The Greatest Story Ever Told Part 2

"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."

One of the best things about Huck Finn is that here we have Twain at his satirical best. Americans love satire, probably more than most other countries (England may have the edge, but it is a close race) and our sense of satire begins with Mark Twain. In the quote above (the prelude to the book) we get a sense of Twain's humor but it doesn't stop there. Most people are familiar with at least one Twain quote, but it is in Huck Finn that Twain uses humor to scold without getting too cynical about humanity.

I think a lot of my views about the world stem from this period in Twain's writing. It is optimistic about life, but generally cynical about humanity. Twain becomes darker and more bitter as time went on, but here Twain, through Huck, loves life and takes pleasure from it while sharing a negative view of humanity as a whole.

There were plenty of reasons for this as well. During this period in American history, Twain saw America divided over the civil war, slavery at its worst, emancipation, and the rise of the KKK and lynching. He saw the expansion west and the total annihlation of the south. Later during the Gilded Age, he became even more critical of the stripping away and homogenization of local cultures, and our obsession with materialism.

In Huck Finn, Twain makes appearances and speaks directly to the audience through Huck and other characters breaking down the wall to speak to us directly. In one of the most direct scenes, Twain, through the character Sherburn launches into a diatribe about mob violence and lynching in general. He calls a mob pitiful:

"The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that's what an army is--a mob; they don't fight with courage that's born in them, but with courage that's borrowed from their mass, and from their officers. But a mob without any MAN at the head of it is BENEATH pitifulness"

"Your newspapers call you a brave people so much that you think you are braver than any other people - whereas you're just as brave, and no braver. Why don't your juries hang murderers? Because they're afraid the man's friends will shoot them in the back, in the dark -- and it's just what they WOULD do."

As Huck shares his adventures with the King and the Duke, a couple of con men, he sees other terrible things about society. They con people out of money through religion, drama, and by pretending to be someone they're not to get an inheritance. Both the King and the Duke are evil people and will stoop at nothing to get ahead. They both however keep getting one-upped by others who are just as corrupt.

Chapter 31 is perhaps the greatest chapter and the most damning of society in general. In it, Jim has just been sold by th King and the Duke back into slavery and Huck doesn't know what to do. He panics and realizes that God is punishing him for helping free Jim. He realizes then that God is always watching and would get him in the end. As a reader who has followed Huck through all of his adventures it is heartbreaking to see a boy feel wicked for doing something we know to be right. He tries to pray and ask forgiveness, but he can't because "you can't pray a lie." So, he then writes a letter to Jim's owner Miss Watson and tells her that she can pick up her slave. But then, as soon as he was finished he begins to think about Jim and how they were friends.

"It was a close place. I took . . . up [the letter I’d written to Miss Watson], and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: “All right then, I’ll go to hell”—and tore it up. It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming."

His decision to go to hell for helping out a friend and a father figure is Twain at his most critical in this book. I think he is reaching out to everyone in the south and holding a mirror up to them and saying "do you see what you have done? Do you see how rotten you are to make a boy feel this way?"

It gets even worse when Huck runs into Tom Sawyers aunt later and explains he was late because the engine blew in a boat "Good Gracious, anybody hurt?" Huck responds by saying "No'm killed a nigger" She says, "good because sometimes people do get hurt"

In the end, Huck realizes that whatever it means to be "Sivilized" in this society wasn't for him. He decides to go his own road to makes his own rules about his life without having to follow rules that are both hypocritical and wrong.

If you've never read Huck, do it sooner rather than later. I think you are missing one of the greatest books of all time. You won't be disappointed in the least.

Currently reading: Sophomore research papers
Currently listening to: R.E.M. on Austin City Limits