A presentation on Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910)

A presentation onAdventures of Huckleberry Finnby Mark Twain(Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910)
Literary Concepts Authorial Techniques Topics, Themes, and Patterns Illustrations by E.W. Kemble Map Summaries and Questions about “episodes”

Mark Twain
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

An understanding of certain literary concepts is very important to an understanding of the humor and seriousness of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.Below is a list of literary concepts to be applied to the novel.

Twain criticizing society, with a chuckle
Definition of IRONY. How does it work in Huck Finn? Definition of Realism. Definition of Satire. Definition of Parody. Jim’s revelation. Getting rich. Jim owns himself!(1270-73) Huck’s visit to Judith Loftus (1277-82) Huck & Jim: stealing/“borrowing” (1283-84) The wreck of the Walter Scott: the shipwreck of the historical Romance novel: adventure & style (1284-1290) Huck makes an effort to save the men on the sinking Walter Scott. Huck and Jim talking about King Sollermun and whether the French speak the same language as other men (Is there one species called “man”?) (1290-93) Huck’s trick on Jim on the foggy night when Jim fell asleep on the raft. The jumbo raft: BIGGER THAN LIFE BOASTS; GHOST STORY

Twain’s techniques for expressing his criticism (or condemnation) of society without ever stating it directly himself as the author.
IRONY REALISM & REALIST Technique SATIRE HUMOR through PARODY

IRONYin Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Twain uses a first-person narrator– Huck– so that he can create a discrepancy between what Huck says in Huck’s voice and what Twain really thinks but leaves unspoken. The irony will only be understood if we question the reliability and competence of the narrator. Is Huck a reliable narrator? SO: When there is a discrepancy between the surface meaning of Huck’s words and Mark Twain’s underlying meaning, there we have a moment of IRONY. Example: When Huck says, “—you can’t learn a n****r to argue.” (1293) Twain was angry with American Universities for their white-elitist views about the natural intelligence of white men vs. black men. Twain believed the opposite of what Huck says. Huck is blindly expressing an attitude which he has picked up from the Southern culture in which he has been formed.

REALISM
The literary movement called Realism may have started in France with the works of the novelist HonoreBalzac, and made more extreme in the “naturalist” novel of Emile Zola. The Realists are known for using a detached narrator who reports the objective truth of real life society in every closely observed and accurate detail, including the crude and shocking physical and social realities of life in a corrupt society from the highest level of society to the lowest. Realist novels are usually very graphic and “concrete.” The Realists were confident that a bald statement of facts without the narrator preaching or explicitly condemning would itself be enough to condemn a corrupt society in which injustice, poverty, sordid squalor, bigotry, hypocrisy, perversion, crime, disease and addiction were prevalent. Huck Finn serves Mark Twain’s Realist vision very well: Huck is the dead-pan narrator par excellence, with almost no sense of humor, at times an innocent ignorance, and a tendency to report without absolutely condemning anyone.

SATIRE
Definition: a literary work in which individual or social vices, follies, stupidities, injustices, abuses, shortcomings etc., are held up to ridicule and contempt; the use of ridicule, sarcasm, irony, burlesque etc. to expose, attack or deride vices, follies, etc.—sometimes with the goal of bringing about reform or improvement While the vision of the author using satire may be very serious, the surface effect is often quite comical, as in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

HUMOROUS SATIRE through PARODY:PARODY: presenting an exaggerated version of the object of criticism being condemned through laughter/mockery. Literary parody is exaggerating the style (and subject matter) of the work of literature to be mocked so as to make it laughable and ridiculous. The Walter Scott wreck (the robbers) The King and the Duke (the impostor, fraud, flim-flam man, concept of royalty) The Royal Nonesuch theater, and the conflation of Romeo and Juliet with Hamlet in a crazy, botched confusion of details The ending of the novel, when Tom Sawyer reappears

farce
an exaggerated comedy based on broadly humorous, highly unlikely situations with bizarre, incongruous elements

the picaresque genrea genre originating in Spain which features a sharp-witted, clever, roguish, low-born character who travels through levels and layers of society in various episodic adventures. The picaresque novel is not only entertaining; it is also an effective vehicle for satirizing various aspects of the society that the picaro character outsmarts, rebels against, mocks. The picaresque novel is usually a first-person narrative told by the picaro character himself, and is often presented in loosely related incidents or disjointed episodes without a linear plot development, i.e., in a rambling narrative without much internal order or coherence. The picaro character is a low-born adventurer, a vagabond and rogue, but not a villain.

theBildungsroman genre
A novel which tells the story of the social, aesthetic and/or moral growth and development of a young character, usually male. Sometimes thought of simply as a novel about a boy growing up into adulthood, with a focus on various influences on the character and how they shape his “character,” sense of identity, and sense of the meaning or goal of an authentic life. Is Adventures of Huckleberry Finn a true Bildungsroman? By the end of the novel, will we agree that Huck has undergone some moral development or change, either good or bad? Has he arrived at some wisdom through his experiences and adventures? Does he understand himself differently, have greater insight into people and the world, achieve a deeper understanding of life and how to live it—having learned from his own mistakes and the mistakes of others?

