I

UNIT 15 HUMOUR AND OTHER ISSUES IN

HUCKLEBERRY FINN
Structure

Objectives
Introduction
Humour
15.2.1 Humour in Character
15.2.2 Humour in Situation
15.2.3 Humour in Language
15.2.4 Farce
15.2.5 Burlesque
15.2.6 Defining the Limits of Fun
Intertextuality
Is Huckleberry Finn a Racist Book?
Major Critical Approaches to Huckleberry Finn
15.5.1 Criticism during 1885-1950
15.5.2 The Post-1950 Criticism
Let Us Sum Up
Glossary
Assignment
Further Reading

15.0 OBJECTIVES

This Unit begins by discussing the different kinds of humour in Huckleberry Finn
against the background of the work of literary comedians in 19th century America. It
then goes on to deal with intertextuality in the novel and more importantly with the
explosive issue of whether or not the novel is racist. Finally, it gives major critical
approaches to the novel.

Mark Twain, it will be recalled, made his literary debut as a humorist, one among the
many who flourished in the Civil War period. These humorists who are described as
"literary comedians," "Phunny Phellows" and "Misspellers" were a rage in their time
delighting Americans both with their writing and from the lecture platform. They
evoked laughter by using grotesque exaggeration and by being irreverent towards
men and traditional beliefs. More specifically, they used eccentric spellings, (which
was a kind of rebellion against traditional culture), puns, malapropism, anti-climax
and burlesque and a quaint style.

Perhaps the tallest among these humorists was Charles Farrar Browne who following
the fashion of the day appeared in print and in the platform under the non de plume of
Artemus Ward. He was a friend of Mark Twain. Here is a sample of a 'filler' he
wrote for the editor of the newspaper The Plain Dealer:

The Plane Dealer:

Sir
i write to no how about the show bisnes in Cleeveland i have a show consisting in
part of a Calforny Bare two snakes tame foxies & also wax works .. . .now mr. Editor
scratch off few lines and tell me how is the show bisnes in your good city i shal have
Huckleberry Finn hanbils printed at your offis you scratch my back i will scratch your back, also git up
a grate blow in the paper about my show don't forgit the wax works.

Yours truly

Artemus Ward \

"People laugh," Ward explained, "more because of my eccentric sentences than on

account of the subject matter.." He went on : "There is no wit in the form of a well-
rounded sentence.. If I say Alexander the Great conquered the world and then sighed
because he could not do it some more, there is a f i m y mixture." Among other things
he ridiculed popular romances and burlesqued the lecturers--philosophers, politicians,
ministers, professors--who dispensed wisdom and inspiration to people,
outhumbugging "all the humbugs the world ever saw."

Areternus Ward was only one of the humorists--there were many more among whom
there were three others who need to be mentioned: Henry WheeTer Shaw (non de
lume, 'Josh Billings'), David Ross Locke ('Petroleum Vesuvius Nasby') and Charles
Henry Smith ('Bill Arp'). Through their play with words, their irreverence and
exaggeration and burlesques and parodies, all these Phunny Phellows laughed at
sentimentality and pretentiousness.

If he had affinity with Artemus Ward and other literary comedians Mark Twain also
absorbed a great deal from the tradition of Southwestern humor modifying it in the
process. In fact the comic tradition of the Southwest is, in the words of Bernard De
Voto, "the matrix of Mark Twain's humour." To come to specifics, four elements of \
Southwestern humor have been incorporated in Huckleberry Finn. They are: the
conrnen (the king and the duke), the camp meeting, the circus and the Royal
Nonesuch. Two debts could be mentioned here. The motif of the camp meeting in
the novel (Chapter 20) has been traced to Johnson Jones Hooper's Some Adventures
of Captain Suggs (1845). Captain Suggs 'works' a camp meeting and makes a
collection and disappears with it just as the king does a similar thing in Huckleberry
Finn. Also, the hoax that Huck plays on Jim after the fog (in Chapter 15) is a version
of the Western hoax perpetrated upon Pike in Dan De Quille's The Big Bonanza
(1877).

15.2 HUMOUR

Mark Twain's humour in Huckleberry Finn is clearly firmly rooted in the tradition of
American humour. But it has appealed to readers across centuries and continents
also, which shows its universality.

Exercise

Now identify the devices Mark Twain has used in the novel for a similar purpose. Be
specific, as far as you can by noting down chapter and page numbers.

"Most amiable and charming, Sir, you shake the sides of the world with merriment."
That was what the Chancellor of Oxford University said while awarding Mark Twain
his honorary degree. If this tribute is true of any one book of Mark Twain's, it is true
of Huckleberry Finn.

It is an extremely h y book and its humour is unfading. What is the source or

rather what are the sources of humour in it?

Huckleberry Finn is at once a book about boys and about adults, or more specifically,
about a boy's view of the world of adults. Does humour lie in the way the 14-year old
boy views things? Does it lie in the language used? Or in the situation in which the Humour and other
central character finds himself? issues

Another important area of enquiry is--is the book humorous in only one way? Or do
we come across humour of different kinds in it? All this should lead on to answer the
question: what is the quality of humour in this novel?

