately malignant,
chosen to be malignant,
because
or worse,
one who has freely
and one who deserves our sympathy
he is the victim of cultural
forces beyond his
control.
The characteristics
an analysis of
Pap are (1)
"aggregative rather
that the oral
than analytic"
thought are "redundant"
servative
of the oral mind
(3) that
or traditionalist"
(4)
(2)
the
that
most pertinent
mind and
that
oral
oral
speech
oral speech
mind is
thought
to
are
and
"conis "close
41
(5)
to the human lifeworld" and
agonistically
toned
Ong
speech
is
38-46).
(Orality
the aggregative quality of oral thought and
In noting
speech,
that oral
writes:
This characteristic
is closely tied to
reliance on formulas to implement
elements of orally
memory.
based thought and expression
tend to be not so much simple integers
of integers,
clauses,
antithetical terms or phrases or
folk prefer,
Oral
discourse,
not the soldier,
especially
but
clauses,
in formal
the brave soldier;
but the beautiful princess;
the princess,
the oak,
as clusters
parallel terms or phrases or
such as
epithets.
not
The
but the sturdy oak.
Oral expression
not
thus
carries a load of epithets and other formulary
baggage which high literacy rejects as cumbersome
and tiresomely redundant because of its aggregative
weight.
The cliches
in political denunciations
many low-technology,
the people,
in
developing cultures--enemy
of
capitalist war-mongers--that strike
high literates as mindless are residual formulary
essentials of
oral
thought
processes.
(Orality
38)
From
such
necessity arises
professor as a "prowling,
Pap's description of the
thieving,
infernal,
black
white-shirted
42
free nigger . . ." (34)
"govment" that refuses
as well
the auction
to sell him on
by any of the epithets Pap
formulae for describing
is not intended
observation
context
of that
language,
to supersede
just-said,
keeps
and particularly
to
the oral quality
repetition of
both speaker and hearer
Pap repeats
but rather
historical context.
that "redundancy,
track" (Orality 40).
the historical
man,
is integral to that
Ong points out
This
the black race.
for Pap's hatred of the black
emphasize that language,
uses to describe
fit his remembered
him, Pap must make the black professor
store of
block.
that the black man is
Despite the lack of evidence
characterized
as his description of the
the
surely on the
word "govment" ten
the
times in the space of two paragraphs in his famous speech in
Chapter 6.
The effect of this is a crude and sometimes
comic unification of Pap's widely disparate complaints
against society,
seeing
and the comic quality
Pap's speech
in print,
for through
reading we are able to identify as
presented as a whole.
abstraction.
patchwork that which
But
for Pap,
Indeed,
the government
his conception
is
is inarticulate only
But the speech
an abstraction--"govment"-- Pap's
total failure.
by
the technology of
terms of literate expectations.
if we analyze it in
analysis of
is emphasized
speech
is
As
is
not an
of government
illustrates perfectly the necessity of
the oral
connect words with specific experiences,
mind to
with the
a
43
"lifeworld" as Ong
is "a-standing
that "jams
him
a free nigger
34).
it.
ready to
into a
trap of
till he's been
Government
is
what
government
government for the literate
plicable in terms of
his orality.
is
months"
for Pap.
if not all,
Pap's
to his experience and owes
Pap's speech
is also
ex-
Ong remarks:
oral or residually
oral
in their verbal performance and indeed
their lifestyle.
that disengage
Writing fosters abstractions
knowledge
from the arena where
beings struggle with
separates
one another.
the knower from the known.
It
By keeping
knowledge embedded in the human lifeworld,
situates
(33-
strike literates as extraordinarily
agonistic
human
him,"
mind.
character of
in
from
that stipulates the meaning of
The adversarial
cultures
away
the State six
categorization is bound entirely
Many,
man's son
a cabin," and "that can't sell
in
nothing to the written record
It is a person
with his life.
take a
for Pap
has meaning
Government
immediate contact
through its
who
calls
knowledge within a context of
orality
struggle.
(Orality 43-44)
Though
Huck is never
expected to respond,
of his speech
in the form of
questions.
speech
with
"Call
begins
the words
Indeed,
much
Pap's
this a govment!"
though in response to some imaginary
remainder of his tirade is filled
Pap phrases
interlocuter,
(33),
and the
with what a literate
as
44
identify as rhetorical
audience would
is completely lacking
oratory
such rhetorical
Pap's
if
Pap's
But
in the objective quality
questions would
that the black
remark
questions.
serve to
ordinarily
a give
man "wouldn't
me
which
create.
the
road
I hadn't shoved him out o' the way" (34) serves as pro-
logue
to the eruption
speech
of
violence
physical
with
which the
ends:
Pap was agoing on so, he never saw where his
old limber legs was taking him to, so he went head
over heels
both shins,
over the
and the
hottest kind of
tub of
salt pork,
too,
language--mostly hove at the
around the cabin considerable,
He hopped
first on one leg
holding first one shin and
other,
then the other one,
give the tub
here and there.
all along,
and then on the
and at last
he let out with
his left foot all of a sudden and fetched
tub a rattling kick.
Pap's attempt at rhetoric,
institutionalization of
thought
processes
and
In
which Ong identifies as the
"the agonistic dynamics
of oral
(Orality 45),
finally
expression"
the absence of
Pap's struggle
such internal
the a
(34)
disintegrates into the prototypical struggle
evolved.
barked
rest of his speech was all the
nigger and the govment, though he
some,
and
from which it
participatory interlocuters,
must be internalized,
strain is vented
and the pressure
in physical violence.
from
How-
45
ever, even this attempt to externalize his struggle through
for
violence backfires on Pap,
he only
succeeds in injuring
tub.
his own foot when he kicks the inanimate
in
Finally,
his terrifying nightmare Pap must struggle with death itself, and though he cannot
finally win the
struggle,
has
he
succeeded at least in creating the delusion that he is
grappling with others,
As
oral
of Pap's
the inherent conservatism
noted before,
community.
with the dead of his oral
by his isolation.
mind is exacerbated
Ong acknowledges
that
Writing
.
ways.
.
.
on itself,
tasks,
is of course conservative in its own
But
conservative
by taking
the text frees the mind of conservative
that is, of its
memory work, and
(Orality
speculation.
41)
Pap must encapsulate his past in rigid formulaic
that
to retrieve
past at
all,
between individual consciousnesses
a text, having
change.
patterns if
and while the same may
be said generally of oral communities,
assimilation and
thus
to new
enables the mind to turn itself
he is
functions
in the discourse
lies the possibility
In a sense Pap has himself
taken unto himself
become
all of the conservative
functions necessary to his existence--a responsibility
would be shared among the individuals of an oral
As the owl has foretold
Pap--is already dead
(4).
for
to Huck in Chapter I,
He is dead at
least
to
which
community.
someone-the world
46
of
living
Pap's alcoholism,
discourse.
and his inability to
violence,
his
his
bigotry,
participate in society
are
not the sources of the fatal aura that surrounds him, but
rather
the evidence
he has tried
desperation
well.
of all
there is nonetheless a thread
suppose that Huck is
thing
was right
to his fate,
for a
thrown in jail
kind
"He was just suited--this
Huck writes:
drunken spree,
on Huck as
tolerance in Huck's treat-
of
When Pap is
ment of his father.
Pap has
and in
death,
that have led Pap
the forces
live,
To
rigor
to impose this
And while certainly we cannot
cognizant
of
underway.
rigor akin to
to a psychological
acceeded
long
of decay
in his line"
(29).
At another time Huck
says that "Pap warn't in a good humor--so he was his natural
self"
(31).
luck's
reluctance
to pass
father seems at first remarkable in
and
privations
he
judgment
on
his
light of the beatings
suffers at his hand,
and despite Huck's
avowed distaste for the civilizing tendencies of Miss Watson
and the Widow Douglas,
the reader
why Huck does not actively
removing
mystery
himself
aid the forces
from Pap's
of Huck's character,
often aquiesces
must at some point wonder
power.
Indeed,
the central
to forces that he might well overcome,
a discussion of the nature
Ernest Becker
in
the fatality with which he
its first expression in his relationship
In
of society
so
finds
with Pap.
of the heroic
individual,
writes:
No organismic life can straightforwardly be
47
into himself
draw back
living,"--but
we
The insurmountable
the consiousness of
problem.
life
itself
is
(270)
problem of life which Becker refers to is
death that
faces all
but at the price of having one's
and limited by the repression of
By
human beings.
by drawing back,
repressing this consciousness,
to function,
that
must remember
insurmountable
with Adler,
to say,
is due to "problems in
that mental illness
the
for his natural fears and
It is all right
limitations.
pay some
in some areas,
a severe kind
penalty of
each one must
in all directions;
self-expansive
choice.
one is able
shaped
world
Again,
Becker
writes:
we can also see at once that
between normal and neurotic,
all
bound in some
is
there
no line
as we all
ways by the
lies.
lie
and are
Neurosis is,
universal.
Or
putting it another way, normality is neurosis,
and
something
share;
it
to show damaging effects
people around him and he seeks
it--or
others
the refusal
is
We call a man "neurotic" when his lie
vice versa.
begins
we all
of
seek it
reality
occasion any visible
for him.
"normal"
problems.
on him or on
clinical help for
Otherwise,
because
.
it
we
doesn't
But the whole thing becomes more complex
we see how the lies
about reality
call
.
then,
begin to
when
48
label "neurotic."
And
Generally
experience.
free
we
speaking,
number of
human
call
forward momentum,
may
that a person
and growth
are any
neurotic
begins to constrict too much,
any life style that
that prevents
there
from many ranges of
for this,
occasions
the
to begin to apply
Then we have
miscarry.
new choices,
(178-
want and need.
79)
Huck begins his adventures
neurosis of
not
St.
