Huck Finn: the Ugly and the Beautiful

I teach in an all-girls school in Greenwich CT, so it is interesting to evaluate student responses to Huck Finn, a male-centric novel about a marginalized white boy and a marginalized black runaway slave who form a unique bond as they drift downriver. If a river is a road that flows, Huck Finn  may be the first American road book.

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.

Resistance

Sophocles' Antigone, written in 441 B.C., 2500 years ago, opens in the aftermath of war. Antigone, devoted daughter of Oedipus, of the cursed line of Kadmos, is the defiant heroine lamenting the death of her twin brothers, "two brothers, a double death in a single hour." 
Brothers divided. Eteocles fought for Thebes, and Polyneices fought for Argos against Thebes.

As in all wars, each side felt itself in the right. Both sides exhibited sacrifice, courage, honor.
Acting against the new edict of her uncle King Creon forbidding the burial of the traitorous Polyneices, Antigone takes a handful of dust and symbolically buries him. A gentle burial.

A simple gesture. One of literature’s first acts of civil disobedience.

Antigone is a woman, however, and traditionally the role of a Greek woman is that of mourning.
Not that of resistance to the Law.

In Homer's epic, woman is more docile. Penelope waits patiently for twenty years  for Odysseus' meandering return home to Ithaka. Penelope at her loom, weaving and unweaving.
 
In Wallace Stevens' modern poem The World as Meditation, Ulysses is the interminable adventurer. He exists solely in imagination, yet Penelope waits and weaves, " never forgetting him that kept coming constantly so near." Woman as dutiful wife, ever faithful and serene.

But this is tragedy. This is Sophocles, so we know that the world will cave inevitably, inexorably in.

Antigone is no waiter. No weaver. No wife. She is an activist.  An individual motivated by love, social justice, and moral outrage. A daughter, a sister, and a woman.


Her traits? Uncompromising determination, a sense of her own worth, a quickness to stand by her beliefs, a readiness for self-sacrifice, a sense of duty and personal honor, a refusal to surrender. A quiet grace. A way with words. And an action plan:  that handful of dust.

These are all the makings and qualities of a heroic temper -- the temperament of a fine athlete, actress, artist, debater, doctor, entrepreneur, corporate exec, teacher -- which requires discipline, effort, stamina, tactics, performance, victories of some sort.

Antigone is a warrior who stands up for her values, who resists her uncle's rampant ideology.
In the 20th century Antigone was a powerful symbol of the French resistance against Nazi oppression in WW II (see Brecht and Anouilh's versions).

Why read Antigone? Because she is a leader to emulate, both good to great, and built to last.

In a somber world, against the dark mysteries of human and divine dispensation, natural catastrophe and randomness, Antigone’s courage and steadfastness are a gleam of light.

She represents logos, the power of the word, and  noumenos, the power of mind.  Attunement.

She understands what the people want, and her act of civil disobedience challenges Creon and his belief in the polis.

Antigone, however, believes in human rights. She understands the human dimension, the personal, that “there are honors that are due to all the dead.” 

Why remember Antigone?

Because she reflects the consolation that the carnage and chaos of war can offer. She is a magnificent reminder that it is heroic  to meet the finality of death with a greatness of soul.

A simple act , facing death heroically...which, because it is so purely human, brings honor to us all.

The Alphabet of Grace

Theologian, writer, humanist, Frederick Buechner taught at Exeter, then Harvard, then left for the Vermont hills. The Alphabet of Grace conveys the limits of language in expressing the ineffable. God manifests at odd moments, in peculiar ways, in the details of nature. For Buechner the "clack-clack" of two apple tree branches in the wind is a beginning point, a portal to inwardness.

"The invisible manifests itself in the visible."

In his convincing reflections on grace, Frederick Buechner divides the day into 3 parts: gutturals, sibilants, absence of vowels. Tracking the small half-miracles of everyday life, the glimmerings of grace, Buechner makes reference to the opening of Anna Karenina.