Regionalisma literary trend or movement in 19th century American literature in which authors set their stories in a particular region of the nation with an emphasis upon local dialect, custom, beliefs, character types, conflicts– all presented in realistic detail Dialect The sum total of local characteristics of speech in a particular geographical region, with an emphasis upon how the regional dialect deviates from the real or imagined standards of the base language of which it is a variant, e.g., Southern dialect; New England dialect. Twain states in the “Explanatory” at the beginning of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that he pains-takingly imitates three major dialects along the Mississippi River Valley, and modified varieties of the third: “the Missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of backwoods South-Western dialect; the ordinary ‘Pike-County’ dialect; and the modified varieties of this last.”

The COMICAL TRADITIONin Southern Literature… and Twain’s serious humor, or dark comedy
Mark Twain was a great humorist. He also had very serious social criticisms. He tended to deliver his criticism through irony, in a humorous way. In his Autobiography he stated: “Humor must not professedly teach or professedly preach, but it must do both if it is to live forever.” While he hated certain preachers and preaching in general, he admitted, “I have always preached…. If the humor came of its own accord uninvited I have allowed it a place in my sermon, but I was not writing the sermon for the sake of humor. I should have written the sermon just the same.” Should Adventures of Huckleberry Finn be read as a serious sermon? If so, is it a sermon about the flaws of American civilization? Human Civilization in general? Human Nature in general? the need for more law?

SYMBOLISM? (TYPES and ARHCETYPES)Symbol = an object, place, person, event which has a literal, ordinary function in a story or situation but also suggests some “deeper”, “higher”, “universal,” “spiritual”, or “archetypal” meaning which remains indeterminate, i.e., you cannot “pin down” exactly what it means. The symbol communicates in a powerful way– just as the springtime air does—without anyone being able to explain what it means exactly. Symbols do have a “logic” to them; you cannot interpret them in any haphazard way. Some symbols are traditional, rooted in a culture. Other symbols are invented by writers who invest them with meaning in the context of a novel, short story, play or poem carefully developed around the symbol (e.g., Tennessee Williams’ play The Glass Menagerie) so that the context establishes the symbol as a symbol and clarifies what the symbol “stands for”. the Mississippi River as symbol? (T.S. Eliot called the Mississippi a great brown god at the center of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) Life on a river RAFT as symbol? Jim and Huck together on a raft on a river as a symbol? The “king” and “duke” taking control of the raft?

ORAL vs. WRITTEN
Is Huck telling this story out loud to a listening audience, or is he writing it down for readers? Which would be more “natural”? Which would be more “conventional”? Do we have evidence to say for sure, either way, whether he is speaking or writing?

ALLUSIONSMark Twain’s literary work Adventures of Huckleberry Finn makes many Biblical, literary, and historical allusions or echoes. Or it uses elements of various genres (e.g., the picaresque) Robinson Crusoegraveyard poetry of novels of Sir Walter Scott Julia A. Moore Richard III the picareque novel Romeo and JulietDumas’ The Man in Hamlet the Iron Mask Macbeth and The Count of Monte Cristo King Lear Arabian Nights (1,001 Nights) Bluebeardthe Domesday Book

And the ghosts of “dead people”—like the ghosts of historical figures or Biblical personages—haunting the Mississippi River Valley:George Washington MosesHenry Clay Adam kings, dukes, earls and such Cain & snake(s)the “dolphin” (dauphin) the Angel of DeathKing Looy and Queen Marry JudithHenry the Eight SarahCharles Second; Henry IV Sollermun (King Solomon)Casanova SaulBaron von Trenck RachelBenevenutoCellini Doubting Thomas (the Apostle)

Frontispiece

Adventures of Huckleberry FinnBritish publication: 1884American publication: 1885
(Tom Sawyer’s comrade) Scene: The Mississippi Valley Time: Forty to Fifty Years Ago [Although Twain gives his narrative a somewhat specific time setting, the criticism he expresses through Huck Finn applied not only to the American Southern past, but to his own time and our time as well. Read in the broadest interpretation, the novel offers Twain’s mostly negative vision not only of a particular civilization, but of human nature itself.]

Mark Twain opens the novel with an unusual statement, seemingly a warning to the reader:
NOTICE. Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR PER G.G., CHIEF OR ORDNANCE. Is Twain warning only the reader of the novel NOT to read his book in certain way, knowing that he does not really have the power or authority to carry out those threats on his readers? Or is he also warning the character-types in the novel—persons over whom he does have power and authority— about what will happen to them under his “rules,” his authorial control over the fictive world he is making up in his imagination, e.g., a character like Tom Sawyer looking for a “plot” or conspiracy in the novel (in the fictional life-world of the narrative)—looking for a romantic adventure story—is “shot,” thanks to Twain’s authorial decision. Or is Twain—talking not to his characters, but only to his readers— merely giving his reader a vague preview of what will indeed happen to some of the characters when they break his prescriptions against looking for motives, or morals, or plots in making sense of other characters and in making sense of what is happening in them and around them as they attempt to watch out for their own self-interest. Twain did say that the greatest disease in humankind was “the moral sense”—nothing has caused more conflict, cruelty, war, and death than human beings’ moral convictions. Nothing is more inimical to “common sense,” basic decency and humane-ness toward other human beings—ALL others. Another great disease was the Tom Sawyer-esque drive for “adventure” and “style” which with, in Twain’s opinion, many Southerners had been infected by Sir Walter Scott.