What is humour? Without waiting to define it at great length, we could say: Humour
lies in oddity, in the perception of incongruity. This incongruity may be between the
ideal and the real, between things as they seem and as they are, it may be between the
language modes, between the genteel and the vernacular. "The characteristic
situation in American humorous writing," says Louis D. Rubin, Jr., "is that in which
cultural and social pretentions are made to appear ridiculous and artificial" (386).
This insight is particularly apt for HucRleberry Finn because a major preoccupation
of the novel is exposure, exposure of sham and pretentions and artificiality in the
anti-bellum society. And though there is much comedy of the purer sort, humour has
primarily been used as a tool of attack, for ironic and amused comment and satire.
Twain's is mostly a lambent flame that plays around the social institutions and
practices without burning them. It sometimes scorches too but never reduces them to
cinders.

For the sake of convenience the discussion has been arranged under humour arising
out of character, situation and language.

15.2.1 Humour in Character

Huck:

Much of the humour in the book arises out of Mark Twain's choice of a 14-year-old
narrator and the qualities he endows him with. The following points could be made.
Some of these have been made earlier.

1. Huck, we have already said, is an 'unrel&ble' narrator, which means that he

does not always understand things completely. This disparity in
understanding results in irony wKich leads to humour. Huck's naive response
to the practice of saying grace shows that he does not understand its
traditional importance. Consequently he is able to defamiliarize the practice
even as he questions its intinsic value. The same is true of his response to
Widow Douglas' formula about praying. Again, the innocent questioning of
Buck by Huck brings out the mindlessness of the killings in the feud. Much
the same naivete and criticism are evident in his description of the
Grangerford parlour and his immature praise for Emmeline's poetry.

2. Twain withholds a sense of humour from Huck. Consequently, like the dead
pan expression of his creator on the lecture platform, Huck keeps a straight
face almost never breaking into laughter. The only time he laughs is when he
sees the king cavorting on the stage all naked. Huck seldom loses his temper
either. This lets the 111humour of the situation to come through to the
reader. The way Huck wriggles out of tight situations time after time with
smart lies furnishes evidence of this. Such situations are all the more
humorous because Huck is a vulnerable character who survives in the
generally hostile world of adults on the strength of his wit. Besides, here we
have the impishness of a child combined with his almost never failing
invention.

3. Twain casts Huck in the mould of an ancient Greek comic type of character,
Eiron, a character who deprecates himself, one who thinks he is worse than
he thinks he is. This comes out very clearly in two episodes connected with
Huck's dilemma on whether or not to help fiee Jim. In the first episode
Huckleberry Finn (Chapter 16) he accuses himself of not being "a man e$Gghl' who hadn't "the i
spunk of a rabbit" to tell the slave hunters about Jim. His eventual decision
shows Huck to be a true gentleman and friend but he thinks he is being weak

4
and spineless. Later in chapter 3 1 Huck again acts sp endidly when he
decides to stand by Jim and go to "hellm--thatis in fa his finest moment--but
he believes he is being irremediably wicked. Twain modifies the mould j
because unlike an eiron figure Huck does not merely pretend that he is worse
than he is; he believes that he is a hopeless sinner. The result is laughter
combined with admiration for him.
If Huck is an eiron figure, the king and the duke are alazons, boastful characters, who
are also accomplished conmen. Both are figures of pure comedy. Each of them tells
an extravagant tale to force Huck and Jim into treating them with deference due to
their rank. The very rank that they usurp also enables Twain to attack hereditary
nobility. He also uses them to comment on the gullibility and sentimentality of the
people. This is clear in two episodes, one in which the king works a camp meeting
and the other when the two attempt to cheat the Wilks' family. Here the king is
taking up a collection for pirates:
So the king went through the crowd with his hat, swabbing his eyes, and
blessing the people and praising them a@ thanking them for being so good to
the poor pirates away off there; and every little while the prettiest of girls,
with the tears running down their cheeks, would up and ask him would he let
them kiss him, for to remember him by; and he always done it; and some of
them he hugged and kissed as many as five or six times.

1
Though the king is a bit of a lecher, he is more interested in cash than in kissing
What Twain is doing here is to invite us to laugh at the misplaced sentimeentali of
the people. At times when their impostures become too blatant, Twain gives up irony
and launches a direct satirical attack on the frauds. Their attempt to defiaud the
Wilk's children is a case in point. But Twain's satire is never allowed to remain
harsh. For example here are three harsh things that Huck says about the king and the
duke:

i) It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race (Ch.24).

ii) I never see anything so disgusting. (Ch.25)
iii) . ..all that sot and slush it was just sickening. (Ch.25).
These hits are direct and severe but when Huck sees them cruelly tarred and feathered
and ridden on a rail, his charity softens his earlier harshness:
Well, it made me sick to see it; and I was sorry for them, poor pitiful rascals, . . .
Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.
There is another example of direct satire in Col. Sherburn's speech to the mob after
his murder of Buggs (Ch.22) in which Twain seems to be speaking for himself and
which is rather harsh. Altogether, however, what we have in Huckleberry Finn is
amiable or amusing satire.

