Toni Morrison speaks of Huck's morbidity, his preoccupation with death and dying, his longing to escape the constrictions of "sivilized" life with the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson. Chapter I ends as Huck slips out the window, in response to Tom Sawyer's call to adventure.
The call of the wild. The wildness of nature that Thoreau and Emerson wrote about. Twain takes up this American theme, and adds a new twist -- nature that is in motion, the flow of water that is life on the raft, or "present-tense living," as one of my students described it. Huck and Jim take what they need and live in a low impact, sustainable way. Ironically, whenever Huck is on land he is in disguise, taking on different identities. Only on the raft does he feel genuine.
Huck feels trusting and authentic because of Jim, who is presented in contrast to his drunken abusive Pap. Both Huck and Jim understand one of the simpler issues of this novel: power. Power on land belongs to white men, who are prone to violence, dominance, ignorance. Twain limns this world in episode after episode of shore life. No wonder Huck and Jim keep hustling back to that raft. They need to keep moving; in hot pursuit are gangs of men seeking to return Jim to his rightful owners, and return Huck to "sivilized" life.
Is this satire, humor, moralism? Just realism. A long narrative and somewhat tedious tale of life on the Mississippi after Reconstruction. Not an egalitarian portrait, despite all kinds of founding American egalitarian documents and proclamations.
Referring to Jim and other black slaves, Twain uses the N-word 219 times. The 2011 NewSouth edition, edited by Auburn University Twain scholar Dr. Alan Gribben substitutes the word "slave" for the N-word. This new version has incited much commentary. Certainly it is a violation of authorial intent.
In a "Note on the [N-Word]," Harvard Law Professor Randall Kennedy states, "Langston Hughes remarked that '[this] word to colored people is like a red rag to a bull. Used rightly or wrongly, ironically or seriously, of necessity for the sake of realism, or impishly for the sake of comedy, it doesn’t matter. [They] do not like it in any book or play whatsoever, be the book or play ever so sympathetic in its treatment of the basic problems of the race. Even though the book or play is written by a [person of color], they still do not like it. The [N-word], you see, sums up for us who are colored all the bitter years of insult and struggle in America.
Given the power of this word to wound, it is important to provide a context within which presentation of that term can be properly understood. It is also imperative, however, to permit present and future readers to see for themselves directly the full gamut of American cultural productions, the ugly as well as the beautiful, those that mirror the majestic features of American democracy and those that mirror America’s most depressing failings."
Twain's novel is a challenging read for many reasons.The use of the vernacular is hard for some readers, who are not used to this kind of decoding of dialect. Yet, careful close reading reveals that Twain includes an Author's Note about the use of dialect to convey themes of bias and miscommunication. The humor is not particularly catchy for today's students. The satire of royalty in the long Duke-Dauphin sequence that goes on for more than eleven chapters begins to wear thin, and teachers need to make connections to European history.
Huck's moral awakening and love for Jim are not particularly striking to today's readers, many of whom have had access to cross-cultural friendships. Students often do not understand the point of the novel, which is that Huck Finn begins as a racist in a racist society, and by the end of the novel, he feels empathy and love for Jim, and begins to take action. He rejects a stable life in a racist society that masquerades as "sivilized."
So why read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?
Precisely because it is a novel that encourages important, passionate conversations about "years of insult and struggle...and America's most depressing failings." Toni Morrison's 1996 introduction “This Amazing, Troubling Book” cites Jim as Huck Finn's "consolation," his "father-for-free" in moving him "toward truth" and social activism.
This 1885 novel closes with both Huck and Jim determined to "light out for the Territory." Tired of low status as a marginalized male in his region of birth, each seeks to fulfill the founding fathers' promise of freedom elsewhere. Jim and Huck are searching for a place and a space where they can fully experience the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Too bad we can't still light out, move away, leave when faced with intractable complex problems. The concept of "away" has changed in the connected world of the 21st century.
Instead we must pay attention, through empathy and understanding, and take action to seek solutions to complex issues, instead of ignoring or handing them over to the next generation, generation after generation. Because such avoidance eventually leads to a "sivilization's" collapse, as Joseph Tainter compellingly notes in The Collapse of Complex Societies.
So why read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in a girls' school?
Because this controversial text inspires conversations about hierarchies of power, the uses of power, and the socially constructed nature of race, ethnicity, gender, and culture -- constructs that continue to keep many groups of people at the margins.
And this kind of problem-based learning generates reflective and critical thinking -- and reminds us that we are all floating together on a fragile raft called Earth. And that we need to learn to live in partnership and harmony just like Huck and Jim.
E pluribus unum.
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