Huck is living with people trying to ‘sivilize’ him in various ways—his mind, his beliefs, his physical and social behavior, hygiene and health. HUCK DOES NOT LIKE THE PHYSICAL AND BEHAVIORAL CONSTRAINTS OF CIVILIZATION: He finds Widow Douglas’ ways too “dismal regular” and “decent”. Huck is (physically) uncomfortable in a civilized, regular routine, and he puts on his “old rags” and runs away from the Widow Douglas. BUT HUCK IS A SOCIAL ANIMAL: HE FEELS LONESOME WHEN ALONE BUT, when Tom Sawyer makes Huck’s participation in a social group—Tom Sawyer’s Gang—contingent upon his returning to the Widow Douglas and submitting to convention and routine, Huck submits. He wants so much to be in society with other boys, that he is willing to be uncomfortable to be with others. Unless he gets too uncomfortable. But when alone, he gets lonely. The natural impulse of people is to be with other people. Human beings are social animals. It is not natural to be a hermit.

RELIGIOUS CATECHISM: “After supper [Widow Douglas] got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers; and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by-and-by she let out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn’t care no more about him; because I don’t take no stock in dead people.” (Chapter I)

HYPOCRISY:Twain often complained that people like nothing so well as reforming other people’s bad habits
Example: “Pretty soon I wanted to smoke [my pipe], and asked the widow to let me. But she wouldn’t. She said it was a mean practice and wasn’t clean, and I must try to not do it anymore. That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don’t know nothing about it…. And she took snuff too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself.” (Chapter I)

The problem of language/signification:e.g., Talk of ‘Providence’
Widow Douglas’ account of Providence: Positive definition of God’s ‘Providence’: makes a boy’s mouth water Miss Watson’s version of Providence: Negative def. of God’s ‘Providence’: threats of “the bad place" Although Huck is not sophisticated enough to put it this way, he does have a sense of the potential falseness, unreliability, or duplicity of language. Example: The same word ‘Providence” can be used to signify two very different beliefs or supposed realities. Add to this category the problem of concealment, counterfeiting, and outright lies. Whose words and actions to trust. Huck is fully aware that he lives in a world of untruths, and is fairly adept at operating within in to protect his own interests by fooling others with words or counterfeit money (as he hopes to fool Jim’s hairball with a counterfeit quarter while hiding a good dollar in his pocket).

“Don’t put your feet up there, Huckleberry….Don’t scrunch up like that, Huckleberry—set up straight… Don’t gap and stretch like that, Huckleberry—why don’t you try to behave?” (Chapter I) --Miss Watson Huck finds that SILENCE is often the best response to other people’s words, their claims on you, their attempts to control your thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors. “Then she told me about the bad place, and I said I wished I was there. She got mad, then, but I didn’t mean no harm. All I wanted was to go somewheres, all I wanted was a change, I warn’t particular. She said it was wicked to say what I said; said she wouldn’t say it for the whole world; she was going to live so as to go to the good place. Well, I couldn’t see no advantage in going where she was going, so I made up my mind I wouldn’t try for it. But I never said so, because it would only make trouble, and wouldn’t do no good.” (Chapter I)

People trying to “sivilize” Huck.Pap trying to unsivilize Huck.Huck wants to light out on his own, and find peace and solitude. But solitude makes him lonesome.Birds and stars and the wind and darks barking and lazying along on the Mississippi can make him feel lonesome or make his lonesomeness go away.

Huck is a good kid with a good heart.People around him try to manipulate and use him, mostly.There are some good folks who love him and look out for his best interest (like Judge Thatcher, Ha, Ha).

Huck wants friends.But even his guardians and friends annoy and pester him.He wants to get away, to light out, to have a change.HUCK feels LONESOME.He is also conscious of mortality, the dead, ghosts—an awareness which makes him feel melancholy, dread, and fear.Huck wants COMPANIONSHIP in a scary world. “Miss Watson she kept pecking at me, and it got tiresome and lonesome. By and by they fetched the niggers in and had prayers, and then everybody was off to bed. I went up to my room with a piece of candle, and put it on the table. Then I set down in a chair by the window and tried to think of something cheerful, but it warn't no use. I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead. The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die; and the wind was trying to whisper something to me, and I couldn't make out what it was, and so it made the cold shivers run over me. Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that's on its mind and can't make itself understood, and so can't rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving. I got so down-hearted and scaredI did wish I had some company. Pretty soon a spider went crawling up my shoulder, and I flipped it off and it lit in the candle; and before I could budge it was all shriveled up.” (Chapter I)