Miss
Huck's
society,
Because
apparent to Huck.
him is objectively
literacy,
serves instead
to set him further
in some
sense
rather than having arisen from
inherent self-validating ends
of Tom
Sawyer and
to his identity,
threat to Pap.
unambiguous
imposed
it,
that
the Grangerfords,
is patently strange
to Buck,
and as
with
apart from
on Huck's
it develops free
it.
context,
of the
characterize the literacy
for instance.
Literacy
such it poses a threat
just as Huck himself,
Thus,
Furthermore,
to bolster his identification
meant
literacy is
the Widow
Watson,
the extent to which this neurosis
and others,
restricts
is
the "normal" neurosis of
Petersburg, as have Tom Sawyer,
Douglas,
it
But because Huck
neurosis of Pap.
has not been raised to
St.
the "normal"
"abnormal"' (because
Petersburg and the
by society)
shared
caught between
as literate,
poses a
literacy can never be for Huck the
source of power
characters in the novel.
that it is for so many other
For Huck to objectify
his
actions
49
as Tom Sawyer does in the ending of the
through literacy,
but of
reality,
Having
Pap,
self.
emerged both culturally and biologically from
Huck must acknowledge the dark
St.
represents.
role
merely a repression of external
would entail not
novel,
can attempt to reform him, as the
judge's
make his mark on
own,
for
to do
so would
and death.
comment
to reform,
upon Pap's failure
as well as
the
corpse in chapter
mistaken
three as Pap,
much as its expectations.
of
identification
reveal
Huck alone
society's
disposed
of.
and darkened cabin,
self,
Huck has the
Indeed,
so
point,
in Pap's
means,
the motive,
any ultimate sense to
trains Pap's own gun on
ventions of St.
it is
violent
to
him.
And
not answer in
If Pap
that the laws and con-
Petersburg which stand ready
murder of his
closed
mind it-
the problem of death itself.
has taught Huck anything,
be so
and the opportunity
to commit an act which will
yet he declines
the
one
desires as
cannot
similar to Pap's darkened
fulfill society's wish--he
Huck for
at
the drowned
recognizes that Pap,
and more importantly the death that dogs him,
easily
that
maybe"
"a body could reform the ole man with a shot-gun,
(28),
Pap,
be to
potential for meaninglessness
acknowledge its own
The new
to the
But society can never acknowledge
of its
as one
that Pap
relegate Pap
does by having Pap appropriately
a written document.
as he is,
society can
Petersburg
of town drunk, or it
new judge
potential
father
to exculpate
have no power over
50
the ranks of the dead, who can come in the night to claim
own.
their
Huck's enactment
farewell
appropriate
St.
for
Petersburg,
own
death
to the competing
Huck
share,
Petersburg cannot
myth on which
for it
a way of
to share
the
coping
father,
fate of his
threatens
that community rests,
the knowledge
It
a literate.
is
and ultimately
community,
But it
is
the oral
death.
Pap's
son
to create
he will accomplish
can
this
his own
through
community he forms with Jim on
transcend the inherited
Petersburg and to achieve the
reflexive attitude that transforms
one.
can
that literacy
for Huck
left
the raft which enables Huck to
repressions of St.
the fundamental
community, and yet he is
never be a member of the literate
heroic
the
with which
sustain it against the advances of
book.
of Pap and
him, a knowledge which the community of St.
Pap has left
his
neuroses
find
must
To avoid
mortality.
Huck must find a community
himself
as an
serves
it reiterates as nothing else could
adventures.
object of his
with his
of his own
self-
an artistic act into a
CHAPTER BIBLIOGRAPHY
Becker,
Press,
Blair,
Mark
California
P,
George
Huckleberry
Ong,
Walter
the
Smith,
Twain
Free
C.,
Orality
Word.
London:
Mark
The
Dramatic
and Literacy:
Methuen,
Mark Twain:
Berkeley:
U of
Ed.
Berkeley:
U
51
Unity of
State
UP,
1976.
The Technologizing
1982.
The
Harvard UP,
[Samuel Langhorne
Finn.
Ohio
Columbus:
Cambridge:
Huckleberry
Fischer.
Jr.
Finn.
Henry Nash.
and Huck Finn.
1960.
J.
Writer,
Twain,
York:
1975.
Walter.
Carrington,
New
of Death.
The Denial
Ernest.
Development of a
1962.
Clemens].
Walter
Adventures
Blair and Victor
of California
P,
1985.
of
of
CHAPTER III:
"You can't
The
from
short
reveals
Alone,
Huck
and
his
Huck's
camp
Island,
fire
by it
smoking,
got sort
uneasiness
way;
right
with
off"
island,
(51).
canoe
to find
me;
I'll
almost
Certainly,
Huck
reveals
the
an outsider,
he
is
Petersburg is not,
for human
Huck
says,
is
does
is
that's
continued
live
on
felt
Jim
the
now"
at
downstream
searching
he did not
Though Huck
departure
the
lonesome,
that
this
better,
on
danger of
many critics have
52
I
discover
of his journey.
as so
here
Well,
with
to his
can't
"I warn't
my
later,
is filled
"I
shared his island;
His
I set by
but by and
that night
so avoided the
no loner.
loneliness
Three days
out or bust.
might have
was that
priorities
need
was dark
(48).
who it
remark
the first opportunity and
out whoever it
of Jim on
satisfied;
campfire,
when Huck
his first
it
pretty
but then
out
find
And
(50).
"when
He withdraws
for safety,
escape
Of his first night on
. . ."
abandoned
and dread.
I'm agoing
island
writes,
and feeling
Jim's
discovery
is subject to both a deep
of lonesome
upon finding
cramped
Huck
between Huck's
fundamental
and a discomforting uncertainty.
Jackson's
to argue"
interim
Petersburg
Island
discourse.
a nigger
but significant
Pap and St.
Jackson's
learn
from Pap
implied,
may
and
the
be
St.
53
illustrates,
can
deadening.
of
be both
Rather,
community
sciousness
St.
of
his three
days of solitude,
isolation.
Like Christ,
Jim is escaping not
permanent loss
is
the number
broken
who populate this novel,
of
freedom,
genteel
St.
family
unity,
families,
Petersburg.
have
outside of a living context.
culture,
such as Jim's
whom he will
and if
one
be
notes
considers
and child abusers
Here Murphy
dynamic
"Family
abstraction,
which Murphy refers would
family
that definition seems both en-
the essential
is a literate
but from
Kevin Murphy
while at the same time falsely associating
those
Huck's
of his community--his
and admirably concrete" (369).
correctly identifies
to Jim
his father and
from slavery,
is sold down the river.
that "for Jim, freedom
ritual
to neither.
Petersburg--from
the other slaves of St.
of orphans,
Huck's
Huck is torn between
Likewise,
compassing
e.g.,
and yet
has
Twain's much
significance of
belonging to both,
separated if he
Pap's oral con-
and his appearance
community,
the potentially
of
Christian imagery,
serves to enhance the
and
from the impossibility
with this,
as a ghost,
his
cognitively
literate consciousness
In connection
evocation
death,
Huck's escape is
Petersburg's
created for him.
noted
physically deadly and
that the juxtapositioning
and
as Pap's fate
Freedom,
for freedom.
Huck's desire
result of
little
and
of Jim's
Jim's values
unity,"
must largely be,
with
like
the list of ills
meaning
Ong notes
flight,
to
for Jim
that an
oral
is always close to
54
the "human
lifeworld"
A chirographic (writing)
(print) culture
typographic
way
denature
leaders and
itemizing
neutral list entirely devoid
human action
context.
neutral
need for
as a
An oral culture
list.
his family
and,
as a code of family
memory,
his identity,
of his oral community.
subject
to the same
enveloped
things
of a
has nothing
(Orality 42)
more broadly,
ethics.
the
entire
to nothing so
It is rather Jim's
which is threatened by the
For without that community,
loss
Jim
the critical
questing
for freedom,
pression.
And such
or
need
controversy
for community
over whether
merely fleeing
renders
they are
society's
judgments upon Huck's
from the application of
re-
character
the abstract,
as have
and unlikely
ideals of freedom and unrepression must be re-evaluated
perspective.
Specifically,
betray Jim to Miss Watson,
cooperate
is
sort of restrictive reality that has
and Jim's imperative
irrelevant
this
a
Pap.
Huck
evolved
in
political divisions in
slave community of St. Petersburg is tied
very
such
an abstract,
so
abstract
even more a
distance and
can
even the human,
as the names of
Jim's
culture and
with
be reassessed
for community;
Tom's
Huck's
not
to
and later his willingness to
outlandish
plans
in light of this new
moreover,
decision
from
for
Jim's
dynamic;
the concept
of
escape
i.e.,
orality
must
the need
must
be
55
applied
pretation
of Buck
and
While his ties
Huck's
the bias of a literate
in order to escape
literacy
Jim's
relationship.
the
cultural
supplies
will
enable Huck to become
with Duck's oral
Though Huck's
literate,
speaks to the oral
creation
discourse.
regression to an oral
Print
the absence of a
the
and even
the novel all harken
state.
...
could.
back to the oral
Ong
writes:
as well as
mechanically
a firmer sense of closure than
structure..
.
.
The
imagined or real.
her position was a bit
nineteenth-century
author
gave birth to the
The print world
break
novelist
was
more specifically with a text and less
with auditors,
reader'
space and
which eventually made the definitive
with episodic
engaged
problem of
But at work is more than simple
thereby established
novel,
that
unmistakably
psychologically locked words into
writing
past
need for a living community.
clearly linear plot progression,
origins of
is
the first-person narrative,
closure at the end of
it,
the self-reflexive author of his
adventures.
The use of
that initiated
ends
the nurturing link
Jim
it
the evolution of
to Pap have disengaged
from
inter-
reveals
somewhere,
and
unsettled still.
novelist's
the problem
still tends
. . . But his or
recurrent
The
'dear
of adjustment:
to feel an audience,
the
listeners,
must frequently recall that
the
56
story is not
for
in his or her own
one alone
to declamatory
The addiction
world.
reading of selections from their
novels also reveals
oral
narrator's
feeling for the
the lingering
together.
