The setting is in California. This was largely unsettled and everyone
was settling for the gold rush.
The guy wins the contest by stuffing the frog with quail pellets so
it can't jump. This story was the first of Twain's trickster figures. Other
tricksters in the stories especially Tom and Huck. It is good for the roll
of a kid because they like to play pranks. Lying is their way of outsmarting
the over bearing beasts we call parents and teachers. Other pranksters
Elmer fud and bugs bunny
Huck & his readers are separated by a great divide, the
Civil War. One thing that Huck cannot know and that we can't forget is
that looming out in front of him is this great conflict. He is dealing
with the same issue that the country will in 10-15 years -- slavery. Huck's
stance with slavery is a major theme in this book, also intertwined is
the stuggle of Huck toward maturity to manhood. It will be defined as his
reaction to this institution as it impacts Jim. Here Twain picks out a
theme that comes out over and over in his writing issue is what we will
about slavery and these heroes do the same thing, abolish slavery. Huck
frees this one slave. Lincoln is in the back of Twain's mind during the
book. The reason is Lincoln worked on a flat boat to take goods to port
down south. Along the way he saw slavery up close and saw it was
wrong.
Huck comes to his maturity with out truly cluing in. He lived in a society
that was against abolitionist. He thinks he is wrong about freeing Jim
but Jim is his friend so he will do it anyway. Twain is condemning the
south not Huck. If Huck were more respectable he would have been able to
turn in Jim.
This gets into whether Huck is a reliable or unreliable narrarator.
He is writing from a limited perspective he is a kid. We are able to see
he is doing the right thing, even though he doesn't think he is doing the
right thing.
Huck's growth toward maturity.
According to Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces,
heroes in myth and fiction typically go through a three-stage process in
their growth toward maturity -- separation, initiation,
return. He describes the process this way:
A hero ventures forth from the world
of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are
there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from
this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow
man. (Campbell 30)
The plot of Huck Finn is rather loose at times; nevertheless, it
is unified by this theme of separation initiation and return.
We can see Huck go through this process
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Separated from his community.
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growth experience and initiation
-
return.
Introduction: life in the community
In order to become a man you have to leave your community. We see
Huck going around St. Petersburg, MO, being treated like and acting like
a boy. He goes to school & church and gets into mischief with
the other boys, who form a gang led by Tom Sawyer.
Chapter 3
We played robber now and then about a month,
and then I resigned. All the boys did. We hadn't robbed nobody, we hadn't
killed any people, but only just pretended.
Well Tom found out there was going to be a
whole parcel of Spanish merchants and rich A-rabs was going to camp in
Cave Hollow with two hundred elephants, and six hundred camels, and over
a thousand "sumter" mules, all loaded down with di'monds.
It was really a Sunday school picnic. They
busted it up and Huck says oh well they have been enchanted to look like
a Sunday school picnic but they are really A-rabs.
We busted it up, and chased the children up
the hollow; but never got anything but some doughnuts and jam.
Then the teacher charged in and made them drop
everything, busting up the gang.
Tom and Huck are together, and they are both boys at this stage.
I. Separation
Huck gets separated from the community; his dad kidnaps him. His dad wants
the money and it is also jealous and resentful. His dad is thinking that
Huck should not be better than him. So his dad locks up Huck. After Huck
gets out. Huck and Jim run away. In order to become independent you have
to leave. Huck goes down the river; we see his growth develop in stages.
II. Initiation
The Mississippi River is where Huck grows up. He is on his own &
must grow up fast to take care of himself & Jim. Along with other
stuff in the novel, there is an over all progress of Huck's character.
A. Lost in the Fog
The first moment of his growth occurs in chapter 15. Their plan all along
is to hang a left at Cairo, Illinois. But they keep going south because
of the fog. The fog is a symbol of Huck's moral lapse here. They get separated
in the fog, Jim is on the raft and Huck is in the canoe. After awhile it
clears up. He decides to go down stream to try and catch up with it. It
was a monstrous big river and he looked down stream and saw a black speck
here and a black speck there and it was the raft.