Huck might be viewed as a “natural” boy in a natural state running from a corrupt civilization. The problem with that theory is that Huck’s natural conscience is in conflict with the deformed conscience which he believes is right (i.e., the moral conscience taught him by society which says, for example, that Jim is a n****r and a slave, and that Huck should turn Jim in.Huck is NOT John Locke’s natural human being in a “state of nature”. Huck has been shaped by the customs and morals of a civilization. And Huck cannot think his way out of that shaping influence.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn might be read as a Political Parable, played out in the Mississippi River Valley, both out on the river and on its banks. The novel gives us an overview of the forces of history which have settled into the Mississippi River Valley: Political Religious Superstitious Folkloric Governmental Cultural Scientific (esp. Hocus-Pocus type science, e.g., mesmerism, phrenology)

The REALISTIC world into which Twain throws Huck is full of:
law money property government conventions “morals” “rights” superstitions ghosts witches “signs” lies scams pretend manipulation hypocrisy threats coercion empty words counterfeit money robbery greed murder imprisonment mockery white trash racism slavery unequal rights humiliation envy prostitution alcoholism pranks/ tricks manipulation boasts verbal abuse physical abuse neglect desertion abandonment fools frauds costumes impostors gullible crowds (hooded) lynch mobs competition the need for distinction claims to (blood) royalty/privileged title individualism religious hoaxes medical quackery phony spiritual revivals temperance revivals morbid sentimentality and “romance” loafing rednecks cruelty to animals cold-blooded murder an anti-democratic speech graveyard and obituary poetry revenge feuds & the culture of death twisted moral reasoning foolish codes of honor an elitist speech delirium tremens (d.t.’s), corpses, and the Angel of Death, & a rat, a last will and testament (motivated by Miss Watson’s conscience, mediated by law), more snakes and “witches”, sawdust, a “witch pie”, torment for the sake of “style”, and real bullets used in a harmless [?] game of pretend and fantasy

Whether you are studying the Political Philosophy of John LOCKE, Jean-Jacques ROUSSEAU or Thomas HOBBES– and attempting to apply the concepts, categories, assumptions and principles of any of these thinkers to the supposedly “natural” protagonist narrating the novel and to the world he reports about in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—any good “politics” is founded upon a clear definition of… HUMAN NATURE & The HUMAN CONDITION The biblical names Twain’s uses throughout the novel, along with certain situations he invents, suggest that he is building elements of his fictional world on and around “prototypes” in order to give his novel another layer beyond just one boy’s “adventures”—the layer of his realistic, cynical, perhaps pessimistic view of perennial human nature and the unchanging human condition. Huck Finn is not just about dangers and follies in American civilization, but of the human animal and human civilization (and the lack of it).

Huck lives in a world of people suffering from a dichotomous human nature, each person with a “white angel” and a “black angel”– as Jim’s hairball says of pap.All people are part good and part evil. Some are more evil than others.That’s HUMAN NATURE.That’s “the damned human race”!

GET ME OUTTA HERE!!!
HUCK SHOULD BE SNEAKING OUT!

Of course… there is the sensitive topic of how “n****r” Jim is depicted in Twain’s novel, whose first words in the novel are the paranoid and ignorant words in “the Missouri negro dialect”, “Who dah?” (which happens to be the question which Hamlet opens with—”Who’s there?”) A topic of debate in the United States for decades! Each year a few more school districts in the U.S ban the novel.

One thing we can discuss while reading the novel is its depictions of Jim . . .
. . . and why this great novel, with so many flashes of human understanding and compassion and even tenderness, has been banned from school districts and libraries all over the country. “Do you think the book should be banned?,” we’ll ask.

Tom Sawyer several times acts on the impulse to play pranks on Jim, or to use Jim for his own entertainment, or to execute his clever ideas with style, like they do in “books.” When pranking Jim, does Tom want not only to have fun, but is he also acting on an impulse to exercise power over an “other”, to humiliate Jim, to make Jim feel his prisoner-hood, to make Jim feel his subjection to controlling forces from which he cannot protect himself? Example: Chapter II: Tom wants to tie Jim to a tree with ropes. Huck talks him out of it. Instead, Tom hangs Jim’s tree on a tree branch just over his head.

What is the basis of Tom Sawyer’s authority in making the rules for his gang? When he is challenged on a point by another boy, how does Tom explain the reason for a rule or practice (e.g., prisoners have to be ‘ransomed’)? Where does he get his idea of the gang owning a “mark” that no one else is allowed to use? What does the conversation of these children in the cave—with Tom at the center—reflect about the real world of civilization, including the literary world within that real world. What kind of man will Tom Sawyer be when he grows up? In a moral sense, will he help or hurt society? Tom cares not about “law” and “religion,” but about keeping up appearances, having a good reputation, being envied for his daring exploits, and doing things “by the book” (as at the end of the novel). To seems to be a “glory”- hunter with little regard for the consequences in terms of the feelings and physical safety of others (or himself).