Paradoxically,
.
devices for
rather than a
reveals a break with,
the nineteenth-century
and,
initial address to the reader
Yours Truly Huck Finn,"
of the novel,
designedly
are
masking the oral quality of
their overwhelming failure
narrative,
148-49)
his salutation at the end
strikingly,
End,
(Orality
the spirit of
Huck's
novelist.
.
the appearance in Twain's novel of such
literary conventions
continuance of,
.
itinerant
to string episodes
travels served
whose
per-
An especially
world.
sistent ghost from this world was the
hero,
each
for readers,
nineteenth-century novelists
of Dickens and other
old
but
listeners
more
"The
inadequate
By
the narrative.
to lend a literate air
to Huck's
these devices serve to emphasize the ineradicable
orality of the
novel's
language.
address parodies the form
it is
You don't know
Indeed,
Huck's
opening
meant (by Huck) to preserve:
about me,
without
you have
read a book by the name of "The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer,"
made
but
by Mr.
mainly.
that ain't
Mark Twain,
There
mainly he told
was
no matter.
and
things
the truth.
he told
which
That
That
the
book
was
truth,
he
stretched,
is
nothing.
but
I
57
never seen anybody but lied,
without
it
Huck undermines his
and with
it
"Call
literate
Polly
literate
me Ishmael,"
language of
shore,
(1)
as he offers
oral
Some years ago--never mind
little
or no money
we
driving off
leave
the spleen,
a little and
It
is
The
novel
the first
paragraph,
Ishmael
literacy
itself.
most
with his
alludes
had
literate audience.
literate values
And only
embracing
been
However,
reflexive
of
trying
in Twain's
for
the very orality
acts,
for it
from
so long to differentiate
by turning literacy
literate of literate
upon itself,
by the
could Twain achieve this.
Twain has not simply superimposed his own selfattitudes
to
an attempt
marks nothing short of a dialectical cresting,
a literate
the
(1)
inversion of oral and
represents
which
a way I
and regulating
Cato's throwing himself upon his sword--clearly
to create intimacy
in
and nothing particular to interest me on
circulation.
before
the
the narrator:
see the watery part of the world.
And
opening
is quickly subsumed by
I thought I would sail about
have of
it,
he is ad-
explicitly
how long precisely--having
purse,
. . .
readers
Melville's
Call me Ishmael.
my
time or another,
literate allusion even
By contrast,
Moby-Dick,
overtly
aunt
the community of
dressing.
of
was
one
on Huck's
character.
58
Ong points
reflexive,
implement
of
its
out that "intelligence is
so that even the external
its workings become
own
reflexive
process"
quality of Muck's literacy
internalized
demands
of
virtually
fiction
writing--the
relentlessly
tools that it
'internalized', that is,
(Orality 81).
But a
is that it appears
from its
account
inception.
for
much
Of
of Huck's
Finn
on
literate
this subject
quality
(3)
But
abilities
they are "essential
classic"
to
and
in his article
conclude,
literacy.
of Huck,
So I
Blair's
far as
"Was Huckleberry
as
Blair
does,
language,
For
instance,
that
"you can't
His words are
hensive arguments of
of animals,
insight
than different.
because
hinges on
his
between Twain's voice
Huck says at
learn
a nigger
ironically
the
the end of
the
to argue.
opposed
to
both
one of the compre-
the novel--that unlike
the
that
funniest
they are incongruous,
the immediate argument posed by Jim,
alike
written
after his discussion with Jim concerning
quit" (98).
genera
with
too readily the remarkable
and so
observation holds.
French
the
facility
America's
recognition of the ironic incongruity
Chapter 15,
course,
foibles are acceptable
to the humor of
is to dismiss
of Huck's
and that
been
fact that we would not put up with a narrator
Written?" (1-3).
Huck's
part
peculiar
to have
who could not write well--and Walter Blair has
definitively
uses to
the various
various species of mankind are
more
59
Jim's insight arises out of
his oral consciousness--man
and should
is one
thing,
language.
speak a single
insight is grounded
the aggregative
implicitly
not
quality
many things,
Twain's
Conversely,
in a literate,
scientific
analysis which recognizes differences among species,
also
two
recognizes
genera.
scientific
the greater relative
And
is
even Huck's naive division
serves convolutedly to
division of humankind
falling
blacks
as
can't
his attempt
according to color.
back upon
to
at analysis,
upon
that
to
argue,"
to
witness:
bility of
problem of
told
to
language
while
itself
i.e.,
the
that
"you
frustration
of
nonetheless
willingness to disengage his literacy
it,
and
indeed to turn
society.
Kevin Murphy has observed of Huckleberry
with any tale
Moreover,
Thus,
whites,
reflects
the attempt
from the society which spawned
literacy
as such
the social convention that regarded
inferior
a nigger
demonstrates Huck's
mankind according
is
subsume the equally questionable
intellectually
learn
and
to Twain than to Jim.
of
the
of language
rather than aggregative,
methodologically closer
Huck's
faulty in
his approach to the problem
nonetheless analytical
but
differences between any
while Huck's analysis is
sense,
of
in the first
the story
disentangling Huck
that "as
person, we have two dramas
being told and
the person telling
Finn
it"
the unfolding sensi-
(383).
This
much
discussed
the narrator from Huck the
character leads Murphy to conclude that Huck has,
in the
60
end,
not understood
the significance of his story;
the character are at
narrator and Huck
Murphy cites the
novel,
in which Huck the narrator
character,
Huck's
essentially un-
after
death and thus of his
ture,
Murphy
writing a book.
assertion,
he
writes:
learns
light out for
But
the
much as
hope
the forces
that this
we should recognize
assertion is offered not so
of all
Pap's
of the rest" offers a tiny
that Huck wishes once again to escape
of repression.
of
for . . . adven-
eligibility
that he is going "to
Territory ahead
the
paragraph of
actually appears as a
as evidence that Huck remains
changed by his act of
the
the
last one and
inconclusive last
same.
Huck
a repudiation
Buck has witnessed on and along the river
to
downstream, but as a resistance
in his drift
the adopting and civilizingg" that Aunt Sally
That Huck continues to
alone is planning.
its own
Sally Phelps "Aunt Sally" has
in terms
of Huck's
desire
and thus
wherever
he goes,
with him his lonesomeness,
ability which makes
analysis
fails
in
family
Huck will
implications
cohesiveness,
surely
the emotional
bring
vulner-
prey to the dehumanizing
schemes of a Tom Sawyer.
Murphy's
for
call
(385)
two respects.
First,
like
James
Cox, whose analysis has been discussed in an earlier chapter, Murphy entertains the possibility
of
an unrepressed
61
Murphy
This leads
Huck.
vulnerability,"
"emotional
apart from Tom
connected
Sawyer,
see Huck's
to
the
nificance
of Huck's literate
recipe
for action,
that set Huck
In its
as Tom
is
unrepressed
Murphy overlooks the real
act.
and
The second failure
In searching for an
to the first.
conclusive
qualities
very
as weaknesses.
an unrealizable ideal,
Huck,
"lonesomeness"
sig-
failure to offer
Sawyer's schemes
a
do,
Huck's book refuses to validate any attempts at formal
resolution.
In short,
subordinates itself
Huck has all
common
The
book subverts itself and
witness to repressive
Grangerfords,
as has
humanity to romantic ideals,
hesitation.
pulate discourse
insidious,
schemes,
which inevitably dominate their human
been noted,
sacrifice
which allows
them to
slaughter the Shepherdsons and sacrifice
without
so
forever to its evolving human audience.
along been
discourse schemes,
contexts.
the
The King
for less
ends--their
their own children
and the Duke
consciously
mani-
though perhaps less
lofty,
material needs--undermining their own
community as well as others in the process.
But of all
discourse schemes Huck encounters along the river,
the
none more
clearly disregards the human context than that of Colonel
Sherburn.
Moreover, Sherburn's attitude toward community
stands in such distinct opposition
analysis of the Sherburn incident
understanding of Huck's character.
an opportunity
to introduce the
to Huck's
that further
is essential to a better
This analysis
offers
concept of "interpretive
62
communities," which I openly
borrow
from Stanley Fish's
Is There a Text in This Class? and which concept is
to my
conclusion
about
Twain's
In his chapter "How
Searle," Fish
applies
book
crucial
novel.
to Do Things with Austin and
speech-act
theory
to
Shakespeare's
Coriolanus in conjunction with his own
concept of "inter-
pretive
analysis
communites"
character
character.
(197-245),
Coriolanus
Indeed,
is
it
is so appropriate that one
modeled upon
by its laws and
forming a community of one,
the
must wonder
Coriolanus.
Like
community,
rituals and effectively
and he seeks some higher
than the surrounding community
his actions.
of
to Sherburn's
Coriolanus sets himself apart from his
refusing to abide
authority
his
strikingly applicable
if Sherburn is not actually
Sherburn,
and
by which to justify
Fish writes:
What Coriolanus
does opens the
way for anyone who
feels constrained
by the
declare a society
of his own, to nominate his own
conventions,
to stipulate his
suddenly there
splinter
bonds of a society to
is a possibility of a succession
coalitions,
each inaugurated
phrase Coriolanus hurls at
behind him:
.
..
of
by the
those whom he has cast
"There is a world
The world elsewhere
another state
own obligations;
elsewhere."
he seeks is
(for then he would
not
simply be trading
one system of conventional ties for another)
but a
63
recognized
world where essences are immediately
not require for
and do
mediation of
When Sherburn stands
their validation the
procedures.
public
before the Bricksville mob after he has
shot the helpless Boggs, he says to them
the pitifulest thing
army is--a
borrowed
that
out is a mob;
that's what an
they don't fight with
mob;
born in
that's
(216-217)
them,
mass,
from their
that's
courage
but with
and from
courage
their
officers.