15.2.2 Humour in Situation

Situational humour has been talked of in different contexts earlier.
It only needs to be said that there are scenes which are excellent examples for the
study of humour in all its aspects--in character, situation and language. The king's
speech at the Wilk's home is one such example and has been analysed earlier.

15.2.3 Humour in Language

1

i) Huck's use of words like 'grumble' while referring to the practice of saying
grace has already been referred to.
 Humour and other
Another funny word he uses is 'leak' to refer to the tearshedding of the frauds: issues
"I never see two men leak the way they did" (25: 189).

ii) Malapropisms never fail to amuse. Following the example of rile literary
comedians, Twain uses malapropisms, e.g. diseased for deceased (25, 193).

affront for 'confront'

The doctor says: We'll take these fellows to the tavern and affront them with
t'other couple .. ."(29:224).

iii) The king's attempt to explain etymologically why he has used the word
orgies for obsequies takes a dig at fake scholarship and is both audacious and
vastly amusing.
bd
I say orgies, not because it's the common term, because it ain't--
obsequies bein' the common term--but because orgies is the right
term. . . . It's a word that's made up out'n in the Greek orgo, outside,
open, abroad; and the Hebrew jeesum, to plant, cover up; hence inter.
So you see, funeral orgies is an' open er public funeral' (25: 193-94).

iv) Ironically when Huck misuses the word mumps and then tries to explain it as
something extremely serious to Susan and the harelip at the Wilks' home he
ties himself up in knots. (28:2 19)

15.2.4 Farce
4
There are scenes of pure fun also such as Aunt Sally counting and miscounting the
spoons and confusion caused by Tom and Huck's 'borrowing' of shirts and sheets 'for
the evasion. It is delightful to see boys scoring over adults, which is entirely in tone
with the youthful spirit of the book.

15.2.5 Burlesque

The writer's use of burlesque to poke fun at Tom's make-believe world derived from
conventional romance-writers in the first three chapters and the last ten chapters has
been referred to earlier.

Mark Twain is also using irony to criticize the white society for what Shelley Fisher
Fishkin calls "the virtual enslavement of free blacks in the South during the 1880s"
(97).

15.2.6 Defining the limits of Fun

What this book does very well, I think, is that it defines the limits of what constitutes
fun or rather what does not constitute fun. For what is fun for Huck and Tom turns
out to be torture and humiliation for Jim. Behind such insensitive fun seeking is the
assumption that blacks aren't like whites and are easy game for white fun. Huck
seeks fun with Jim twice but both times he fails. As part of his first attempt he ties a
dead rattlesnake round Jim's bed but when Jim is bitten by a snake, he has a sense of
guilt. But after the second attempt involving the fog incident he vows never to play
: mean tricks on Jim.
Tom however never learns. His evasion plan that means prolonged but needless
torture and humiliatioq gives him "the best fun he ever had in his life and the most
intellectual" (Ch.36). In saying this Tom defines what fun should not be.
~ u z l e b e Finn
r~ To sum, we have several kinds of humour in Hucklebem, Finn. If there are moments
of pure comedy, farce and impish humour of children, we also have humour as a tool
of attack all buoyed up by the irrepressible zest of youth.

Exercise

In what different ways is Twain critical of white society?

- its racism
- its eolence
- its gullibility
- its senfimentality
Is the atpck ironical? Or is it direct?
T h i of ~ specific instances.

This is a term used to describe relationship between literary texts. This relationship is
one of interdependence.

The assumption behind this concept is that texts are not isolated phenomena. They
grow out of other texts and, as Jonathan Culler puts it, are made "possible by prior
works which they take up, repeat, challenge, transform."

Mark Twain downplayed literary influences boasting that his wide culture was all of
it real, none of it artificial for he said he did not know anything about books.

Even so his reading which became wider especially after 1870s provided him "with
much matter that he conquered and annexed to his territory."

As for Huckleberry Finn "he trotted along in the track of funny American writers; he
echoed more than a baker's dozen of them in this book alone," as Louis D. Rubin, Jr.
put it. Besides there are echoes fiom foreign authors by the score--which is quite
astonishing considering that the book's narrator is a semi-educated boy.

These sources enumerated by Walter Blair are: Old Testament authors, CelIini,
Cervantes, Shakespeare, Bunyan, Pepys, Defoe, LeSage, Saint-Simon, Casanova,
Goldsmith, Scott, Moore, Trollope, Carlyle, Dumas, Dickens, Reade, Taine and
W.E.H. Lecky.

Much of the humour of Huckleberry Finn depends upon the reader's awareness of the
works of Shakespeare particularly Hamlet, Othello, & Romeo and Juliet and they will
be able to savour Mark Twain's fully only if they have read the texts which are here
mutilated and are able to see the incongruity between the original and the travesty of
it.