"Jim was setting there with his head
down between his knees, asleep, with his right arm hanging over the steering
oar. The other oar was smashed off, and the raft was littered up with leaves
and branches and dirt."
So she'd had a rough time.
This is Huck's first great breakthrough -- understanding actions
have consequences. This is a breakthrough that does not automatically
come with age. Many Tech students seem totally surprised when they
get in a wreck when they are drunk & speeding. They can't believe
it could happen to them.
B. The Note
Huck goes through another crisis in chapter 31. This is the crisis that
centers around a note. He feels ashamed about what he is doing for
Jim because Jim is property and he has been taught all his life slaves
are property and you have to return them to their master. Would feel ashamed
if he saw anyone in town again, which is why growth takes place away from
the community.
He is thinking what kind of person does that make me for steeling Miss
Watson's slave. His conscience is kicking in. The conscience awakened
by Jim now threatens to turrn against him. It is very dangerous for Jim
at this point.
He starts worrying about his salvation, his wickedness. The thing he
must do to save his soul is to turn in Jim. So he writes the note.
I felt good and all washed clean of
sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could
pray now.
Do we think this is the right thing for Huck
to do? No it is not. His religion has been tainted by the system of slavery.
I laid the paper down and set there thinking--thinking
how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost
and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip
down the river; and I see Jim before me, all the time, in the day, and
in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, and somethimes storms, and we a
floating along, talking, and singing, and laughing. But somehow I couldn't
seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind.
I'd see hem standing my watch on top of his'n, stead of calling me, so
I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out
of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the
feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet
me, and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always
was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had
small-pox aboard, and, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best
friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he's got now; and
then I happened to look around, and see that paper.
It was a close place. I took it up, and held
it in my hand. I was trembling, a minute, sort of holing my breath, and
then says to myself:
"All right, then, I'll go to hell"--and
tore it up.
He chooses his own friend's life over his. Are we to think this damns him?
Huck is willing to give up his life for his friend Jim. This is the moment
of full maturity. At this point he is a man. What he sees as his
destruction, we see as his salvation. We look at the note differently
than Huck does because he is a child of his time & we of ours.
This is the difference the Civil War has made in our perspective -- now
everyone believes that slavery is wrong.
Huck is a rascal who risks his life to save another & thus shows
himself to be more noble than the "good" people who ignore the problem
of slavery. Oscar Schindler (Schindler's List) was a real-life
example of a rascal who uses his wits & cunning to save others &
thereby becomes a hero.
III. Return
Chapter 33
Since Huck is unable to get back up the river to return to the community
of St. Petersburg, MO, Twain brings Missouri to Louisiana in the form of
Tom Sawyer. This is Huck's return, as if from the dead. Tom shows
up & thinks he's a ghost. Tom is still a boy, Huck is a man. Huck says
lets free Jim. Tom knows Jim is already free. They make this elaberate
plan that gets Tom shot. This trick of Tom showes how much Huck has matured
and Tom stays a boy.
Ch 21
Boggs comes to town once a month to get drunk.
All the loafers looked glad--I reckoned
they was used to having fun out of Boggs. One of them says--
"Wonder who he's a gwyne to chaw up this time.
If he'd a chawed up all the men he's ben a gwyne to chaw up in the last
twenty year, he'd have considerable ruputation, now."
He is always coming into town threatening people. He is like a side show.
Boggs comes a tearing along on his
horse, whooping and yelling like an Injun, and singing out--
"Cler the track, thar. I'm on the war-path,
and the price uv coffins is a gwyne to raise."
He decides to go after Colonel Sheburn, the richest
man in town. This is not someone you'd want to make angry. Boggs insults
his honor.
"Come out here, Sherburn! Come out
and meet the man you've swindled. You're the houn' I'm after, and I'm a
gwyne to have you, too!"