Prince Oblonsky awakens to a new day and the hope of forgiveness, despite the fact that his wife has banished him to the sofa in the study for carrying on with the French governess. "What's to be done?" Oblonsky asks. What are the needs of the day? Tolstoy implies. Prince Oblonsky puts on a grey dressing gown lined with blue silk, ties the tasselled cords round his bare waist, and approaches the window, feet turned out, striding forward confidently.

Buechner's grandmother comments. How French: that focus on the feet. And this is what Buechner finds most interesting about the Tolstoy passage. Those feet.
Yes, those feet. Writers imply. Readers infer. And both Tolstoy and Buechner suggest that our feet are what keep us grounded and moving forward.
"What's to be done?" frets Oblonsky at the window.

What is to be done...? What are the needs of the day? Meet them fully, Tolstoy implies. Walk confidently in the direction of your dreams, Thoreau says. Forget yourself by moving forward into the drift of everyday life.

"What is the hope that there is?" Buechner posits. Look for it, he implies. Walk towards that hope; walk in the hope.... with faith to "live this day out as if it were the first day of my life.Take any day and be alive in it." He suggests that It is the first day because it has never been before, and the last day because it will never be again.

We meet the needs of the day by following our feet.

"Where your feet take you today is who you are," Buechner exhorts. "Guide thou my feet."

This is the holiness of every day life. The sanctity. Every day is all there is.

Take little steps. One at a time.

The Readiness is All

"The readiness is all" Hamlet, 5.2.218

Such a powerful statement. Good teaching is all about preparation. About cultivating habits of mind, a sense of attunement, "intelligence in the wild." Harvard Project Zero's David Perkins speaks of the need to give students practice in navigating the murky darkness of complex problems.

Yes, such problems are heading our way. Megacities. Water, food, and energy shortages. Collapsing empires, vast migrations, homeless refugees. Microbes. Toxic oceans. Problems we can not even imagine.

This is why I love being a teacher in the 21st century.

I am a steward of the next generation. And I am training students, teaching them the thinking dispositions, the habits of mind, so that they will be ready to face the murky unknown. With courage and compassion, confidence and conviction. With commitment.

Yes, "the readiness is all."

Paying Attention

"He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must be finally paid to such a person."

That's Linda Loman, speaking about her husband, in Act One of "Death of a Salesman," Arthur Miller's tragedy of the common man, the story of Willy Loman, a man who is exhausted making ends meet as a travelling salesman, always on the go. He's got a secret life, too. Like many patriarchs, invested in competitive one-upmanship, there is The (other) Woman. Willy's son Biff discovers his father's deception, and is forever burdened by this truth.

Even though Willy Low-man prefers digging in the soil, planting seeds and nurturing them, and hates the dismal orange light of his city, he believes that being liked is important. Willy believes that in his America, with hard work, dreams will come true. He believes that coming out the "number-one man" against the competition is an important goal.

If you're selling stuff, perhaps that matters. And selling stuff in a manufacturing society used to be a fine career.

But Miller asks us to take a closer look. In the final Requiem scene, Linda, always the mediator, is bereft at Willy's suicide. It's a 1949 play, and clearly Miller is presenting Willy's existential solution: suicide as an act of free will.

Biff, however, laments the fact that there are no mourners. His father's dream of being well-liked never materialized. Biff states: "He had the wrong dreams. All, all wrong."

Biff, the next generation, has had enough of cities and his family's dreams. Willy's dreams are false, impossible dreams because Willy is the common man, the mediocre man. A man who dies without dignity. Willy is a tragic figure because his ordinariness precludes dignity.

Biff wants out. He knows he's mediocre. He seeks to find a genuine life, an authentic self somewhere else, away from home.

Like Huck Finn, who resists being "sivilized" according to Aunt Sally's and Miss Watson's norms, Biff rejects his father's dream. Like Huck, the quintessential American puer eternus, Biff chooses to Light out for the territory, back to the land and a slower pace, a place where he can find and know who he is.

