Themes in Huckleberry Finn: An overview

1. Themes in Huckleberry Finn: An overview Monday, 31 July 2017

2. What is a theme? • The writer wishes to explore certain key ideas throughout a text. • The manner in which these ideas are presented to the reader can be called the theme… • Themes can be found by study of the interaction of characters in the novel and by the choice and manner of portrayal of events. • A motif: a recurring idea which can be sued to develop and build a theme… we will see this with money in this text.

3. Freedom and Restriction • One cannot be explored without the other • Huck’s narrative highlights this theme in relation to a range of characters • Physical Freedom (Jim and slavery / Huck and father or Widow Douglas) • Cultural Freedom (The issues surrounding the inability of the South to adapt or to drop features of the Southern way of life, especiaslly honour codes). • Mental and Spiritual Freedom (Huck struggles with morality and conscience).

4. Physical Freedom • The novel is constructed around a narrative of Jim’s attempts to escape from slavery. • The progress of the raft takes him into ever increasing danger. • He is eventually freed, though curiously on the death of his owner, rather than by the boys’ actions. • The fact that Tom knows him to be free yet does not act on this information but extends his danger and incarceration as part of a game is unsettling. • Huck escapes from his father in a manner which possibly pre-echoes the end of the novel. The difference is that Huck knows himself to be in danger as he fakes his own death, whereas Jim’s escape is made unnecessarily complex to please Tom. • Huck escapes the ‘sivilisation’ planned for him at the beginning and the end of the novel.

5. Cultural Freedom • Honour: The Grangerford/Shepherdson feud highlights the cruel and destructive aspect of ‘honour’. The families pay lip service to religion and to society (taking in a stray child), yet are bound by a destructive code of honour. • ‘Sivilisation’ sought to impose an ordered and structured life on the Mississippi which Huck finds intolerable. The Pastoral Idyll of pre-Bellum times is replaced by a society driven by industry, efficiency and the pursuit of profit. • Elements of organised life rejected by Huck include: religion, schooling and ‘behaviour’.

6. Mental and Spiritual Freedom • The opening focuses the reader on Huck’s attempts to deal in the ‘truth’. • He looks at religion and rejects the traditional form of prayer and heaven/hell in favour of his own feelings and beliefs • His conscience struggles between what is accepted as law, based on society, and what he feels to be right and wrong. This crisis is fully explored around his decision to give up/save Jim. The idea of societal and natural justice being in opposition is familiar to students from TKAM. • Despite exploring this area and clearly (to a modern reader) doing the ‘right thing’ we note that Huck is no freer at the end than at the beginning of the novel.

7. Integrity and Honesty • Clear overlaps with the previous theme… • Religion is a misunderstood belief system: • Rejects Miss Watson’s instruction to believe in ‘spiritual gifts’. ‘I reckon’d I wouldn’t worry abut it any more, but just let it go’. • The sermon in church for the Grangerfords and Shepherdsons is praised by all who hear it: on brotherly love. • The camp meeting shows the gullibility of those praising the idea of ‘love they neighbour’ but who are unable to see the clear actions of a charlatan as fraudulent.

8. Disguise and Deceit • Huck regularly needs to present a false identity for himself as he travels • Often this is drawn with great humour which helps to differentiate this fraud from the altogether more serious aspects of the theme seen in characters like the Duke and King. • Exploitation by Duke and King: • Huck and Jim lose control of their raft • Jim is returned to a condition of slavery being tied up all day • Numerous innocent characters are defrauded and deceived. All are gullible, but it is clear that the pair have no moral code and seek only profit. We may wish to consider whether they represent the new ruling classes who are so altering the face of the South and West a the time by their profit-seeking industry and railways.

9. Conscience and integrity • Huck will follow his ‘sound heart’ rather than his cultural obligations • This is shown in his regular self-questioning around saving Jim from slavery and allows the presentation of Jim as a rounded figure, despite the somewhat stereotyped character traits - child-like naivety and superstition. • The end of the story sidesteps the need for Huck to openly state his attitude in the face of hostile opinions. • Note how little integrity is seen in the minor characters on the river.

10. Language • Written in a number of vernacular forms • Jim and Huck are direct and simple in their conversations. Honesty is clear. • Most other characters, especially Duke and King use a high degree of rhetoric to cloud their true meaning from their listeners. This is a feature of Southern speech at the time with great weight being placed on the ability to use rhetoric in speech. Twain is showing the vacuity of the idea. • Opening: ‘That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth,mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.’ • Close: ‘and so there ain't nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I'd a knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn't a tackled it, and ain't a-going to no more.’ • Huck is shown as honest and trying to present a truth to the reader.

11. 2 motifs: Money and Southern Behaviour • Money is at the heart of the novel. It is worth recalling how wealthy Huck is at the start and how he rejects this wealth, whilst keeping it from his father. There is no sense of him reclaiming his wealth a the end of the novel… • To live on $1 a day is ‘more than a body could tell what to do with’. • Father sees Huck’s $6000 as rightfully his since Huck is a minor • Jim is worth $800 to Miss Watson • Jim was rich once and receives a gift of $40 from Tom at the end – he feels rich • Judith Loftus is driven by the idea of the reward money to wish to search for the pair • Slave catchers give Huck two $20 pieces to sail past when they believe Jim is diseased. • The King and Duke are utterly driven by the wish to obtain cash by fraudulent means. • Jim is sold for $40 by the King and Duke. • NB : When a specific sum is mentioned there must be a reason for it – Twain is very precise and does not simply refer to ‘money’.

12. The South… • Characters in the South are seen in opposition to Huck and Jim. The contrast in the characters is clear to see. • The Southern belief allows a person to be seen as property – the immorality of slavery runs throughout the novel. • Jim has qualities we do not see in the Southern characters. • The towns show a number of characteristics of the people of the south: • Violence, murder, drunkenness, gullibility, high-rhetoric • Words are seen as more powerful than deeds by the King and Duke and by Colonel Sherburn. • Sherburn attacks Southern men for their cowardice. Note that he has shot Boggs in cold blood and avoids any punishment (even the lynching) by eh ability of his tongue to shame the men by pointing out possible truths. • The South clings to ideas from the past and is seen in contrast to Huck and Jim’s honesty and openness.