(191-92)
Sherburn,
seeks a world where abstractions like courage
too,
and honor are intrinsically
meaningful and not reliant upon
an interpretive community for
such a world is
But as
meaning.
Fish notes,
and any man who posits
an illusion,
world becomes "exactly what he always wanted to be,
such a
a
natural force whose movement through the world is indeprovided
pendent of all supports except those
virtue.
But of course,
too is
this
Coriolanus is ultimately destroyed
authority
he
has
disdained
the illusion
meaningful.
the very sort
of
the ultimate fate of
but we may be certain he has succumbed to
that he can live apart
tained by ideals
and
an illusion,
(Fish 219).
We can only speculate about
Colonel Sherburn,
by
He is
unto himself.
He is complete and sufficient
a God" (217).
by his own
from a community,
sus-
which he believes are intrinsically
The consequence of this is
that he is able to
64
construe the killing of a helpless
as either
courageous,
unfettered community
And that
of
one,
any
of the
mob speaks not
or both.
action can
Sherburn can sustain this
Bricksville
but
or honorable,
drunk as a positive
Indeed,
become
act,
in the
a virtue.
illusion against
the
of the correctness of his
values,
weakness of the Bricksville community.
Huck is clearly caught between two extremes of community.
At one
extreme
is the community
of
St.
Petersburg, which threatens to envelope
his
individuality.
munity of
one,
At
which
the other extreme
is in fact
is
him and subsume
Sherburn's com-
the antithesis
of
community.
Somewhere in between lies the possibility for human choice,
for such a concept has no meaning except
between
the community
and the individual,
submission and absolute individual
dialectics
will.
in the tension
between
complete
And all
of the
to which Huck is subjected throughout
the novel,
even those arising from his experiences with Jim,
finally subordinate
to Huck's
need to define his
are
rela-
tionship to a community.
Those critics
instances
short of
who have chosen to focus on those
wherein Huck's evaluation of Jim's
the ideal of universal
brotherhood are
bias toward an interpretive community,
pense
of Huck's
individuality.
attention to the overriding
by the novel,
humanity falls
reflecting a
their own,
In other
words,
through
problems of discourse
such critics are themselves
at the exin-
suggested
constrained
by
65
but never
interpretive systems which can only displace,
account for,
that,
in the sense
to be formalist
can be said
intrinsic
Huck,
of their
value to the perceptions
in response to
interpretive
Kevin Murphy writes that
For instance,
communities.
value
they have attached
perceptions,
individual
just as
intrinsic
Sherburn has set up absolutes and attached
to his own
Such critics
alternate interpretive systems.
Jim's altruistic offer
"when
to delay his
freedom to help the wounded Tom, says, 'I knowed he was
white
we
inside,'
see
the extent
to which Huck's
deter-
mination to rationalize his freeing of Jim has warped his
thinking"
(381).
Murphy's
to
desire
as the chain which binds him
depict
literacy
to the values of slaveholding
society causes him to see only the extent to
thoughts reflect those
iuck's
which Huck's
values and to ignore how
radically
such a statement departs from the status quo of
St.
with
That
Petersburg.
regard to
plicitly
perceived
Huck's
the ultimate
warns us not
by
is,
thinking
is
(something
"moral"
to find in the novel) of
"warped"
Twain
ex-
the story as
Murphy.
Even George Carrington,
who consciously tries
a formalist approach to the novel,
of other worlds for its authority,
to avoid
reveals his commitment to
an interpretive strategy which looks to that
language
only
most illusory
a world beyond even
itself:
Not turning in a slave is,
to
be sure,
something
66
on
founded
passionately
It is,
this culture.
is
something
if
a major achievement
that conscious commitment
.
. and
.
...
after thirty chapters,
is
rather than behavior
in the world of Huckleberry
really
meaningful
Finn.
Many intellectuals,
assume that
actions rather than
Twain's
a major
believes that not doing
one can still believe,
anyway,
issue (slavery) as
one
nevertheless,
achievment only if one
and as
as rigid
of an achievement in a culture
being
pronouncements
are real
symbolic actions, and
demonstration
book-long
verbal types
that
overlook
language
not itself reality but a device for dealing
is
with
(147)
reality.
Here Carrington misses the
point that the reality which
language deals with is always constituted by language itself.
There is no knowable,
created by language.
absolute reality beyond
Only with faith in such
that
an absolute,
objective reality can Carrington make his evaluative distinction
between doing and "not
of an achievement"
and "a
"symbolic
and
actions"
Carrington's
major
"real
achievement,"
actions."
characterization
types" is rendered
doing," between "something
of
ironic by his
and
between
Moreover,
"intellectuals"
as "verbal
implicit assertion that
only if
he had
Huck would have commited a "real
action"
written the note to Miss Watson.
All normal humans are
67
but intellectuals are specifically
verbal,
literate types,
who always value what is written over what is merely thought
or said.
And Carrington places himself foremost
literates
by valuing as "most
literate, grows directly out of
linguistic
realities.
contexts,
his
sensitivity to contingent
thus manageable
not the static,
hell of Miss Watson,
frightening hell of
rather the far more
It should not be supposed from
decision
luck's
is
is existential,
one,
a nihilistic
Muck
of community.
must be avoided.
perceive jointly
of
St. Petersburg,
two,
for
this,
however,
that
his dilemma
while
for with Jim
But here,
but
existential uncer-
is no existentialist.
keeping with his deepest needs,
sibility
to shifting
his sensitivity
The hell to which Huck commits himself when he
and
tainty.
as a
and to act
refuses to betray Jim in Chapter 31 is
abstract,
written.
real" that which is
Huck's reticence to act,
Indeed,
among these
His action
is in
lies the pos-
the formalist trap
too,
to
Huck and Jim are no more likely
some absolute reality than are the citizens
or Pap.
Moreover,
even in a community
tension must exist between the shared views of the
community
and the
views of
the
individual.
Muck's
can never be absorbed by his community with Jim,
cannot
suppose that
it should be.
orality is not an ideal,
proach
Ong points out
and
never
was.
literacy
and we
that
To ap-
it positively is not to advocate it as a
permanent
state
for any
culture.
Literacy
opens
of
68
possibilities to the word and to human existence
Oral cultures today
unimaginable without writing.
traditions and agonize over the
value their oral
traditions,
loss of these
but I have never
encountered or heard of an oral culture that
not want
to achieve literacy as soon as possible.
(Some individuals of course
but are
mostly
beyond the reach
Yet orality
It can produce creations
for example, The
of literates,
Nor is orality ever
eradicable:
literacy,
resist
do
soon lost sight of.)
is not despicable.
Odyssey.
does
completely
Both
reading a text oralizes it.
orality and the growth of literacy out
are necessary
of orality
the evolution of consciousness.
for
(Orality 175)
Ong's remarks
undesirability of
indicate both the impossibility
Huck's returning to
the "ideal" of
Unlike Pap, Huck
orality through his relationship with Jim.
But
more importantly,
will not be "lost
sight of."
suggests that the
literate consciousness
Ong
is expanded by
self-reflexive examination of its oral origins,
precisely this self-reflexiveness
and the
which has
and
the
it is
been thrust on
Huck through the necessity of forming an oral community with
Jim.
In attending to the needs of a community which cannot
finally account for Huck's
literate perceptions,
individuality,
specifically
the linguistic grounding
of that
his
69
community,
though certainly at a subconscious
to Huck,
proof of this understanding
Jim to Miss
lies in Huck's
Watson in Chapter 31.
made manifest
is
communities,
and indeed of all
The
level.
betray
to
refusal
that he is
Huck's belief
is
sacrificing an absolute reality for a contingent one (he
actually
trading one contingent
reality
for another),
to Sherburn's
actions
in
perfectly opposed
and
regard
Huck freely
the citizens of Bricksville.
is
to Boggs
chooses the
needs of the community over his individual needs.
Huck and Jim's partnership
itself,
but rather a step
key
Huck
of
however,
an end
which
the
is itself
must
such an understanding
to Huck's expanded vision,
the
way to belittle
and Jim's friendship,
in
con-
in the evolution of Muck's
And though this is in no
sciousness.
importance
is not,
vitiate the claim of many critics that the success or
failure
of the
novel
hinges on
Huck's ability to sustain an
unchanging relationship with Jim following
Chapter 31.
world,
Huck
through his
must inevitably carry back to the
book,
the revelations he has
through his association with Jim.
For it is to
community,
the community of his readers,
ultimately
answer.
of
literate
gained
this larger
to which Huck must
And fortunately or not,
follow Huck into this world,
leading him in it,
the actions
while Jim cannot
or more accurately,
continue
the apotheosis of community which charac-
terizes Huck and Jim's relationship will also characterize
Huck's
literate
creation.
70
It is necessary at this
deal
with
the
point to backtrack a bit and
most prominent sub-theme in Twain's novel.
The question of
race must be
problem of discourse if
Twain's
novel
Smith's
essay,
the charge that
is regressive
"Huck,
logically subordinated to the
Jim,
is to
and
be
avoided.
American
is the single most cogent discussion
linguistic
context which
character.
the
Racial
L.
Discourse,"
of the complex
Smith systematically destroys any doubt
and if
problem
David
surrounds and defines Jim's
Twain's characterization of Jim
racist,
the ending of
is
that
dignified and anti-
we accept as the primary focus of the novel
of "racial
improve on Smith's
discourse," little
observations.
can be done
However,
plication of the orality/literacy
through
dichotomy,
to
the ap-
it becomes
clear that Twain has addressed the problem of discourse at
an even
more fundamental
clusion that "given
the subtlety
it is not surprising
derstood or
race"
(10).
subordinate
Smith writes in his con-
level.
of Mark
that most of his
simply ignored
But Twain's
Twain's approach,
contemporaries misun-
the novel's demystification of
demystification
to his demystification
of
race
is
of discourse in
general.
