Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

 

"Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain't got no business doing wrong when he ain't ignorant and knows better" (355).

Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer are the models for boyhood camaraderie and unhindered adventure. When I teach this novel, the male side of the class usually relates to the characters and story with ready approval. The girls, however, sometimes feel as though they've entered a fever dream where there are no rules and no comforting securities. I think that this response tells us something about the differences between men and women, but also about the success that Samuel Clemens (known by his pen name, Mark Twain) had in writing for a certain audience. My frustrated and sometimes horrified response to the material is exactly how I feel when hearing my brother relay stories about his daily interactions and choices. So, while I'm taking a deep breath in between chapters, I am also struck by the authenticity that Clemens was able to infuse with his storytelling. For this reason, and many others, I give you many a reason to pick up Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, whether you are the intended audience or not:  

1. "We said their warn't no home like a raft, after all...You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft" (256).

The boyish simplicity. Samuel Clemens is a master of the childhood adventure novel. He writes like a boy whose mother had her hands full, and in fact she is quoted saying as much about the prolific author. He creates madcap scenarios for his characters to navigate, and they do so with a nonchalance that provides an ironic underpinning to the whole ordeal. Huck's self-awareness is marked by polar opposites: He will realize truths that no one else in the text seems to understand, but yet he happily goes along with whatever wild enterprise he or his friends dream up. If I had no prior awareness of the book, how would I know the appeal of this novel to the inner boy in every young man? My feminine horror at almost every page turn. The unpredictable setting along the Mississippi River, each ridiculous disagreement and misuse of common words, and the unnecessarily complicated, hairbrained schemes of Tom, Huck, and Jim...This book is exhausting! I consistently find myself wanting to mother all three of them. I'm guessing that this is the effect that Twain was going for.

2. "He was thinking about his wife and children away up yonder, and he was low and homesick...I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks does for ther'n" (286).

The recognition of mutual humanity. Huck Finn was such an important work for its time, and it still remains so today. The simplicity in Huck's journey as he grows in friendship with Jim, the only true father figure in his life, is a beautiful testament to the unnatural bigotry of racism. Many of Huck's direct influences tell him that skin color categorizes and alienates. Independent of the society that establishes these ideas, he conceives very quickly of the comparative humanity in Jim. They are the same in all essential aspects. An even greater testament to this realization is the fact that Huck continues, for a time, to believe that it is a moral wrong to protect and help Jim. Yet, he still does so out of loyalty to his friend and belief in his individualism. The most powerful tool against hatred and isolation is relationship, and Twain communicates the empathy between Huck and Jim with great poignance.

3. "Jim said bees wouldn't sting idiots; but I didn't believe that, because I had tried them lots of times myself, and they wouldn't sting me" (202).

The humor. This point is obvious and almost doesn't need to be made, but for the sake of fastidiousness, I will cover it nonetheless. Situational irony abounds. Twain often plays on the reader's awareness of what the characters seem not to know. The well-rounded emotional impact of the novel is both lighthearted and occasionally serious--Huck Finn is a well-balance novel with all of the personality and depth of a real boyhood coming-of-age. 

One critique--the length. I will fully acknowledge my bias in this area, as I often feel that books, movies, and even songs can go on for too long. There is a lot of fluff and nonsense (primarily coming from Tom as he crafts convoluted rescue plans that really only need a chapter to convey) that make re-reading it somewhat of a chore. I am not probably the audience that Twain imagined, and so I would not hesitate to recommend the book to anyone who desires a look into the mind of a young and hapless teenage boy growing up in a pre-Civil War America.