By-and-by a proud-looking man about fifty-five--and
he was aheap the best dressed man in that town, too--steps out of the store,
and the crowd drops back on each side to let him come. He says to Boggs,
mighty ca'm and slow--he says:
"I'm tired of this; but I'll endure it till
one o'clock, mind--no longer. If you open your mouth against me only once,
after that time, you can't travel so far but I will find you."
Then he turns and goes in. The crowd looked
mighty sober; nobody stirred, and there warn't no more laughing.
Boggs made the mistake of being in town at one o'clock.
"Boggs!"
I looked over there to see who said it, and
it was that Colonel Sherburn, He was standing perfectly still, in the street,
and had a pistol raised in his right hand--not aiming it, but holding it
out with the barrel tilted up towards the sky. Boggs throws up both of
his hands, and says, "O Lord, don't shoot!" Bang! goes the first shot and
he staggers back clawing at the air--bang! goes the second one, and he
tumbles backwards onto the ground, heavy and solid, with his arms spread
out.
How does the crowd react to this little shoot out? We are going to lynch
him. They crowd around Sherburn's house.
Just then Sherburn steps out on to
the roof of his little front porch, with a double-barrel gun in his hand,
and takes his stand, perfectly ca'm and deliberate, not saying a word.
The racket stopped, and the wave sucked back.
Here he is standing higher than them with a gun, which sobers them up a
bit.
He never said a word--just stood there,
looking down. The stillness was awful creepy and uncomfortable. Sherburn
run his eye slow along the crowd; and wherenver it struck, the people tried
a little to outgaze him, but they couldn't; they dropped their eyes and
looked sneaky, Then pretty soon Sherburn sort of laughed; not the pleasant
kind, but the kind that makes you feel like when you are eating bread that's
got sand in it.
Then he says, slow and scornful:
"The idea of you lynching anybody! It's
amusing. The idea of you thinking you had pluck enough to lynch a man!
Because you're brave enough to tar and feather poor friendless cast-out
women that come along here, did that make you think you gad grit enough
to lay your hands on a man? Why, a man's safe in the hands
of ten thousand of your kind--as long as it's day-time and you're not behind
him.
Southern way is to sneak up somebody. In the
North you pray for humility in the south you talk about bravery, but you
just as brave and no braver.
"So they always acquit; and then a man goes
in the night, with a hundred masked cowards at his back, and lynches the
rascal. Your mistake is, that you didn't bring a man with you; that's the
one mistake, and the other is that you dedn't come in the dark, and fetch
your masks."
This reminds us of the KKK. This is a coward's way to deal with it.
"You didn't want to come. The average
man don't like trouble and danger. You don't like trouble and danger.
But if only half a man--like Buck Harkness, there--shouts 'lynch him, lynch
him!' you're afraid to back down--afraid you'll be found out to be what
you are--cowards."
They didn't bring a man, only half a man.
"If any real lynching's going to be
done, it will be done in the dark, Southern fashion; and when they come
they'll bring their masks, and fetch a man along. Now leave--and
take your half-a-manwith you"--tossing his gun up across his left arm and
cocking it, when he says this.
The crowd washed back sudden, and then broke
all apart and went tearing off every which way, and Buck Harkness he heeled
it after them, looking tolerable cheap. I could a staid, if I'd a wanted,
but I didn't want to.
Huck didn't want to stay because he didn't want to die.
What's the significance of the need to bring a man
along? Had Sherburn actually been brought to trial, he could have
pled the "true man doctrine."
In the South of the time, being an adult male didn't make you a man--that's
why adult black men were addressed as 'boy'--it was a demeaning term used
to show that they hadn't "earned" the status of being called a man.
But being an adult white male wasn't enough to make you a man either.
You had to prove your manhood. When Boggs insulted Sheburn's honor,
he called into question whether Sheburn was a real man. For Sheburn
to fail to act would cost him his status in the community; a true man couldn't
let such an insult slip by unaddressed. Sheburn proved his manhood
in taking out Boggs and in facing down the crowd. These are the types
of scenes we associate with Westerns, but this code wasn't limited to the
west.