For only through such a comprehensive approach can we make
sense of the disparate
Smith's
analysis
signals
the novel
of racial
sends.
discourse in
affords him relatively high ground from which
Jim's
character.
He
argues
that
"by
the novel
to evaluate
presenting us a series
71
of glimpses which penetrate
the
and for his chief
stereotypical
apparently
explores
Jim's
to superstition.
indeed
Jim may
be super-
or Tom Sawyer,
the attempts by the reader,
currency
Huck to gain comic
Jim's expense.
attempts to
For instance,
play
from those
asleep,
to Jim's advantage.
or
superstitions at
in Chapter 2,
Tom
when
by hanging
on Jim's superstitions
on a tree while he is
is
reveal
his superstitions work for him in a way that
counteracts
effect
he
example,
attachment
Smith's observation is that while
stitious,
and
exterior
Twain debunks American racial
person beneath it,
discourse" (8),
the 'Negro'
Sawyer
Jim's hat
Smith notes that the net
Jim
other slaves by telling,
embellishing,
adventure with witches.
Smith writes:
the
notoriety among
gains
and retelling his
This incident has often been interpreted
as
an example of risible Negro gullibility and igas exemplified
norance,
Such a reading has
but can only
cations
sentence,
factory,
it
likely
minstrelsy.
partially account for the impliIf not for the
final
such an account might seem wholly satisbut the information
through his
a slave,
blackface
more than a little validity,
this scene.
of
by
that Jim becomes,
own storytelling,
introduces unexpected
unsuited for life
complications.
that Jim has been deceived
prevarications--especially
by his own
given what we learn
as
Is
72
Or has he
about his character subsequently?
the conventions of "Negro
cleverly exploited
(7)
to his own advantage?
One can hardly hope to eclipse Smith's
Jim's
not demeaning,
the
insight into
However,
character.
the possibility
'Negro
has "cleverly exploited the conventions of
that Jim
seems
own advantage"
since
remote,
there
is
his
to
prank
boy's
silly
a
to turn
in order
superstition'
true
that Twain is elevating,
that is,
spirit of the incident,
prank
boy's
silly
turn a
to
in order
superstition"
no textual
evidence that he has sensed he was the victim of a prank.
Moreover,
of Chapter
the real hurt Jim
when in the fog episode
suffers,
15 he catches Luck in a blatant lie, mitigates
against the possibility that Jim would himself
exploit others.
cation
of
Smith does acknowledge the darker impli-
order
Jim's
that
his analysis,
of Tom Sawyer's
place
world:
Jim's triumph may appear
gullibility
"prevarications"
but not outside of, the exploitive
him a notch higher in,
pecking
consciously
of
to be
since we have no direct
encounter
but
Negroes,
"superstitious"
other
the
dependent upon
with them,
we
cannot know whether they are unwitting victims of
Jim's ruse or not.
A willing audience need not
a totally credulous one.
intelligence,
not
In any case,
stupidity,
which
it
is
facilitates
be
73
Tom may have had
Jim's triumph.
laugh,
the last
triumph can come only at
But
beyond
the
"Negro" and
after
all,
Jim.
(7)
the expense of his good character
the dilemma is resolved
by looking
fact that Jim's actions are stereotypically
observing
Huck's
that
rendering
literate
among those versions.
Jim's
of
that the
high value placed on
in
the
the discrepancies
story,
but
verbatim repetition of a
narrative is a literate value,
only
successive
the changes in Jim's
would not notice
is,
to imply that an oral
This is not
audience
It
are inherently oral.
they
versions of his adventure that underscores
verifiable
to
that Jim's intellectual
certain or not,
The prospect,
is unsettling.
belongs
clearly,
but
his chuckle,
because
presence
of a
repetition
such
text
is
57-68).
(Orality
And in a number of other ways, Jim's mode of storytelling
conforms to the needs of
creasingly sensational
a certain amount of
make the
nature of Jim's story accrues to Jim
but it also serves
personal glory,
story itself
The in-
the oral consciousness.
memorable.
Ong observes
that "oral
persons
memory works effectively with 'heavy' characters,
whose deeds are monumental . . ."
oral
culture,
it
is the storyteller's duty
to tell a story which is above all
superstitions
70).
(Orality
Thus,
The
formulaic
is grounded are them-
selves memorable structurings of reality which enable
oral
community
to cope with
in an
to his listeners
memorable.
upon which Jim's story
to
their world,
and
the
through his
74
Jim re-establishes the connection between these
story,
out,
achieving
the
culture learning
"for an oral
known"
In
(Orality
45).
them meaningful within the context of the
on Jackson's Island,
invoking a number of superstitions
circumstances:
Jim said it
a time and lighting.
sign it
was going to rain.
He
it.
it
was the
let
catched
me.
laid
his father
a bird,
He said
sign
when young
birds
done
and
the opportunity
superstitions,
observation that,
which
it
was death.
He
said
mighty sick once, and some of them
his old granny
would die, and he did.
other
was a
I was going to catch some of them, but Jim
wouldn't
then takes
way
same
said it
was a
way, and so he
when young chickens flew that
reckoned
a yard or
come along, flying
Some young birds
two at
Indeed,
present.
the first encounter with
function during
pertinent to the immediate
Jim
in personal
sense, brought them forward and made
terms, Jim has, ina
Huck
with
identification
recasting the ancient superstitions
he repeats this
means
or knowing
communal
empathetic,
close,
As Ong points
living memory.
superstitions and the world of
is
said
his father
(54)
to catalogue
consistent
a number of
with Ong's
in the absence of neutral,
written lists,
the oral narrator will embed abstract information "in a
narrative presenting specific commands for human action or
75
accounts
of specific
appear to the
is,
. ." (43).
the confused
thinking of
within the context
of
artful attention to the communal
of this observation
is that
consistent
in this role.
talents frequently and
Negro
too,
can
stereotype,
perceive
a neccessary
memory.
The significance
we need
necessarily
undermining
Huck
create cracks in
that stereotype,
worth of
We
Jim's character
the expec-
discourse, and acknowledging his stature
couldn't
of
"learn
those
expectations.
a nigger
to argue,"
but
Jim,
the
was able to teach Huck that discourse
always
attend to its
dinate
that context.
human context
Jim's
it
is
demonstrates
static abstractions like justice
the immediate
if
interpretation
the "Sollermun" story clearly
valued above
to
the
chapters of the novel.
the fundamental
independent
oral storyteller,
of the
Jim's intrinsic
by setting him free a final time--here--from
as entirely
and
not look for him
but they often parallel
tations of literate
the topic,
orality,
To be sure,
particularly in the closing
only
what might
the stereotypical
because Jim's
Negro stereotype is inadvertent,
be
Thus,
mind as a wandering from
literate
appropriate to
Negro,
acts .
must
not to suborin
Chapter
14 of
his disregard for
when such abstractions
needs of a living
poignant revelation in Chapter 23 of
child.
are
And
his own unjust
punishment of his daughter demonstrates that Jim,
too,
vulnerable
fit the
to reliance
on conventions
immediate human context to
that
do not
which they are applied.
is
his
76
Revealingly,
that she is
it is because his daughter
wrongly punished
mode of discourse,
Jim's own
sympathy
As
dumb
for being disobediant.
Her
her smile,
oral context,
novel offers so
is deaf and
and
is misinterpreted
perhaps no other
for his fellow
beings.
many critics have observed,
in the
relationship
However,
to
Jim.
humanity in this scene
of
prank,
making
the night before,
oral community
stories,
Huck's recognition
directly
violates the
that Jim has sought
They are
Huck's prank,
certainly inventive,
of
Jim's
ambiguity.
events
principles of
to form with Huck.
meant to instruct,
the
Jim's
are never meant
to entertain,
and
they are meant to sustain that most
in an oral communitity,
however,
is
because of its inventiveness,
living
of Huck's
believe he has dreamed the
valuable of all commodities
not
evolution
episode of
is not without significant
Jim
most important of all,
memory.
the "fog"
for all their rich embellishment,
to deceive.
episode in the
much insight into Twain's comprehensive
Chapter 15 is pivotal
Muck's
through
but
intrinsically
for Jim's
living
literate,
stories are
because it consciously treats
memory as a plaything,
and this disregard for memory
can only be afforded by those who have recourse to a
history,
principle
a text,
which of
is later
carried
course,
for their feud,
lacks.
to its extreme
Grangerfords and Shepherdsons,
reason
Jim
who cannot
but who continue
(This
by the
recall the initial
to slaughter one
77
another according to the conventions of romantic
literature.)
Huck
discovers
his need for community
munity,
and
through
their
operative
tears
and the essential
31, Huck undermines
literate talents,
"forever,
betwixt
unusually
two
between
Jim and society,
more complex,
defined
by discourse.
attack of
conscience
The advent
fostered
The
he
advocacy
which is always
in mind
when
The age
of private,
and
the growth
of
conscience.
in some
had
he wrote:
the inwardness
of print was
marked in Protestant circles by
individual
interpretation
in Catholic circles was
frequent
private
and concomitantly a stress on
primacy of
and wrong,
His choice is far
of print intensified
the Bible,
Muck's
right
Ong seems almost to have
by script.
immediately
Thus,
suited.
for it is between the primacy of discourse and
the primacy of the human community
Huck's
the
bound
things" when
between
even between orality and literacy.
sense
com-
up the note betraying Jim to Miss Watson is not simply
a choice
or
that
to which he is thus inescapably
because of his
choice Muck makes
prank both
realities.