Tom Sawyer is a conventional boy.
Tom steals candles to light the cave where he and his gang of robbers will meet. BUT he must leave a nickel as payment. TOM IS A CURIOUS MIX OF CONVENTIONAL MORALITY AND IMMORALITY. He insists that his band of robbers must rob and murder. BUT they must do it with a certain style. They won’t be sneaky “burglars.” A good burglar is never discovered and has no face-to-face encounter with the victim. Tom insists, rather, that his band must be robbers who “stop stages and carriages on the road, with masks on, and kill people and take their watches and money.” (Chapter II) He wants a dramatic encounter with the people that he violates and kills, which, despite the masks, will result in notoriety and, it is to be hoped, being made immortal in legend. HUCK DOES NOT SHARE ANY OF THESE VALUES, REALLY. HUCK DOES ONCE HAVE A PANG OF CONSCIENCE ABOUT STEALING FRUITS AND VEGETABLES, BUT HE CERTAINLY NEVER LAYS OUT MONEY AS PAYMENT OUT OF A DESIRE TO SHOW “STYLE”. STRANGELY, HOWEVER—EVEN THOUGH HUCK SEES THE EMPTINESS OF TOM’S WORDS—HE STILL ADMIRES TOM AND WISHES THAT HE COULD DO THINGS WITH TOM’S “STYLE”— OR HAVE TOM THERE TO SHOW HIM HOW TO DO IT RIGHT.

Huck also questions why a huge, powerful genie— “as high as a tree and as big as a church”— would jump at someone’s beck and call and follow the commands of a little man. Huck questions others’ teachings and claims: Huck does his experimenting in the woods. Huck is an “empirical pragmatist” or “pragmatic empiricist”. empirical = he judges by first-hand experiment and experience pragmatist = it has to work for him and be useful, or he doesn’t do it or believe in it. It has to have some “advantage” in it. Huck tests the efficacy of prayer, praying for a fishing line and hooks. He got the fishing line, but no hooks, even after several prayer-attempts. Conclusion: Prayer is not efficacious. If it were, why wouldn’t the Widow Douglas pray to get her stolen snuff box back and actually get it back. [He will revise his belief about prayer later, but he still won’t believe it will work for someone like him, but only the “right kind” of people.] In the picture to the left, Huck is testing Tom Sawyer’s claim that genies are real and can be conjured by rubbing a tin lamp or an iron ring. No genies come. Conclusion: Genies don’t exist.

Huck getting rid of the $ 6,000 which has brought pap back into his life again after a 1-1/2 year absence.

Jim’s hairball speaks of pap’s “white angel” and “black angel”— establishing the Manichaean concept of the duality (or dichotomy within) human nature, or the Christian doctrine of guardian angels and corrupting devils/demons battling over the soul’s of human beings, like in a cartoon.Jim also serves Huck as a father figure/counselor in this scene.Jim is a reader of signs: bodily signs, dreams, natural phenomenon, etc. He is the oppressed semiotician who must read signs to make sense of his experience and the survive. The oppressed person is forced to interpret the signs in an oppressive world– for signs of danger, of hope, of how to act.Jim has a habit of reading signs, but Is Jim a skilled “reader” of signs? Semiotics & Money (the art of making signs and “reading” [interpreting] signs): The hairball’s (not Jim’s ) expectation of payment for services rendered A counterfeit quarter to fool a sham (a prophetic hairball) a concealed good dollar in Huck’s pocket Jim’s technique for making a counterfeit quarter look “real” Jim and Huck’s belief in hairball’s vague prophecy?

White trash pap wants to keep his son down! He don’t want his son dressing fancy, and reading and writing, like he’s better than his pap.Pap tears up the picture which Huck got from his teacher as a reward for doing his lessons well.

As Jim’s hairball says, pap may both a “white angel” and a “dark angel”, but the “dark angel” certainly has a firm grip on him. Can he be reformed? What conclusion does the judge above come to after his attempt to make the hand of a hog into a clean hand of a man committed to becoming a new, better man?

“It was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable all day, smoking and fishing, and no books nor study. Two months or
more run along, and my clothes got to be all rags and dirt, and I didn’t see how I’d ever got to like it so well at the widow’s…. I didn’t want to go back no more…. It was pretty good times up in the woods there, take it all around.”

“But by-and-by pap got too handy with his hick’ry, and I couldn’t stand it. I was all over welts.”

“…it warn’t good judgment, because that was the boot that had a couple of his toes leaking out…”

Pap has low self-esteem.He is a social dropout,a dead-beat dad,an alcoholic,and child abuser. “Natural” man or “unnatural” man?
pap believes he has “rights”. Does he deserve them? He demands Huck’s money by parental right. He condemns the government for violating his rights– and threatens to leave the country and withhold his vote. He wants control, so he exerts it over someone smaller and less strong, as bullies do. Those who feel weak, small, worthless, abused, powerless must abuse someone else, exert power over someone else, own someone else…

What is Huck thinking and feeling as he watches people from the world he wants to leave behind looking for his dead body? Does he really want to be alone? Or does he only want a retreat into solitude for a little while?