This play still resonates. My students sense Willy's deep unhappiness, his false self. They see him as bi-polar, dysfunctional. They throw all kinds of DSM-IV diagnoses at Willy Low-man.

They don't yet understand how difficult it is to provide for a family, how expensive it is to move, how terribly stressful it is to have no money, to have few options in this "land of opportunity."

There are strong parallels to families who are currently struggling economically.

However, even in a country that tends to corral everyone into college, higher education, and preparation for life as a knowledge worker, there are other options.

We still need people who can invent and fix things, who can work with their hands and hearts. (See the NY Times piece, 5.21.09, "The Case for Working with Your Hands http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24labor-t.html?em) And we must pay attention to finding work for ourselves that is in alignment with who we are.


Paying attention asks us to be authentic, to listen to the tiny voice within, our nature, our gut, intuition, whatever we call it. And this, Miller suggests, is the path to freedom and the pursuit of happiness.

(Miller died at the age of 83. He famously said: "If I'd known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.")

Meant to Be

We have been reading Sophocles. First Antigone, which is the more interesting play, in that it gives voice to the idea of resistance to civil law. Civil disobedience in 442-441 BCE. Why? The gods were out of favor; the plebs was questioning the established values of oracle/fate/prophecy, and intriguing new ideas came into play: individualism, personal choice, and an unpredictable factor -- chance, or randomness. Antigone resists her uncle Creon's decree; she honors her family; she insists on burying Polyneices, and defies civic law. That Sophocles assigns resistance to a woman is quite interesting.

Her mother Iocaste also represents a "new" idea. She scoffs at the power of fate, and asks her husband/son Oedipus in Oedipus Rex to abandon his reckless course of action in determining the the cause of the pollution in Thebes. Of course Oedipus himself is the cause of the plague. He is the murderer of his father Laius.

Now the idea of fate has great appeal still....There are those who like to sum up life's twists and turns with this pat phrase: "it was meant to be." But what exactly do we mean by this phrase? Two recent books by Nassim Nicholas Taleb suggest that the world is more random than we like to recognize, and that we tend to attribute causality, where perhaps there is none. It is comforting to attribute rationale to the random. In fact, Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan suggest that our reliance on statistical data and diagnostics is unfounded.

So how could Oedipus have defied his "fate"? How might he have proved the oracle wrong?

By exercising mindful choice. By choosing restraint over impulse. By not killing anyone who might possibly have been his father. By not sleeping with older women. By accepting advisement in the form of Teiresias, Iocaste, the Shepherd, the Choragos.

His fate was only "meant to be" because his interpretation of information was shoddy. And because his hubris isolated him from attunement.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow

Today we pulled out Macbeth's seven soliloquies to examine the arc of his character, the trajectory of his fall from grace. In Act 1.2, he has it all: valiant warrior, distinguished thane, a new title.

Then he meets the witches, the weird sisters. He misreads their cues. He might have listened and walked on. But like the investment bankers, CEOs, and regulators, his interpretive skills are skewed. He wrestles with subtext. He mistakes sorcery for reliable sources. He is as good (and evil) as his advisors.

Macbeth heard only what he wanted to hear. Bewitched, he listened to whispers that fed his "vaulting ambition" and killed goodness everywhere. Regicide, parricide, war with foreign invaders. Noble soldier, weird brother that he is, Macbeth trammels or slays the entire next generation. A failure of the imagination. Childless, he cannot be a steward.

By Act 4, he mourns "that which should accompany old age/As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,/ I must not look to have; but in their stead/Curses"... Greek tragedy speaks of the moment of recognition, or anagnoresis.

Too little, too late.

The parallels are easy. Timing is everything, for traders and kings. The moments pass. "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player/... It is a tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury/Signifying nothing."

Policymakers have recently announced the death of the humanities. They cry out for scientists, mathematicians, engineers. Too bad the number-crunchers, MBA's, and quant specialists, oriented toward pragmatism and utility, do not read more literature, or remember it.

Every high school student has read this play.

Humanists matter. It is time to remember to remember.