15.4 IS HUCKLEBERRYFINN A RACIST BOOK?

Huckleberry Finn has been one of the most controversial books in American
literature. It was banned by the Concord Public Library soon after its publication in
February 1885 because it was thought to "contain but little humour and that of a very
coarse type," "the veriest trash," "more suited to the slums than to intelligent,
respectable people." The wheel came full circle in 1957 when the NAACP (National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People) condemned the book for its use
of the vernacular tenn 'nigger' that was described as an affiont to the dignity of a
I whole race. Since then the controversy has generated a considerable body of Humour and other
criticism centring round the characterization of Jim. Ivhny black critics have issues
objected to the way blacks have been depicted in the novel. Probably the most
irreconcilable critic among them is Chicago educator Dr. John H. Wallace who has
described it as "the most grotesque example of racist trash ever written." But equally
interestingly some of the best defences of the book also have come from black
authors including Ralph Ellison and the Nobel Prize winning novelist Toni Momsorl.
And it has been called (by a white critic) "arguably the greatest anti-racist novel by an
American" (Fishkin, 23). Mercifully the critical divide between the book's defenders
and detractors is not entirely along colour lines.

,
Before you proceed I would like you to examine your response& the novel on the
question of racism. Focus particularly on the use of the-word "nigger" and the
picsentatioq of Jim.

Let me suggest an analogy that would bring home to you the offensive nature of the
word. What would your response be if an Indian writer used the derogatory word
bhangi for a person who belongs to the lowest caste in the caste hierarchy?
--
Make notes about Twain's characterization of Jim so that you can argue that

i) Hucklebeny Finn is not a racist book

ii) Huckleberry Finn is a racist book.

The charge of racism must be decided in terms of the total effect of the novel.

I would like to make the following points:

1. There are many voices in the novel--the voice of racism is one of them. But
the speaker Pap Finn is far from being a sympathetic character--he is a
drunkard, a violent criminal, a cruel father who is merely interested in getting
hold of Huck's money. The speech is so self-condemnatory that Twain
merely lets Huck report it without feeling the need to refute it.

2. Mark Twain's use of the offensive word 'niggd has been objected to not only
because it tarnishes a whole race but also because it encourages bigotry.
However the usage has been defended on grounds of realism. In a 1991
interview, Ralph Ellison said: "Mark Twain was being quite realistic when he
used the term. If I find it necessary, if I'm writing about characters who use
that language, I put it down. That's the way it is. We have to learn to come
to terms with it" (Fishkin, 197). Mark Twain had [Link]
his own earlier racial bias and he was far in advance of his time. In fact he
had the prescience of a great writer to foresee how history would delay the
h i t s of freedom to the blacks and he put it in the ironic ending of the novel.
Even so he apparently did not wish to create a psychological resistance in the
minds of the contemporary readers by using a word other than the usual
dialect word. We must also remember that Huck's use is entirely
unselfconscious and he continues using it even iifter he has learnt to
appreciate Jim's humanity. One can only conclude that Ellison's defence
notwithstanding, Mark Twain was a creature of his times. But this does not
mean that Huckleberry Finn is racist.

3. Mark Twain, it seems, used the available stereotype of a comic negro to start
with. Initially Jimis ignorant, superstitious and gullible and an easy target
for white jokes. But until his fraudulent sale by the king he is a growing,
evolving character. In the course of his development Twain demolishes
several myths of negro inferiority--that negroes are stupid, that they are
 grown up children who need looking after and that they don't feel the bonds 1
Huckleberry Finn of family Hection as strongly as the whites do. At his best Jim comes across
as an adult, responsible, affectionate, protective and loyal, loyal to a fault.
The novel shows that Jim may be illiterate and sometimes irrational but he is
not stupid. He knows bird lore that saves Huck from the violent rain storm.
In sharp contrast to his greedy sadistic father, Jim acts as a surrogate father.
He warns Huck not to have anything to do with Walter Scott, an advice he
disregards as a result of which both coine perilously close to being trapped on
the sinking boat. Jim builds a wigman which is a kind of home for both. He
puts in extra hours of duty so that Huck could sleep longer. Lastly he nurses
Tom who is his chief tormentor back to health, in complete disregard of his
own interests. Twain obviously intends to raise him in our esteem.

Jim however shows unmjstakable traces of his comic origin, in the beginning and
particularly in the end when heis gleefully made to accept 40 dollars given by Tom
for being such a patient prisoner.

. . .Jim was pleasedl most to death, and busted out, and says:
'Dah now, ~ u c kwhat
, I tell you? . . .

I tole you I got a hairy breast, en what's de sign un it; en I tole you I ben rich wunst,
en gwineter to be rich agin; n it's come true; en heah she is! Dah, now! doan's talk to
me - signs is signs, mine I tell you; en I knowed jis's well at I, uz gwineter be rich
agin as I's a stannin heah dis minute!'
(Chapter the last: 327)

The slideback into his earlier superstitious comic manner is shocking. But this as
also Twain's use of the word 'nigger' in no way detract from the position that
Huckleberry Finn is anti-racist both in structure and characterization. As Toni
Morrison said, it was in fact to Mark Twain's credit that he insisted on bringing
combustible issues which the Americans of 1880s were trying to bury, on the table.
She believes that the cyclical attempts to remove the novel from classrooms extend
Jim's captivity on into each generation of readers." A novel that deals with the
explosive issue of racism and makes plentiful use of irony requires a sophisticated
'
response. But we cannot blame the book for the fault of understanding of some of the
readers.