Through his actions in Chapter
literate community
boyish
his power to subvert
both his commonality with Jim,
difference in
and,
his
(Orality
introspection,
marked
confession
of
the examination
153)
which
written discourse,
of
leads him to deny
the
is itself the product of
by
sins,
of
78
written discourse.
when he
tears
to Miss Watson, Muck has,
up the note
more deeply interiorized that
sense he has moved
yet further
while in
away from
the
oral community
in another sense,
subverted by the
no
Written dis-
literate consciousness
has already been
Finn as a
about Huckleberry
of the oral
reflexively
narrative
whole.
book,
denial
born out of
which is also Huck's
the discursive questions it
book,
acts.
most heroic stature
Both Twain and Huck achieve their
through acts of
re-creation
of literate
most literate
the
pointed
turned
of literacy
was a result
upon itself,
Twain's
reflection.
can never
Twain's
finally answer
must look
raises, and thus
The
forever to its community of readers for validation.
book denies the very
we
And
has no need of orality to accomplish this task.
should recall at this point what
out
one
And
longer dialectically opposed to that orality.
course can be fully
in fact,
literacy.
he is,
he is seeking to preserve,
and
literacy,
In apparently moving away from
illusion that a book inevitably
creates--that meaning resides in the book,
apart from
inter-
pretive community that makes sense of it--and so anticipates
the critical argument that Stanley Fish would
nearly
a hundred years
later:
interpretive communities,
text
put forth
rather
or the reader . . . produce
responsible for the emergence of
Interpretive communities are
than either the
meanings
and are
formal features.
made up of those who
79
share interpretive strategies not
for writing
texts,
properties.
prior
for constituting their
In other words
to the act
is usually assumed,
world,
interpretive
Jim's
community
"fog
person,
person
only
all
This
than,
it can be seen that
that
takes
is,
Huck's
as an attack
meaning
of the
in Jim's consciousness.
prank--the
Indeed,
written or oral,
the
interprank in
on his
his
prank has meaning
such is the nature
but so strong
that,
closing chapters
as Tom
Sawyer
of the book,
will amply demonstrate
consiousness and is in
human
in the
the literate consciousness
regularly assumes that language
human
of
is the illusion
created by writing that language exists apart from its
component
as
(14)
has no way of "objectively" distancing
from the
language,
de-
way around.
is why Jim
episode" personally,
for he
therefore
read rather
the other
world,
strategies exist
and that which the community
prets are always one.
the
these
of reading and
termine the shape of what is
In the oral
for reading but
is exempt from
fact imbued
the flux of
with a static
meaning.
To understand the human impulse behind this assumption
we must again invoke the words of Ernest
The individual
has to protect
world, and he can do this
would:
Becker:
himself against the
only as any other animal
by narrowing down the world,
experience,
developing
shutting off
an obliviousness
both to
8O
repeat too often
self-protection
the great lesson of
that
Freudian psychology:
and creative self-restriction--in
substitute for in-
human
natural
talent:
he calls
this
term for
key
Rank has a perfect,
stinct.
is normal
repression
man's natural
a real sense,
We
for action.
he would be crippled
Otherwise
cannot
to his own anxieties.
the world and
the terrors of
it "partialization"
and very rightly sees that life is impossible
without it.
has just this
comfortable
capacity to
and
no
used
"fetish-
term
the
the
same idea:
is exactly the
off what he can chew and digest
"normal" man bites
life,
more.
(177-78)
and it
This ability to partialize is certainly linguistic,
can be seen
that
the great
over oral language
for
partialize the world
I have
action.
ization," which
of
the well-adjusted man
we call
What
advantage
of written
language
lies in the potential for written
language to make "comfortable action" both infinitely accessible
and infinitely variable.
written
language interpreted
The danger is of course
by an individual
outside of an interpretive community,
that
operating
or by an individual
within an interpretive community which is itself anchored to
a cannon of
slavery,
texts,
may construe almost any action,
for instance,
as "comfortable
action."
even
In an oral
81
community,
comfortable action must always be limited by the
relatively
narrow
James Cox
Interestingly,
Huckleberry
Finn]
The problem
is
the
to define
for
"partialize
the
world
upon Huck's
consciousness,
creation
revealed
is
source of this discomfort
expect it
do what we
action."
comfortable
and
upon his
in the
to do:
mark
Jim's
most ambitious
book's
readers what Tom Sawyer's books have done for
him, that
is,
recipes
static
followed without reference
Having
his note
his
community.
"recipe for comfortable action,"
to Miss Watson, Huck approaches
isolation we
a state of
Indeed,
discarded
his description
farm in
him to sustain.
in the opening of Chapter 32 evokes
in Chapter
community,
without an interpretive
the Phelps'
cannot long expect
of Pap's nightmare
the memory
which may be
for action
to a living
to
unwillingness
do for its
offer
[of
discomfort"
of this
source
ending
uncomfortable.
to use Huck's term,
is,
lies in the book's refusal to
literate
that "the
has noted
We would answer that the
(174).
consciousness.
scope of the communal
Huck,
6.
Effectively
like
Pap,
is
sub-
ject to the community of the dead:
When I got there
like,
and
it
was all
hot and sunshiny--the
the fields;
and there
lonesome and
seem so
gone;
and
if
a breeze
hands
was gone
to
was them kind of faint
dronings of bugs and flies
it
and Sunday-
still
in the air
like
fans
that
dead
and
and quivers
the
everbody's
along
makes
82
feel
that's
spirits
it's
like
many years--and you
As a general
about you.
wish he
always think
makes a body
with it all.
too, and done
was dead,
they're talking
it
thing,
so
ever
dead
been
you
because
mournful,
makes you feel
it
leaves,
(276)
The sound of a spinning wheel,
a fitting
symbol for the
domestic warmth and belongingness of the interpretive community
that Muck so ardently desires but can no longer
believe wholeheartedly
in,
to
subsequently causes Huck even
wish he were among the dead,
for there,
at least,
he could
belong:
When I got a little
ways, I heard the dim hum of a
spinning wheel wailing along up and sinking along
I was dead--for that is the lonesomest
sound in
(277)
the world.
For a brief
I wished
and then I knowed for certain
down again:
moment, Huck stands alone in the face of a
tragic human fact, that only in the stasis
of death is
discourse immune to subversion by its human context,
even if circumstances did not intervene,
they do,
we could not expect Huck
icy absurdity.
the
in this
But
Huck's
actions in
is
the
which of course
to stand long
before this
moment Huck does articulate
most profound terms his deepest need,
community, and it
and
in
his need for
within the context of this
closing chapters must
need that
be evaluated.
CHAPTER BIBLIOGRAPHY
Becker,
James
Mark Twain:
M.
Stanley.
Is
Authority
of
Harvard UP,
Murphy,
Literacy
There
Text
London:
"Huck,
[Samuel
Fischer.
Class?:
The
Cambridge:
Jim,
and
Ed.
The Technologizing
American
Walter
U of
Berkeley:
83
in
363-87.
Racial
of
Discourse,"
4-12.
Langhorne Clemens].
Finn.
Studies
into
1982.
Methuen,
Mark Twain Journal 22.2 (1984):
Huckleberry
Princeton:
The Descent
26 (1984):
the Word.
Mark
This
Finn," Texas
Orality and Literacy:
Twain,
in
Progress:
in Huckleberry
David L.
1976.
1980.
Walter J.
Smith,
Humor.
Communities.
Lanuae and Literature
Ong,
a
Interpretive
"Illiterate's
Kevin.
Ohio State UP,
The Fate of
of
Unity
Dramatic
The
1966.
Princeton UP,
Fish,
Jr.
Columbus:
Huckleberry Finn.
Mark Twain
Written?"
1-3.
C.,
George
Carrington,
Finn
Huckleberry
"Was
Walter.
Journal 19.4 (1979):
Cox,
Free
York:
New
Death.
of
1975.
Press,
Blair,
Denial
The
Ernest.
Blair
California
Adventures
and Victor
P,
1985.
of
CHAPTER IV
THE CHILD OF STRENGTH AND THE ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL
One could
Huckleberry Finn in much the same
chapters of
Huck approaches them,
strategy
Because
to approach the final
say it is necessary
that
is,
unsure of
the extent
direction.
that readers attempt to fulfill their
formal expectations through the ending of the novel,
will
be
disappointed
by
"territory," a region no longer
vidual and the community
is from this land,
to
attempting
its
to cooperate.
a wilderness
wholly
has yet
to take
its
per Twain's warning,
final
and
the indishape.
that "persons
find a moral" in the book "will be banished,"
for those who would re-
ceases to exist
for the territory
solve
refusal
wherein the relationship between
not yet a state,
It
the novel's
they
take us only to a place as ambiguous as
The book can finally
the
as
our interpretive
and trusting to "Providence" for
to
condition
ambiguity.
Many years after Twain
gave
his notice
to his readers, William Styron, in a prefatory note to The
Confessions
of
Nat
Turner,
wrote:
Perhaps the reader will
from this narrative,
to try
produce
wish to draw a moral
but it has been my intention
to re-create a man and his era, and to
a work
that is
84
less
an "historical novel"
85
in conventional terms than a meditation
history.
on
(vii)
Styron's "meditation"
(who can help but
wonder how directly
a product of
Twain's own
character of
such overt and wrenching ambiguity that his
meditation it
is)
created a
note to the reader seems a much more biting
Twain's.
For
angel whose
Nat's own
"morality" makes
every act is
joke than
of
him an avenging
at odds with his own humanity.
Through the distorting perspective of time,
Twain has come
to be for many readers but a chider and cajoler of the
conscience,
from
an equivocating diluter
which Styron's Nat Turner
except death.
And it
of the brutal absurdity
offers no apparent
is tempting
escape
to answer such a charge
by
simply noting that within his own social context Twain did
his
worst,
that though he
helped to create an audience
would one day pay to be alienated,
to attend
Twain himself was forced
to certain conventions that inevitably
edge off his
message.
Among these
nod toward community,
Sawyer,
of
believe, however,
that Twain's object
self-awareness for its
sensibility.
I
have
happy return to the
Jim's adventure.
own sake,
any event retreated from
final
which many readers see as the
final destination
Huck and
took the
conventions is the
represented by the
nostalgic world of Tom
that
was
I do not
merely to evoke
nor that he would have in
this goal
to please the popular
argued here that Twain's attendance
86
upon the value
novel,
of community
and that the problem
community are
is
a consistent
theme of the
of discourse and the
finally inseparable.