Three “voices” which speak to Huck’s conscience and heart:
The voice of civilization, embodied by Widow Douglas, Miss Watson, Judge Thatcher, Huck’s school teacher The voice of anti-civilization, of the social dropout, of the pretend rebel who makes empty/pretend threats to defy civilization: pap, Tom Sawyer (both of whom are still bound within civilization as people reacting against it, either for real or for pretend) The voice of “quiet” and “silence” when Huck is in solitude: Examples: When he sits in his bedroom at Widow Douglas’ listening to the wind and dogs barking in the distance, thinking of ghosts, the dead, and those about to die [Huck has a powerful sense of the mortality of human beings] or when he is watching, or floating on, the River. In these surroundings, he finds a “space” in which he can be free and independent of the often “deformed conscience” and falseness of civilization in a world of fallen human nature. Silence is often the best response to people in both the civilized and uncivilized spheres; speaking only causes trouble, and often makes lying necessary. These are the times when Huck seems most in tune with the sadness and sacredness of human life, and the individual’s alone-ness, but he would never put it that way. Huck experiences this silence and lonesomeness even when he is with Jim. Is this because he does not think of Jim as an equal person, or is this because Jim is the only person who does not make claims on him and demands of him as “society” does. Jim is the only one who can share space with Huck without invading his “private” space.

Huck Finn’s “electric shiver” in a Robinson Crusoe moment: He discovers the dead ashes of a recent campfire, like when Robinson Crusoe finds another man’s footprint on the beach!

Huck alone on Jackson Island?
Huck has the notion that he owns the island; that he is the “boss.” Some interpret the island as a symbol of solitude, withdrawal from civilization, or even a return to “the Garden of Eden.” But for Huck, solitude is lonesomeness. (Huck is a social being; but the society he knows is mostly repellent to him.) Then Huck has a Robinson Crusoe moment when he discovers the new ashes of a fire. He panicks, climbs a tree, then begins a search to find out who is on the island with him. (“A Robinson Crusoe experience which carries an electric shiver with it yet, when one stumbles upon it in print.” –Mark Twain LotM) When Huck crosses to the Illinois shore where he can build a fire and cook dinner without giving away his hideout on Jackson Island, he hears horse hooves and a male voice telling another person that they should make camp and give the horses a rest. Slave catchers? Huck returns to the island and determines that he has to find out who is sharing the island with him. He discovers that it is Jim. Jim thinks Huck is a GHOST at first! Huck and Jim form a primitive society of two with a common goal of not being caught and returned to the civilization they want to be free of. An odd couple? Twain recognizes that human beings would not live well and happy in isolation from others.

Jim reveals that he has run away from Miss Watson to avoid being sold down river to New Orleans for $800. Jim, the oppressed man who acts like he is an expert reader of signs, read the sign that Miss Watson was going to sell him down-river. He heard her tell Widow Douglas that she was thinking about it; $800 is a big pile of money—but Jim ran away before he heard what her decision was! Did he read the signs correctly! Sometimes Jim seems to have a real knack for interpreting signs intuitively, but sometimes he is wrong. Huck believes that the right thing to do is to turn Jim in, but Huck will defy that law: He will keep his promise to not tell on Jim, even if people do think he is a low-down Abolitionist for keeping mum. (Twain’s irony: Huck thinks that Abolitionists are low-down; he doesn’t want to be mistaken for one.) Jim talks about his investments in stocks (livestock= a cow) in an effort to get rich. His cow died. Jim complains that the preacher’s promise that any donation to the poor would be repaid one hundred fold lost him ten cents.

In a sad moment of humor, Jim concludes by saying that he is rich right now: He owns himself, and he’s worth $800!

After Jim and Huck set up in a cave on a hill forty (a nice Biblical number) feet up, protected a heavy thunder storm,Huck says, “Jim, I wouldn’t want to be nowhere else but here.”(Edenic: like the biblical Garden of Eden; a return to carefree innocence and plenty: hunks of fish and hot cornbread!)

Then we get a mini Noah’s flood: The Mississippi River rises for ten or twelve days, effectively shrinking the island and making the Illinois shore recede.

Huck and Jim catch a lumber raft, 12 feet by 16 feet.Then they explore a frame house which comes floating down the river. There is a naked dead man, shot in the back. Jim tells Huck not to look at the face, and Huck doesn’t look at all.Jim covers the body with rags.

Huck notices “the ignorantest kinds of words and pictures, made with charcoal” on the walls. (Realism)Jim and Huck get a bunch of “truck,” including some dirty calico dresses.

Huck’s first prank on Jim?Huck realizes that his harmless prank was not so harmless, and caused Jim real suffering.Huck shows the devilish human impulse to torment others– something he learned from Tom Sawyer who “was brung up right”?

A harmless prank? What is it in people that makes them pull pranks on others? Why does it delight us to laugh at other people’s fears. But does Huck laugh at Jim’s real pain? Does Huck excuse himself by saying that he did not mean any harm? Does Huck’s view of Jim and his sensitivity to Jim’s goals and well-being change in this episode?

