Huckleberry Finn, pt II

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Huckleberry Finn, pt II

• 5 April 2005
• EN3231, Week 12

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Todays agenda

• Review elements of novel (mainly middle)
• Discuss questions from end of last class
• Significance of MT RPW poem and Twains
  cosmology
• break
• Reception of the novel (then and now)

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Huckleberry Finn major segments

• Huck at home, Huck with Pap
• H runs away with Jim resourcefulness
• Thieves, feuds, huckstersSociety
• Feuding aristocrats
• Murder of Boggs amid carnival
• King and duke theatrics (stage and religion)
• Peter Wilks funeral
• Return to Phelps Farm
• Return of Tom Sawyer problem of Jim

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Group work

• Please be ready to discuss these questions
• 1. There is a great deal of role-playing and
  identity shifting in Huckleberry Finn, and in
  Chapter 17 Huck, calling himself George
  Jackson, pretends to be someone he is not. In
  this chapter he also criticizes various kinds of
  literature and quotes one poem at length. Write
  an essay in which you explain how Twain uses the
  narrative situation to satirize 19th-Century
  sentimentality.
• 2. Chapter 18 begins with a this sentence Col.
  Grangerford was a gentleman, you see. Is this
  Mark Twains view, our (probable) view, or just
  Hucks? Write an essay in which you explain what
  Twain is doing when he has Huckleberry Finn
  describe Col. Grangerford and narrate the feud
  with the Shepherdsons
• 3. In Chapter 31 Huck says, on one page, that
  You cant pray a lie, but on the next page he
  says All right then, Ill go to hell. Is there
  a contradiction between these two expressed
  beliefs? With reference to Hucks particular
  crisis in Chapter 31, write an essay in which you
  explain Twains representations of religious
  belief in Huckleberry Finn.
• 4. In Chapter 32 an engine explodes, causing
  Aunt Sally to ask Anybody hurt? Huck answers
  No Mm. Killed a nigger. Consider this exchange
  in context and write an essay in which you
  explain what it reveals about the two characters.

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Twain and Humor Distance

• Robert Penn Warren poem

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Huckleberry Finn reception

• Censorship and reviews
• Concord Library, 1885
• 5th most contested book in US
• Mixed reviews, many positive

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The Athenaeum, 27/12/1884

• With Jim he goes south down the river, and is
  the hero of such scrapes and experiences as make
  your mouth water (if you have ever been a boy) to
  read of them.
• Approves, reads in key of adventure
• Mark Twain at his best

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Hartford Courant, 1885

• They do not have the air of being invented, but
  of being found. And the dialects of the people,
  white and black--what a study are they and yet
  nobody talks for the sake of exhibiting a
  dialect. It is not necessary to believe the
  surprising adventures that Huck engages in, but
  no one will have a moment's doubt of the reality
  of the country and the people he meets.
• Dialect as marker of realism distinction between
  romance and realism within same book.

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Atlanta Constitution, 1885

• Now, nothing could be more misleading than such
  a criticism as this. It is difficult to believe
  that the critics who have condemned the book as
  coarse, vulgar and inartistic can have read it.
• Defends book against criticism censorship
  evidence of controversy

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Boston Evening Traveler, 1885

• It is little wonder that Mr. Samuel Clemens,
  otherwise Mark Twain, resorted to real or mock
  lawsuits, as may be, to restrain some real or
  imaginary selling of "The Adventures of
  Huckleberry Finn" as a means of advertising that
  extraordinarily senseless publication.
• CF Twains defensive tone in front pieces
• Hostile review refers to Concord decision.

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Contemporary Controversy

• The N word Jane Smiley in Harpers Magazine
  (January 1996)
• "to invest The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
  with 'greatness' is to underwrite a very
  simplistic and evasive theory of what racism is."
  
• Representations of Jim
• Elevation of the book to THE classic American
  novel
• Famous Hemingway comment from Green Hills of
  Africa, 1935
• Colloquial speech, adventure, realism

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Representations of Jim

• Various illustrations
• Authorial intention vs. reception and
  interpretation
• The meaning of Twains book is not solely
  determined by Twains words
• STILLhow do we understand Twains representation
  of Jim?

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Narrative and Representation

• Huck tells the story Twain creates Huck the
  representation is contextualized
• Ellison criticized the critics of the novel "one
  also has to look at the teller of the tale, and
  realize that you are getting a black man, an
  adult, seen through the condescending eyes --
  partially -- of a young white boy.
• Hucks naivete is not Twains

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Socratic Irony

• H.F. is a classic naïve hero.
• The philosopher Socrates usually dissembles by
  assuming a pose of ignorance, an eagerness to be
  instructed, and a modest readiness to entertain
  opinions proposed by others although these, upon
  his continued questioning, always turn out to be
  ill-grounded or to lead to absurd consequences
  (Abrams, 136).

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Does Twain intend all consequences?

• The N word normalizes racism?
• The case, Monteiro vs. Tempe Union High School
  District, 97-15511, was closed October 19, 1998,
  when the judges handed down their opinion. That
  ended a long battle to have Huckleberry Finn and
  "A Rose for Emily," a short story by William
  Faulkner, removed from the reading list at
  McClintock High School in Tempe, Arizona.
• African American responses satire or evasion?
  Growing body of criticism.
• The Phelps Farm chapters in relation to
  white/liberal complacency Arac and Smiley

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How to distinguish Mark, Huck, and Tom from each
other

• Tom Sawyer, who has a fortune of 6,000 or more,
  pays Jim 40 in recompense for his humiliation
• Mark Twain, 1885 We have ground the manhood out
  of them. The shame is ours, not theirs, and we
  should pay for it.
• Individual vs collective responsibility forty
  acres and a mule