Thus,
question of
the final chapters
should in no way be seen as a thematic aquiescence on
Twain's part.
Moreover,
novel represents,
I will show
on the part of
heroic action grounded in the
individual
and
that the ending of
both Huck and Twain,
the
a
interrelationship between
community.
We have said that
Huck enters
the closing chapters of
the novel effectively without an interpretive community,
it
would be more accurate to say that
interpretive community which,
to
prescribe action,
is
St.
Petersburg
However,
and
for
he has joined an
with regard to its potential
ineffective.
has abandoned the larger,
In concrete
terms,
he
more authoritative community of
the community he has formed
in abstract
but
terms,
he has
with Jim.
traded the constricting,
prescriptive community of religious and social stability
for the open,
humanity.
but hopelessly
Tom
precisely
appearance
because he is able
and however
in concert
Sawyer's
fragmented
is
community
a
relief
to Huck
to supply a context
absurd those actions may be,
with Huck's sympathies,
if
of all
for
action,
they are apparently
not with
his common
sense.
We are faced in the end of the novel not so much with
two Tom
Sawyers,
Mark Twains.
i.e.,
Tom,
and Huck-as-Tom,
On the one hand
is Huck,
the
as with two
groping artistic
87
must be characterized as
soul whose desire for understanding
much by dread as
who must ultimately
conscious craftsman
the
the other is Tom,
On
by sincerity.
give form
to Huck's
a lie,
impulse, and in so doing must in some way make of it
same
By thus dividing
time.
upon him,
is
can observe
Twain
indeed literacy,
that
as
9).
his writing (Barrow
underlies
place
Twain's
of
177-78)
(Becker
much a "partialization"
the
the dignity of
while at the same time preserving
the impulse
writing
himself,
form that fiction, and
demands of
at the
and presentable
both dishonest
is
a rigged game that
reality as the romantic novels Tom Sawyer invokes in his
plans to free Jim,
the forefront of
but by bringing this
the novel's action and by openly
contingent nature of all
community
of man, after
strategy,
and if
he
must somehow
To put Twain's
account,
discourse,
even his own.
dilemma
story.
To write
is to create
serves not merely as a
for the fact
character,
Jim,
outsiders,
posit an interpretive community.
must
that his
cannot
read his own
and to discurse
to
Tom Sawyer's character
barb in the side of the Romantic
tradition, but as a self-assessment of Twain's
consciousness.
impulses.
Twain
less abstractly,
without condescension,
most sympathetic
para-
not merely to wink at this
account for his own literary
novel's
The
shares no common interpretive
all,
Twain is
parodying
Twain refers the reader to the
this process through Tom,
dox,
partialization to
And from
this perspective,
own literate
we can
begin to
88
both in scale and
comprehend the appropriateness,
Tom's
lengthy
"evasion."
nine chapters of
the last
Tom
section
incessantly
invokes the conventions
evasion
The
takes
for many
up approximately
has done throughout the
book.
In his essay "Languages and Identity
in
Huckleberry Finn," Brook Thomas
of Huck's
All
Twain's
just as
of Romantic literature,
in much more subtle fashion,
of
tediously
readers,
Twain,
Adventures
and Jim's
The
writes:
adventures are
created in
Like Tom
literary imagination.
inventing
them out
his difficulties, Twain "had to contrive
of
(his)
But also,
own head."
of
and throughout this
the novel,
and,
tone,
like Tom,
Twain
really comes up with derivative rather than
He relies on
original adventures.
adventure stories,
as
Walter
Scott
the staples of
drawing from sources as diverse
and
Shakespeare.
(9)
Here Thomas's argument precisely parallels my own analysis
of
the ending.
romantic predecessors.
constitutes
But Thomas
proceeds
that language approximates rather
human reality (9),
at odds with my own analysis
overall
evaluation
of
a point of
on
the
than
view
which
is
discourse and ultimately
of Twain's book.
And
identification of Tom Sawyer's romances
writing
with
creation as well as the works of his
Twain's own literate
assumption
must be identified
Tom's romances
my
though his
with Twain's own
is in perfect accord with my own evaluation
of the
89
ending,
it
is necessary here to draw clear
between Thomas's
analysis and my
Thomas argues that
"lie"
about
reality,
'good'
between
the original
and
cludes
and
'bad'
contract
of his fiction"
all
(9).
that Huck's
for "that
lies
truth.
"our ability to distinguish
in
Following
decision
Huckleberry
Finn
depends
on
imaginary
this
argument,
Thomas con-
to head for the territory is a
itself,
But the inherent trouble
ultimately be no
in some sense a
with the author to trust the sincerity
rejection of discourse
opting
own.
language is
that
distinctions
a rejection of
space
of
silent
lies,
and an
simplicity" (10).
with discourse is that it can
more absolutely
identified as a lie than a
That language must itself
constitute reality,
and
yet must always be contingent upon an interpretive community
for meaning is an
And far
it
from
unavoidable ambiguity of human existence.
fleeing this
to its most
profound
Huck's shock at Tom
Jim's escape arises
to the community of
ambiguity,
Huck and Twain
consequences.
Sawyer's
not out
willingness to aid
of Huck's
St. Petersburg,
lingering
but
not
Huck,
must understand it.
undergone a great deal of anguished
to his decision to free Jim,
him
in
attachment
out of the reali-
zation that Tom is violating the concept
Tom,
pursue
Huck,
of community as
after all,
has
soul searching in coming
and consciously or
not,
not simply cast off the standards of his interpretive
he
has
90
community,
but rather
comprehensive
heeded
community.
in his inability
Buck's
to comprehend
larger community,
of a more
the imperatives
failing,
such
as
it
is,
that he has truly chosen
and not merely been driven by his
is
this
own
shortcomings from the community to which he should naturally
belong.
Ironically,
Tom
Sawyer,
who is
the community of St. Petersburg
appears,
to Iuck,
to
be freely
without any principle
far
too imbedded
in
to make such a choice,
discarding
whatsoever.
This
his community
is clearly
Iuck's
perspective when he writes:
Well,
one thing
was dead sure;
and
that was,
that Tom Sawyer was in earnest,
and was actuly
going
out of slavery.
to help
steal
that nigger
That was the thing that
was a boy that
was respectable,
and had a character
that had characters;
leatherheaded;
not
mean,
any
more pride,
and his
I couldn't
him so;
him quit
and
he was
business,
bright and
I knowed
the thing right
not
he was,
and
without
or feeling,
than
and make himself a
family a shame,
be
home
and not ignorant;
or rightness,
and so
folks at
and yet here
understand it,
outrageous,
tell
to lose; and
and
lere
and well brung up;
and knowing,
but kind;
to stoop to this
shame,
was too many for me.
before everybody.
no way at all.
I ought
to just
his true friend,
It was
up and
and
let
where he was, and same
91
(292-3)
himself.
Tom's actions must appear as
To Muck,
that the abandonment
correctly perceives
sensitivity to Tom's contextual
with his
recognition
earlier
chapters.
confirms
the Duke about
his own expanded
feathered that "human beings can be awful
an eloquent
another" (290) is
dynamic at the core
logical
also
revealed
sympathies,
by
to attack
that
be
its
cruel to one
distillation of the axio-
of Huck's
But
consciousness.
for they must attend to both enemy
"yaller dog"
master
and
episode is the ungainliness of Huck's
this
alike--thus Huck's
of
notion
them tarred
upon seeing
and his observation
community,
consistent
as a human being in
to warn the King and
impending lynching
their
interand his
identity is fully
of Jim's identity
Huck's attempt
of one's
Huck
not an act to be taken lightly,
community is
pretive
Boggs.
murder of
terrifying as Colonel Sherburn's
if not as
willful,
its
as
conscience
master's
that
enemy.
and friend
is as
We can
likely
then
see
when the work of the world must get done, when Jim must
freed and the Phelps'
analogy,
man tarred and
(and by
from Huck's unpredictable "providence"
that may indifferently
an old
tricked
must be written) Tom Sawyer's codified
when a novel
schemes are a relief
must be mercilessly
watch a slave sold down the river or
feathered.
The affront to Jim's dignity which Tom Sawyer's games
represent to so many readers is mitigated by a number of
92
Just as Jim's
circumstances.
uck's prank
perceive of
in Chapter
(and therefore
decontextualized
15 as
being somehow
as something
impersonal),
neither can
harmless and comical apart from his own person,
Sawyer's antics are anything but es-
he imagine that Tom
sential
needs of
to the
could not
oral consciousness
Indeed,
his situation.
Tom
inherently bizarre than
prescriptions are no more
Sawyer's
the super-
stitions with which Jim himself confronts the mysteries of
Tom's
directives,
tackle
Huck
to
when
as
'at
mos' anything
fetches
leave,
to Tom's
he
that
he's
but
But
to
ef you
Jim
must
matters of
Tom
instead of a rattlesnake.
accede
finally
garter-snakes with
en
gwyne
me to tame, I's
superior authority in
though Tom does settle for
"willin'
unreasonable,
in heah for
shore" (325).
apparently
their tails
says
ain't
a rattlesnake
dat's
some of
may doubt the necessity of
Certainly Jim
existence.
escape,
buttons on
himself
believes
wholeheartedly in the appropriateness of his actions with
regard
to the apotheosis of style that dominates his inter-
pretive strategy.
manizing
from
And
Jim's acceptance
firmation
all
of
his
indignity
without
along is
faith
events
are
so only
in the final chapter of
even
neatly
of
the
the knowledge
juxtaposed to
that his
bring him riches one day.
string of
though certainly dehu-
the reader's perspective,
inadvertantly.
was free
His schemes,
"hairy
novel,
that
he
the reaf-
bres"'
(360-61)
would
What matters is not the ephemeral
leading up to the
stroke of good luck,
93
the literate reader can review with a sense of irony,
which
but
outcome,
the ultimate
It
the
31 and the closing
the sincere to the comical
cament,
is an necessary element
dilemma
literate
must clash with
as I have
subversion of his own
plete.