15.5 MAJOR CRITICAL APPROACHES TO

HUCKLEBERRY FINN

This section appropriately comes at the end of the Block. For the text of the novel is
primary, and reading and re-reading it will pay rich rewards and lead to a deeper
understanding of it. So keep coming back to the text and ruminate over it, and also
keep comparing it with other texts wherever such comparisons are possible.

Theoretically it is quite possible for you not to read this section. But I hope you
realize that our understanding of this text, any text, is a cumulative process. It is
invariably based on the insights of other readers who came upon the novel earlier for
what are critics but more efficient, better equipped readers?

Sometimes reading a good critical essay can set your own thoughts in motion and you
may find yourself following the trail of an idea of your own.

The best thing you could do therefore is to be a sceptic like Huck - question accepted
opinions.
 "A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to ~ u m o " rand other
read," said Clernens. But his own Huckleberry Finn is a classic with a difference. It issues
is popular with both the general reader and the critic and is also controversial, with
controversy dogging it fiom its first American publication in 1885. Initially found
I objectionable for its "trashy morality," it has now been denounced for its perceived

racism. But the book continues to be read in classrooms and outside and to be
subjected to close scrutiny not only by students, teachers and literary critics but by
educators as well who are womed over its influence on young minds.

The popularity of the book at home and abroad is clear fiom the fact that as many as
145 American editions and 696 foreign editions of it in 53 languages and 47'countries
came out during the period 1884 to 1976.

As for criticism, 3 books, over 600 articles and 8 anthologies of criticism came out
during the same period. The centenary of Huckleberry Finn saw the publication of
two anthologies of criticism entitled Huck Finn Among the Critics (1984) edited by
M. Thomas Inge and One Hundred Years of Huckleberry Finn ed. by Robert
Sattelmeyer and J. Donald Crowley. And there is a journal devoted exclusively to
- Mark Twain, Mark Twain Journal that contains articles on Huckleberry Finn among
other works.

Indians too have contributed to the Twain scholarship with articles and more recently
(1992) with an anthology of criticism on Twain edited by Prafulla Kar, which
includes one Indian article on Huckleberry Finn. Another Indian contribution is
entitled Mark Twain and Nineteenth Century American Literature (1993) edited by E.
Nageswara Rao.

Clearly Walter Blair was right when he said in his preface to Mark Twain and Huck
Finn (1960) that Huckleberry Finn was "unique in being held in the highest esteem
by critics and at the same time prodigiously popular in the United States and
throughout the world."

The criticism could be studied under two heads - Criticism during 1884-1950 and The
Post- 1950 Criticism.

15.5.1 Criticism during 1884-1950

This was a period of general assessment and later of historical studies.

In spite of the ban by the 'Concord Public Library Huckleberry Finn received good
reviews and notices. Some fifty articles appeared during 1884-1920. The
criticdreviewers focussed on "the general effect and effectiveness" of the novel and
helped establish it as Mark Twain's masterpiece and as one of the masterpieces of the
English language. Andrew Lang (1891), for instance, called it "the great American
novel." The praise reached a particularly high pitch with H.L. Mencken (1913) who
said it was "one of the great masterpieces of the world" and called Mark Twain the
father of American literature, the first genuine American artist of the blood royal."

In the next thirty years i.e. between 1921 and 1950 more than 80 essays appeared,
which were dominated by historical studies. Important areas of literary history that
received attention were:

1.I , influences like that of folklore, Western humour and Mark Twain's
upbringing

2: sources of Huck; for the Grangerford piano and for the duke and his tooth-
powder.
Huckleberry Finn 3. literary comparisons with Don Quirote, Tom Sawyer and Horatio Alger
books.

The period was marked by a controversy that was sparked off by Van Wyche Brooks'
(1920) argument who said that Mark Twain's artistic development had been arrested
by his fiontier upbringing and under the genteel influence of his mother, wife, and
friend and mentor Howells. As a result he held Huckleberry Finn to be "of quite
inferior quality." Bernard De Voto (1932) disagreed saying that Mark Twain's
fiontier experience combined with his knowledge of common Amencan life provided
him with creative inspiration. De Voto also deals with several elements in
Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain's use of the picaresq~ieform, his brief but masterful
characterization of Pap Finn and of the king and the duke, and the use of the
vernacular.

With him [Huck Finn] goes a fullness made and shaped wholly of America. It is only
because the world he passes through is real and only because it is American that his
journey escapes into universal and is immortal. His book is American life formed
into great fiction.

