Adventuring with Huckleberry Finn

Last year’s reading project included several portions of novels, and many of those left me wanting more! The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was the first of the books from last year’s Immersive Humanities List that I completed while I was taking a breather from podcasting. We talked on the podcast about this book, along with a slew of 19th century American classics, back in December; at the time Ted had asked us to read Chapters 1-6. Well, I fell in love and stuck around til Chapter 10 but then had to move on.

Before this reading, I’d last picked up HF back in my high school American Lit class, a very long time ago! I hated it; looking back, I wish I knew why. The vernacular? A teacher who didn’t like it? We did have to read out loud in class—not to be a snob, but if you are a fluent reader, it can be painful to sit in a warm classroom just after lunch while someone across the room quietly stumbles across the page, especially in a couple of vernaculars and not in standard written English. The fact that I could come to this book and fall in love was a wonderful surprise.

Fall in love I did. Why? Sweet Huck (oh he would chafe at an old lady calling him sweet!)—his openness and lack of guile, his desire just to be left alone to live his life, the sheer “American-ness” of the whole story. But now that I’ve finished, there is so much more to think about than merely Huck. I’m so very glad I finished it.

You probably know the broad outlines of the story: a boy needs to escape his foul, drunkard father. Faking his own death, he escapes to an island in the Mississippi River, only to discover that he isn’t alone. Jim, the slave of one of his neighbors, has also run off, but he is running towards something: his family was sold and taken from him, and he needs to find his way back to them.

The pair pretty quickly decides to join forces and float down the river together, Huck towards freedom, Jim towards family (and really not freedom at all). Freedom is too much for Jim to hope for. They get into some scrapes and have narrow escapes, but it’s what happens on the raft that is more interesting. Huck is a creature of his times and can only see Jim as slave, not man, when they begin. As they travel together, Huck’s eyes are opened, but for me it’s the way Twain tells this story that makes me love it. It’s in Huck’s language that shifts as the adventure continues. Jim doesn’t change, but Huck’s idea of Jim certainly does, as he starts to relate to him as a full human being capable of love and longing and joy and sadness.

Here are a few other things I found notable about this book:

• Twain’s use of the vernacular, and not just one dialect: When we read this book during the project, I thought that the way the characters spoke added so much to the atmosphere. We hadn’t read anything quite like it in the reading project. After I finished this reading, though, and was doing a little research on the book for some background, I found out this use of vernacular was truly novel. Twain even took several attempts to get Huck’s opening remarks exactly right, based on the several draft manuscripts that survive. And it’s not just one dialect—each character speaks the way he or she would, more or less Southern, more or less educated-sounding or formal. It’s hard to imagine Huck Finn without the language.

• The vivid descriptions of place: Twain lets us feel all of these river-front towns up and down the Mississippi, each one distinctly real and different. But it isn’t surprising when you remember that some of Twain’s earliest success was with travel writing, especially Innocents Abroad. I very much want to read some of his travel books—maybe a pairing of one of those with something more modern?

• Funny characters who manage to stay real: Jim is the very best example of this, I think—tender and yet determined, sometimes scared (with reason), sometimes very brave. But this extends to some of the townspeople and even the Duke and King, a couple of my least favorite characters in a while. Until, that is, Tom Sawyer shows up.

Yes, our old friend Tom comes back in the most unlikely way in the last quarter of the novel. Huck realizes that Jim is being held captive (as he awaits being returned to his rightful owners) by none other than Tom’s Aunt Sally—and that the whole family is expecting Tom for a visit! Huck quickly starts impersonating Tom which works until Tom himself comes into the picture. Those wrinkles work out, but Jim is still held captive by Uncle Silas. Tom decides they will free Jim in the most elaborate ways possible, and they make several attempts, even while Huck points out that they could just OPEN THE DOOR and let Jim walk out. This entire part of the book becomes a frustrating (to the reader and, likely, to Jim) farce that takes much too long to resolve. The ending seems, more than anything, unworthy of the rest of the book.

On first reading, I thought the ending came across as Twain needing to move on to another project. But as I write, another thought occurs to me. Huck is the quintessential American everyman, just wanting to be left alone. During his time on the river, he definitely changes. But he’s not strong, at least not yet, and when Tom appears Huck takes on his old, more servile posture he had around Tom from back home. It’s as if the appearance of Tom reverses much of the growing-up Huck had done as he floated down the river. He didn’t speak up for Jim but went along with Tom’s schemes, assuming his friend was still his moral and intellectual better. Huck loses confidence and the courage of his new-found conviction when an old (and pushy) friend shows up out of nowhere. If Huck is Twain’s Everyman, is this a warning?

This is a thought I sit uneasily with. My initial reading, and that of many others (even Hemingway) is that turning the last quarter of the novel to slapstick was a great failure of the novel, although it doesn’t erase the amazing book Twain wrote. But could it be that Huck is just reflecting what most people would do? If Twain wondered, “What if Tom comes back right here?” then Huck’s hard-won humanity might prove less durable than we had hoped. And it is a warning.

Either reading is possible. I haven’t read other Twain, Bub I did spend time reading histories and commentaries, trying to figure out if my “mailing it in” theory could hold water. Maybe. At this point Twain had multiple business interests and was one of the most sought-after public speakers int he world. But he was also taking a turn toward heavier writing, and never wrote anything as light as The Prince and the Pauper or Tom Sawyer in the years after Huck. Reconstruction was proving to be a failure, and his own family had endured the loss of two of their children at this point. A more pessimistic reading is possible.

Yes, read it.

Yes, love it.

But don’t expect a fully satisfying ending.