Huck will go onto the Missouri shore to find out what is going on.
But he must go in disguise to keep his freedom from civilization. Play acting or role-play as a means of survival or maintaining freedom from social control.

Gender-oriented criticism

Throughout the novel, HUCK invents various FALSE IDENTITIES for HIMSELF: Huck makes up the name Sarah Williams as part of his disguise. Then he disremembers it, and calls himself Mary. Then Sarah Mary. Then, when he is found out to be a boy, he becomes George Peters. Judith Loftus calls him Sarah Mary Williams George Elexander Peters. Then she gives him advice on how better to act like a girl so that he can fool people who might return him to his oppressive master.How many false names does Huck invent for himself? Why does he need so many names? What does it tell us about the world he lives in and his place in it?

To round out his IDENTITY and GAIN SYMPATHY by which he can manipulate his listener(s) to get what he wants, or to protect himself or Jim from being discovered and captured by civilization, Huck invents FAMILIES and FAMILY STORIES and SITUATIONS for himself as part of his current FALSE IDENTITY: Pay attention to the pattern which develops as Huck invents families, family histories and family situations as part of his false identity created for strangers. What do Huck’s made-up family stories have in common? What does it show about his wishes or his sense of the fate of families?

Huck’s visit to Judith Loftus on his surveillance mission to find out what is going on over on the Missouri shore.
Huck needs to disguise himself to keep his freedom. (Wearing the mask/costume to escape the controls of society. Strategic Role-playing.) Judith Loftus is a stranger in town, like the Biblical Judith who was a beautiful and beautifully dressed stranger in the enemy Assyrian camp. (Judith means “Jewess.” Do you know Judith’s story? She cut off King Holofernes’ head with a knife [or sword] to liberate the Israelites from Assyrian oppression.) Judith “unmasks” Huck pretty easily, and conducts tests to confirm that he is a boy. Judith serves as a friend and an agent in Huck’s maintaining his freedom and independence. Little does she know that she is indirectly helping an escaped slave– the same slave that her husband will be hunting later this night!

“Judith Beheading Holofernes” by Caravaggio

Huck has to tell more lies to make up for his bad job playing the part of a girl.
4. Judith guesses that Huck is an apprentice running away from an abusive master. A standard story of the day. Twain is poking fun at the tired story of the runaway apprentice, but also bringing up another form of the abusive master and abused “human property” pattern. Huck plays along with her story. Yes, he is a runaway apprentice. She promises not to tell. Huck finds out what the talk has been regarding his murder, Pap, and Jim. Some think Pap murdered Huck. Motive? Some think Jim murdered Huck. Motive? There are rewards out for both Pap and Jim. How much for each? (Kind of “ironic”? No. No irony here.)

Judith reveals that her husband will set out to find and catch Jim right after he gets home!

“Git up and hump yourself, Jim!”

Chapters XII & XIII
the wreck of the Walter Scott

Huck and Jim are drifting south downriver.Huck and Jim are passing St. Louis, a big city all lit up!

Every night about 10 o’clock Huck goes ashore to some small village to buy bacon, meal and other provisions.
If he sees a chicken that doesn’t look like it is roosting comfortable, he takes it. Pap taught him that you should always take a chicken when you get chance. Every morning before daylight, Huck goes into corn fields and “borrows” watermelons, mushmelons, corn, punkins, etc.

Huck and Jim talk about property.Pap says it is no harm to borrow things.But Widow Douglas taught Huck that “borrowing” “warn’t nothing but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it.”Huck feels guilty about “stealing”.

Jim thinks that Pap is partly right; and the widow is partly right.
What decision do Huck and Jim make in the context of this dilemma? They want the food, but they want to be “decent” like Widow Douglas would want. What do they do? (They throw the unripe and least good-tasting food into the river, and keep the good stuff, so that they didn’t steal!  )

The Wreck of the Walter ScottWhy does Twain name the steamboat the Walter Scott?(see footnote on page 1288)Realism destroys the illusion and dangerous morality of “Romanticism”

Huck decides it’s time to get off the sinking steamboat.
Huck finds Jim at the window as he is getting out. He tells Jim to get the raft. Jim reveals that the raf’ is gone! They’ll have to look for the robbers’ boat or skiff, use it to save themselves, and leave all three robbers in a fix.

Twain is poking fun at twisted notions of adventure, style, rights and morality:
Why does Huck want to check out the sinking steamboat? [A: Adventure, with style]. Who does he say would want him to? [A: Tom Sawyer] Who is on the sinking steamboat? What are they up to? Who does not want to kill another man on board, and why? Jake Packard speaks of “rights” and “morals”. Why is this strange? What problem makes Jim panic, and how do Huck and Jim solve it? Why does Huck tell a lie to get someone to go back to the sinking ship? What is his strange moral reasoning? When the ferry-boat watchman will not at first go upstream to the wreck, how does Huck motivate him to go, i.e., what are the man’s motives for actually getting off his rump to help drowning people?