This entire period comes to a close with a landmark essay that the distinguished critic
Lionel Trilling wrote by way of introduction for the Rinehart edition of Hucklebeny
Finn in 1949. This was followed by T.S. Eliot's introductory essay to another edition
of the text in 1950. Apart from pralsing it both defended the ending of the novel. In
doing so they sparked off a controversy in which almost every critic of American
literature has taken part and which shows no sign of stopping even today. Besides, as
John Gerber says, "Trilling anticipated the flood of New Criticism m the following
years by discussing the book's language and structure ("in form and style Huckleberql
Finn is an almost perfect work"), its symbolism (the river as god, Huck as its
servant), and its psychological tensions (Huck vis-a-vis Jim). The essay has also
given us a memorable phrase "a community of saints" Trilling used to describe the
idyllic relationship between Huck and Jim on the raft..

The stage was set for close critical analysis and interpretation.

15.5.2 The Post-1950 Criticism

There has been a virtual explosion of criticisnl on Huckleberry Finn during this
period and the interpretations have been as extensive as they have been diverse. No
area--whether it be literary history, structure and thc ending, characters, language,
humour and latterly racism--has been left unexplored. For greater clarity important
criticism has been grouped under major areas of interest in the novel.
Theme(@
What is Huckleberry Finn about?

The question has evoked a bewildering variety of responses from its readers over the
years. We can get some idea of this variety from the items listed below: alienation,
conscience, death, faith in human goodness, freedom, initiation, loneliness, lying,
morality, etc. Some critics express the theme in pairs of opposing words: appearance
and reality, imagination and reality, freedom and slavery, ind~vidualand society and
power and love. This list IS based on John Gerber's article entitled Introduct~on:The
ContinuingAdvenrura of Huckleberry Finn. Some of those who you might find
worth paying attention to are the following: James Cox focuses on initiation of Huck
accomplished through symbolic death and rebirth. For Leo M a n the purpose of the
journey is quest for freedom. Also disagreeing with Trilling and Eliot's defence he
finds that the ending is unsatisfactory because it detracts from thc urgency and
dignity with which the quest began. According to Richard P. Adams the theme is the
growth of Huck's personality and his acceptance of adult responstbilttics. Henry
Nash Smith views the navel as a story of the conflict between self and society,
 Structure and the ending Humour and other
issues
The structure of the novel, particularly the ending, has engaged the minds of a large
number of critics. The criticism recpgnizes often explicitly, that Huckleberry Finn is
picaresque and therefore episodic in nature, that its composition was interrupted, and
that Mark Twain was not good at advanced planning.

Critics are ranged in two groups--there are those who are not satisfied with the
structure and those who have defended it for its unity and coherence. The question of
the ending is apparently an urgent and meaningful one for between 1950 and 1991 80
articles have defended it. The Norton Critical Edition has a section devoted to the
problem of the ending.

The first to find the structure wanting was Thomas Sergeant Perry who in a review
(1885) said that the ending was 'somewhat forced.' Hemingway who traced (1935)
all modem American literature to Huckleberry Finn was more forthright-he asked
the reader to stop where Jim is stolen. "That is the real end. The rest is cheating."
Herman Wouk who considers PluckZeberry Finn "the crown of our literature" thinks
- (1956) it to be a jerky,uneven, patchwork tale." He added that if one applied the
classical standards of European fiction it was one long barbarous mistake. Leo Marx
argues that though Huckleberry Finn is a masterpiece "the most serious motive in the
novel, Jim's yearning for freedom, is made the subject of nonsense. The conclusion,
in short, is farce. . ." William Van O'Connor goes farther than most when he argues
that "the critical acumen of Eliot and Trilling notwithstanding, there are a number of
flaws in Huckleberry Finn, some of them attributable to Twain's refusal to respect the
work of art and other attributable to his Imperfect sense of tone." Contesting
Howell's notion that he was "the Lincoln of our literature," he s a j s that Huckleberry
Finn is not the great American novel.

Among the first to defend the structure are Trilling and Eliot. In spite of detecting "a
certain falling-off in the ending," Trilling finds '3formal aptness" in it. Eliot
justified the ending saying that the mood of the end of the book should rightly bring
us back to that of the beginning and asked: "Or if this was not the right ending for the
book, what ending would have been right?" Frank Baldanza (1955) argues more
rigorously and persuasively that the book is knit together by an inner pattern of
repetition and variation. Perhaps the most convincing defence of the structure comes
from Richard Adams who says that instead of plot in the traditlonal sense,
Huckleberry Finn has "a symbolic pattern or organisation of imagery" and that "the
basic structure which exposes the theme of the boy's growth and whlch carries the
weight of the incidents and the imagery throughout is a pattern of symbolic death and
rebirth."

Some critics have divided the novel into suitable units to explain the structure.
According to Professor Gladys Bellamy the book in spite of its episodic nature falls
'naturally' into three 'thematic units.' Martin Stapies Shockley in a 1960 essay
describes Huckleberry Finn as thematically coherent and structurally unified and
proposes "a logical, ordered, five-part structure, with introduction, rising action,
climax, falling action, conclusion."