And Twain's
at
subtle
artistic
and creative
mechanical
butterfly
Beautiful,
Twain's
in tone
essentially
to Jim's
with regard
it.
Tom's
must
of Tom
created
novel
uncomprehending
Like the
by Hawthorne's
"Child of
of
Artist
highest
destruction at
Strength"
he
if
simply a more
Sawyer.
its
to be com-
be subverted
he is
can achieve
"style"
level if
power is
artistic
powers
version
predi-
in Twain's own "evasion" of
described
ficance only through its formal
the
chapters,
to escape the charge that
last
the shift
the preceding episodes at every
Twain's
is
is preordained.
for Jim
as well that
must be reiterated
between Chapter
from
which
the
signi-
the hands of
(Hawthorne
247),
Tom
Sawyer.
Had
moment of glory (as
has done),
every film
had he allowed
schemes of Tom Sawyer
ting
to allow Huck his
Twain succumbed to the temptation
Huck
version
of Huckleberry
to throw off
and free Jim
the oppressive
in a manner
the form of the first thirty-one chapters,
more
his novel.
And it
which speaks across not only the barriers
befit-
he would
have destroyed through this formally apt resolution
central ambiguity of
Finn
the
is this ambiguity
of race and
94
class,
argued,
of
of a particular
merely
the circumstances
rather
his very humanness.
world,
against
place,
defense
beyond
turn
for clarification:
[can]
the
against
is
mortality,
Again,
we must
see that what the psychoanalysts call
"identification" is a natural
urge
to
join
overwhelming powers that transcend one.
identification
is then merely a special
the
Childhood
case of
the child merges himself with the re-
this urge:
process--what
we have
focalization" of
terror,
presentatives of the cosmic
called
but
individuality and at the same
the reach of death.
time places it
we
time and
to identify with an all-encompassing
world,
that negates his
to Becker
is not
the fact of his own individual
to embrace that
abstraction
uck's
barrier
dilemma
of Huck's
the source
For
as we have
across the
but also
orality and literacy,
time itself.
and even,
and language,
of nationality
the "transference
majesty, and
power.
self-transcending
in some real
When one
parents
sense, trying
merges with the
or social group he
to live
expansiveness
of meaning.
of heroism if
we fail
is,
in some larger
We miss the complexity
to understand
this
point;
we
miss its complete grasp of the person--a grasp not
only in the support of power
cendence
that self-trans-
gives to him but a grasp of his whole
being in joy and love.
The urge
to immortality
is
95
not a simple reflex
reaching
out
by
of the death-anxiety
one's
whole
being
but a
toward
life."
(152-53)
In the first
Huck has
three chapters
been propelled,
indentification
with
with
chapters
of the novel,
vision
must,
blood,
be
neurosis"'
is
potential
toward
However,
that
in the closing
uck's transcendent
and that in this
for the vision
beyond
identi-
to apply to the world of flesh
at either
and
partialization
to be compromised.
extreme.
Complete
exclude the possibility
experience.
If
we see
context,
also
As
put it, Huck is a candidate for "clinical
(184)
vision would
of
it
partialized,
Becker would
by his linguistic
humanity itself.
if
work we have seen how
family and society
fication
lies the
of this
Becker
describes
the
fidelity
to
his
of action in the world
results:
you are not involved in what others take for
granted as the nourishment
your own life
becomes a total
extreme this describes
excellence.
Clinically this
psychotic is
face,
or
lives,
problem.
the schizoid
"narcissistic neurosis"
world,
of their
then
At its
type par
state was called
psychosis.
the
The
the one who cannot shut out the
whose repressions are all on the surwhose
defenses no longer
work;
and so he
withdraws from the world and into himself and
his
fantasies.
his
He
fences
himself
off
and
becomes
96
(182-83)
own world (narcissism).
At the other
to the sort of
extreme, Huck is susceptible
a result
compulsive behavior that characterizes Tom Sawyer,
of "too
180).
much narrowing-down
Tom's
of the world
inflexible approach
the visions
Tom Sawyer is finally incapable of
creative action.
through his most heroic action,
his
the simultaneous creation
book.
Becker's own abstraction of
the problem
tence strikingly confirms what I have
of human exis-
said about the ending
Finn:
of Huckleberry
himself not only in
The neurotic exhausts
self-preoccupations like hypochondriacal
but also
him on whom he is
therapeutic
jective
to be
fantasies,
of
sorts
around
work project;
molded;
can't
dependent
those
become his
he takes out his
sub-
are not clay
they have needs and counter-wills
The neurotic's frustration
be remedied
by anything
jective creative work of his own.
looking at it
fears and
in others:
problems on them. But people
their own.
artist
Huck
which Becker describes,
the extremes
alone is able to avoid
all
For
others,
of
despite his ability to appropriate
renunciation of
other
is none
to experience
the terror of real experience.
than a way of avoiding
and
(Becker
for action"
is
to say that
as a
of
failed
but an ob-
Another way of
the more totally
takes in the world as a problem, the more inferior
one
97
can
to work out
try
us that
neurotic
work. . . .
his "creative"
inside
"badness"
this
then the
and
perfection,
feel
to
going
is
or "bad" one
But it
symptom becomes
is
obvious
to
is
in
work that
is
or you objectify
trying for perfection;
sense,
In this
In
life.
of
that
this
of
some kind
objective creativity is the only answer
the problem
you,
on which you then unleash
imperfection in a work,
your creative powers.
real ways.
and others around
up yourself
you eat
under
fully
your control and is perfectible in some
Either
for
by striving
the only way to work on perfection
the form of an objective
He
oneself.
man has to
way he satisfies
which asks that he live and act objec-
nature,
tively as a vital animal
plunging into the world;
but he also satisfies his own distinctive human
nature because he plunges in on his own
of the world as given to
terms and not as a reflex
sense experience.
mere physical
world,
makes a total
gives out a fashioned,
problem.
highest
Clearly,
This,
that
He takes
problem out of it,
in the
and then
human answer to that
as Goethe
man
symbolic
saw
can achieve.
in Faust,
is the
(184-85)
Muck is moving toward an artistic solution to the
dilemma of his existence--his book--while Tom is just as
clearly a failed artist,
working out his dilemma on
Huck
and
98
is to avoid
Jim is
that
he must hide from himself the knowledge
he is
credit,
To Huck's
for him.
games are to retain
his
man if
already a free
meaning
their
the utter meaninglessness of his
the reality of
Indeed,
actions.
he
if
style
attend to matters of
must frenetically
Tom
Jim.
able to
force Tom to "let on" occasionally when Tom's compulsive
Jim's
to endanger
behavior truly threatens
a pick and not a
as when he convinces Tom that
freedom,
caseknife should be used to dig the hole
And
(307).
that
to Tom's
however supple Huck may appear to be with regard
"foolishness," he
Huck's
does not
to Tom's compulsions,
ferable
Becker
adds a single
caveat
to
and it
is
to the problem of existence,
analysis of Huckleberry Finn.
a
Art
form of compulsion.
words,
as
Huck's own
renunciation of
a
tackled
it
and
the artist's
be obsessed"
his book,
it
ain't
solution
to my
essential
can be construed,
he had "knowed what a trouble
wouldn't
heroic nature of
The artist's work
license to
"a social
answer
of itself
to be the truly
for what I believe
entirely
pre-
however
to his dilemma,
solution
creative
powers at
to his own.
moment and bend Tom's will
the crucial
Huck.
able to apply his creative
is
cabin
beneath Jim's
noted in this connection
be
it should
for
chances
too
can
be
in Becker's
Thus
(186).
his assertion that if
was to make a book [he]
agoing
ingredient
of
to
no
more" (362)
his heroic
the final
indispensable
Moreover,
his willingness to abandon a world
is
vision.
he has
shaped
99
problems of
to his own
in answer
existence
tainties of the Territory reveals that the
falling
By
such acts
consumation,
and place for its
short of
forever
juxtaposing
that
may inspire
as it
inspiration.
of
chapters
Huck and Tom in the final
his book,
Twain succeeds in revealing the continuing
struggle
that
above
must face if
an artist
to enter into it.
into
own integrity
himself
or that
Finn
The novel stands
has called
its
is
evidence
sufficient
before us,
of Twain's
courage.
the cryptic
of the
passwords
loving community to which Twain
That this
community
of
the
exist only in the artistic imagination is perhaps
the great human tragedy.
For as
of words "tragic hero" implies,
our
he was propelled by
flaunting what Henry Nash Smith
"flaws"--in fact
sought admission.
heroic can
like Huck,
the stark originality of
heroic and unfailingly
and Huck
his
he gave us into
a sphere of heroism he could not
fully comprehend,
Huckleberry
Twain was
And whether we conjec-
Twain was aware of the insight
that
own artistic impulse,
truly
to rise
work is
struggle,
in revealing the
Moreover,
himself required
his
his
inner
the realm of imitation and enter the world of original
creation.
ture
to
must look forever to another time
The heroic vision
become.
true hero can
but must somehow always continue
in time,
never fully be,
the uncer-
for
mortality,
the
our
paradoxical combination
limitations,
conspire against our visions.
visions themselves must be tempered by doubt,
And
our
bodies,
the
even as they
100
are brought forth through monumental
Huckleberry Finn.
cept
doubt,
this
of a decline
ingredient
The
reader
not as a
into cynical
of the heroic
of Huckleberry
flaw
in Twain's
but
despair,
vision.
It
must
Huck's
book,
munity
which can at last
heroic
heart.
Twain's
book,
be realized
calls
Finn
like
must
ac-
or evidence
novel,
as an
that most optimistic of human endeavors,
creation.
in works
effort
essential
weigh
equally
with
the artistic
forth
a
com-
only in the individual,
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