The symbolic wreck of the (Sir) Walter Scott, floating by the ferry-boat (and Huck in the skiff)

The Story of Sollermun
Jim and Huck sit around in the woods smoking the robbers’ cigars. Jim talks about how worried he was when they lost the raft. He thought it was all up with him. Jim does not want any more “adventure.” Huck reads Jim stories from the robbers’ books about kings, dukes, earls, and how gaudy they dress and how much style they put on. What in Huck’s information about kings most amazes Jim?

Jim and Huck talk about King Sollermun (Solomon).
Does Jim think King Sollermun was wise? What is humorous about their conversation? What does Jim fail to understand about King Solomon’s wise and clever strategy in dealing with the two women who both claimed to be the mother of the “chile”. What human sensitivity does Jim show, even though he misunderstands what King Solomon was up to in the Biblical story of cutting the baby in half?

Jim and Huck talk about language, species, man, and Frenchmen.
Does Huck seem intelligent in this conversation? What about Jim? What do you make of Jim’s “logic” in his objection to Frenchmen speaking a different language. Is Twain making some serious observation about the human race, or just being funny?

Jim and Huck are approaching Cairo, Illinois (a free state, but with proslavery tendencies)!
Find Cairo on a map: What makes Cairo a crucial place for Huck and Jim? Why is it so important that they know they are about to come to Cairo? Think Bible! Cairo, Egypt. Moses and the Pharaoh. etc. Moses will liberate the Israelite slaves from bondage! Jim will be almost free once they reach Cairo! What is the weather like as they approach Cairo? and, of course, what time of day or night is it? [Just three more nights to Cairo. But on the 2nd night: Thick FOG!!! Uh, oh!!!

Huck plays a mean trick on Jim.
What happened on the foggy river that gave Huck the opportunity to play a trick on Jim? What is the trick? How does Jim interpret his “dream,” once he acknowledges that he must have been dreaming. How does Huck let Jim know Huck tricked him? How does Jim feel when he finds out Huck played a trick on him? How did Jim feel when he thought Huck was lost/drowned? What does Jim say to Huck? How does that make Huck feel? What does Huck say to Jim?

Chapter XVI

Huck on the jumbo raft
Prototype of the World Wrestling Federation—boasting and trash talking: Bob vs. the Child of Calamity– all talk; then little Davy thrashes them both Man-talk about dozens of manly and strange topics The haunted barrel: Ed’s story about Dick Allbright’s “haunted bar’l”– Dick Allbright’s dead baby that he choked “by accident”; Dick’s dead baby, little Charles William Allbright, has been following him ever since Huck discovered on board the raft– he says that he is Charles William Allbright! Let’s paint the boy blue all over. “No, let him go,” says little Davy. [Later, Jim gets painted blue so he looks like a “sick Arab”.] They let Huck go.

Jim is very excited that they are almost to Cairo.
Every other minute Jim says “Dah’s Cairo!” But it ain’t. Huck starts to feel guilty. Why? As Huck is rowing the canoe toward shore to find out how far down river Cairo is, he is having an internal struggle. What is Huck thinking and feeling?

Huck talks to the slave catchers: Huck’s “deformed conscience” [social & moral convention] vs. his “natural impulse” to protect his friend Jim

As Huck approaches the shore, Huck is met by two men who are out in their boat searching for five runaway slaves.
This is Huck’s chance to do the right thing. It would be so easy! What does Huck think the right thing to do is? What two “forces” are in conflict within him? What voices does he hear in his head, so to speak? Is it a conflict between “head” and “heart”? What does Huck decide to do (or not do)? What is the consequence of his decisionin this scene? What conclusion does Huck come to regarding future matters of conscience when he feels divided or torn. Will he act the same as he did this time, or differently? What principle will he act upon?

What a godsend!They were given two twenty dollar pieces by the slave catchers!
Situational irony! The money from the slave catchers will help the escaped slave and his accomplice to pay for deck passage on a steamboat headed north to freedom.

Hold on a minute!Jim and Huck discover that they have already passed Cairo!Probably on the foggy night when they were separated!The damn snake-skin did it!

OK. What to do.They’ll abandon the raft, and paddle the canoe upstream until they get back to Cairo. It will be hard work and risky, but it will worth it. and risky

But now…oh, no!...their canoe is gone!

They will have to continue floating downriver—south!—on the raft, until they can buy a canoe and start paddling it back upstream.

Footnote in your book (page 1309):“Twain was ‘stuck’ at this point in the writing of the novel and put the four-hundred-page manuscript aside for approximately three years.

Twain already had the idea of presenting the problem of violence, blood feuds and a twisted sense of honor in the Baptist and Presbyterian South. He decided that the best way to continue was to make Huck solo to put him into company where Jim would not be welcome and safe. Twain wanted to poke fun at Southern gentility and a dark, violent, anti-Christian Christianity expressed as foolish, exaggerated sentimentality mixed with brutality– a satire on a familiar conceit in romantic literature, i.e., family honor above all else, even life.

A presentation on Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910)