Some of the views on the ending have already been referred to. Those who dislike
the ending do so because Mark Twain's tone changes from satire to burlesque and
from seriousness to farce and this abrupt change is accompanied by Torn's entry and
his taking over and diminishment of the characters of Huck and Jim. But there has
been a growing realization that the ending is deeply ironical. The defence of the
ending by three black novelists could be mentioned.. Ralph Ellison rejected
Hemingway's view that the novel really ended with the stealing away of Jim and
charged that he had missed 'completely the structural, symbolic and moral necessity
"for the last part. It was that part that gave the novel its significance or else it would
be "a boy's tale," "meaningless." More recently, Toni Morrison the Nobel Prize
Huckleberry Finn Winner and author of The Bluest Eye felt that the last part of the book was Mark
, Twain's commentary on the "collapse of civil rights for blacks" in the 1880's. Even
more recently the award-winning novelist David Bradley author of The Chaneysville
Incident said that none of the critics of the ending had been able to suggest an
alternative ending. "They all failed for the same reason that Twain wrote the ending
as he did. American has never been able to write a better ending, America has never
been able to write any ending at all" (Quoted in Fishkin, 202-03). Shelley Fisher
Fishkin who uses views of the novelists referred to above to make a strong case for
reading the ending as deeply ironic says: "Huckleberry Finn may end in farce, but it
is not Twain's farce--it is ours" (Fishkin, 199).

Huck and Jim

Critics have generally tended to romanticize Huck. He has been called a picaresque
saint, a Prometheus;a frontier Thoreau, a Mississippi Moses, among other things.
But there are dissenters like William Van O'Connor (1955), who believes that Huck's
appeal is through an immature sort of innocence and that "if we refuse to overvalue
.
him as a symbol, we may be less inclined to overvalue the novel . ."(Inge, 382).
Similarly Robert Keith Miller (1983) discounts the notion that Huckleberry Finn is "a
novel of education" and believes that Twain never intended us to perceive Huck and
Jim as "a community of saints" and that they are "attractive but imperfect" (Miller:
100).

Jim too has been presented as a larger-than-life figure. Roger Salomon relates both
Huck and JimWto the demigods of the river, to the barbarous primitives of the Negro",
..James Cox is almost as eloquent. Describing him as "the conscience of the
~ovel,"Cox calls him the "great residue of primitive, fertile force" (Inge: 153).

On the other hand Ellison objected to the characterization of Jim because Twain fitted
him into the stereotype mask of a minstrel show darky and "it is from behind this
stereotype mask that we see Jim's dignity and human capacity--and Twain's
complexity--emergew(Norton: 42 1-22).

Daniel G. HofEmn argues that though Jim begins in the minstrel stereotype of a
comic negro, Twain tries to make him come out of it "to stand before us in the dignity
of his o m manhood" (Norton: 435).

15.6 LET US SUM UP

We have come to the end of our journey of exploration.

Hucklebeny Finn is a fascinating text to read and study. Far from being a classroom
fossil that some classics come to be, it is alive, perhaps more alive than earlier. It is
alive because it tries to deal with the contentious issues of racism and freedom and
slavery. It is to this 'contestatory' quality of the book that Toni Momson draws
attention to in her brief but compelling discussion of it in the second of her William
E. Massey lectures delivered in 1990 (published as Playing in the Dark, Picador,
1993). The incorporation of this combative critique of slavery would, she believe,
make Huckleberry Finn "another, fuller book."

Hucklebeny Finn is a veritable kaleidoscope. It is extremely funny and its humour

has not faded. When it makes satiric comments it does so with ironic naivete and
does not pretend to judge. This non-judgemental quality is [Link] among many
of the enduring charms of the novel. It has a kind word even for the two rascals, the
king and the duke, who do Huck and Jim most ham. What is even more fascinating
is the troubled togetherness of Huck and Jim on the raft, each one incomplete without
the other, each one needing the other to be truly free, and human and whole.'
 Humour and ather
issues
15.7 GLOSSARY

New Criticism: The name of a 'movement' in literary criticism which

developed in 1920s. The New Critics advocated close
reading and detailed textual analysis and tended to disregard
the mind and personality of the writer.

minstrel show: a stage entertainment popular in America in the 19th century

in which an actor impersonating as a negro burlesqued his
character.

-
15.8 ASSIGNMENT

- 1. Discuss the use of humour as a tool of attack in Huckleberry Finn

2. List the points that you would use to argue that Huckleberry Finn

(i) is a racist book,

(ii) is not a racist book
What are your personal feelings about the issue?
In what way does your being an Indian affect your response to the book?

3. Can you relate Huckleberry Finn to any other novellplay you have read in
your M.A. course or otherwise? Do you see any points of
similarities/differences between this novel and Synge's Playboy of the
Western World?

4. Attempt a character sketch of Jim and Huck.

5. To what extent would you regard Huckleberry Fin3 as an extended attack on

the institution of slavery?

15.9 FURTHER READING

Clemens, Samuel Langhorne. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Ed. Sculley

Bradley, Richmond Croom Beatty, E. Hudson Long and Thomas Cooley. Second ed.
rn
New York: Norton, 1977.
Contains besides the complete text with usefbl footnotes the following sections:
Backgrounds and Sources and Criticism. Essays in the latter section are arranged
under the following sub-heads: Early Views, Form and Symbol: The River and The
I Shore, The Problem of the Ending and Huck, Jim and Tom. The essays include
those by Thomas Sergeant Perry, Brander Matthews, Van Wyck Brooks, Bernard De
Voto, Lionel Trilling, T.S. Eliot, Leo Marx, James M. Cox, Roy Harvey Pearce,
Henry Nash Smith, Kenneth S. Lynn, Ralph Ellison, Daniel G. Hofhan, Walter
Blair and Judith Fetterley. There is of course a select bibliography.

Fishkin, Shelley Fisher. Lighting Out for the Territory: Reflections on Mark Twain
and American Culture. New Delhi: OUP, 1997.
Deals, among other things, with the issues of racism particularly in Huckleberry Finn.
A must reading (available in the American Library, New Delhi.)
H ~ c k l e b e r yFinn Heam, Michael Patrick. The Annotated Huckleberry Finn. New York: C'larkson H.
Po#er, 1981. (Available in Amencan Library, New Delhi.)

Hemingway,,Ernest. The Green Hills of Africa 1935. New York: Scribner's, 1963.
Briefly mentions Mark Twain and Huckleberry Finn

Hentoff, Nal. The Day They Came to Arrest the Book. New York: Delacorte Press,
1982.
A novel about censorship set in motion when a school librarian refuses to take
Eiuckleberry Finn out of circulation, defying her pnncipal's order. 'The book is
charged with being racist, sexist and immoral.

Inge, M. Thomas. Huck Finn among tlre Critics: A Cerrtennial Selection 1884-
1984. Washington: USIS, 1384.
Besldes the introduction. contains two essays by way of background, early reviews
by Brander Matthews and Thomas Sergeant Perry and other early responses by
Andrew Lang, Sir Walter Besant, William Dean Howells and H.L. Mencken. The
section on Modem Criticism includes essays by Lionel Trilling, [Link], Leo Man,
Jaines M. Cox, Frank Baldanza, kchard P. Adams, and Janet H. McKay. Adve~itures
oj-HuckleberryFinn on Film is part of the Appendix.
A major attraction of the volume is its annotated checklist of criticism on the novel
from IS84 to 1983. (Available in the American Library, New Delhi.)

Kar, Prafulla C. Afark Twaitt: An Anlltologv of Recent Criticism. Delhi: Pencraft

hternational, 1992.
Contains three essays on Huckleberry Finri. Useful reading.

Kaul, A.N. "Mark Twain: Huckleberry Finn" in History, Sociology and The
American Romance. New Delhi: Manohar, (in association with Indian Institute of
Advanced Study, Shimla), 1990, pp.28-30.
A lucid insightful discussion of the novel fiom the sociological point of view.
Essential reading.

Miller, Robert Keith. "AnAmerican Odyssey: The Adventures of Huckleberry

Firrn ", in Mark Twain. New York: Frederick Ungar Pub Co, 1933.
Contains 3. solnewhat irreverent reading the novel. Useful reading. (Available ir?
Amencan Library, New Delhi,)

Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and tlie Literary Imugi~ratio~i.

William E. Massey Sr. Lectures irr the History of Anierican Civilization, 1990.
London: Picador, 1993, pp.54-57.
Contains a brief discussion on the "implications of the Afiicanist presence" at the
centre of Huckleberry Finn.

Rubin Jr. Louis D. Ed, The Comic Imagination in American Lilerature. New
Jersey: Wutgers Univ. Press, 1973.
Contains four useful chapters: "Introduction: the Great American Joke" (p.3-15);
'Mark Twain: The Height of Humor' (pp.139-147); 'The Minstrel Mode' (p.149-56);
"The Barber' kept on Shaving": The Two Perspectives on .4merican Humour'
(pp.385-405). (Available in American Library, New Delhi.)

Sattelmeyer, Robert and J. Donald Crowley. Eds. 01reHundred years of

Huckleberry Finn. Columbia: Univ. of Missourie Press, 1985.
Contains several useful essays including "Introduction: The Continuing Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn" by John C. Gerber(pp.1-12) and "We Ain't All Trying to Talk
Alike: Varieties of Language in Huckleberry Finrr" by David Sewall (pp.201-15) and
others.
Essential reading (available in American Library, New Delhi).
Smith, Henry Nash. Nark Twain: The kdventulct of Huckleberry Finn.' in The HumQura d
American Novel From James Fennhore Cooper to !Y%UiamFaulkner. New huts
York: Basic Books, 1965, pp.6 1-72.
Discusses the relevance of the book to the present times.

Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Ed. Jane Ogborn.

Cambridge: CUP, 1995.
All references to the text in the Study Material are to this edition. This edition
contains several pages of Resource Notes besides a glossary.
The moral question involved in the kind of 'borrowing' descfibed in Chapter 12
assumes serious dimensions in Death of a Salesman where is is related to the way
Willy has brought up his children.

Brander Matthews, "Mark Twain and the Art of Writing" in Critical Essays on
Mark Twain 1910-1980, ed. Louis J. Budd (Boston, Mass.:G.K. Hall, 1983), p61.
NOTES