Huckleberry Finn: MARK TWAIN
"I hadn't had a bite to eat since yesterday, so Jim he got out some corn-dodgers and buttermilk, and pork and cabbage and greens—there ain't nothing in the world so good when it's cooked right—and whilst I eat my supper we talked and had a good time. . . .We said there warn't no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft."
At this point, Huck has just escaped from the Grangerford-Shepherdson feud and is thoroughly sickened by society. Compared to the outrageous incidents onshore, the raft represents a retreat from the outside world, the site of simple pleasures and good companionship. Even the simple food Jim offers Huck is delicious in this atmosphere of freedom and comfort.
"Tom told me what his plan was, and I see in a minute it was worth fifteen of mine for style, and would make Jim just as free a man as mine would, and maybe get us all killed besides. So I was satisfied, and said we would waltz in on it."
Huck is once again swayed by his friend Tom. Although in practical terms it would be quite simple to break Jim out of the shed, Tom insists on a more complicated plan with "style." Huck, in many ways, reverts to the status of Tom's follower that he occupied at the beginning of the novel. Nonetheless, Huck maintains his characteristic realistic outlook on the world, and his prediction that Tom's plan could get them killed is more accurate than he knows.
"But I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before."
These lines are the last in the novel. By the final chapter, most everything has been resolved: Jim is free, Tom is on his way to recovering from a bullet wound, and Aunt Sally has offered to adopt Huck. The "territories," the relatively unsettled western United States, will offer Huck an opportunity to be himself, in a world not yet "sivilized" and thus brimming with promise. Weary of his old life, Huck contemplates ways to continue living with the same freedom he felt on the raft.
Huckleberry Finn
(*Mark Twain*) First time American vernacular is used as dialect in a book. Mock-epic tale of American Democracy. Intended to be sequel to Tom Sawyer. Plot is more connected set of adventures. Main Character= Huck, whose worst experience is having drunken father return. Runs away, faking his own death, & goes to Jackson's Island, meets Jim, a runaway slave. Together, they go down a series of adventures on the Mississippi River. For Huck and Jim, the Mississippi River is the ultimate symbol of freedom. Twain demonstrates how racism distorts the oppressors as much as it does those who are oppressed. The result is a world of moral confusion, in which seemingly "good" white people such as Miss Watson and Sally Phelps express no concern about the injustice of slavery or the cruelty of separating Jim from his family.
"The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn't stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back."
In these lines, which appear on the first page of the novel, Huck discusses events that have occurred since the end of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the novel in which he made his first appearance. Here, Huck establishes his opposition to "sivilizing," which seems natural for a 13-year-old boy rebelling against his parents and other authorities. Huck goes on to associate civilization and respectability with a childish game—Tom's band of robbers, in which the participants are to pretend to be criminals.
"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."
These lines from Chapter 31 describe the moral climax of the novel. The duke and the dauphin have sold Jim, who is being held in the Phelpses' shed pending his return to his rightful owner. Huck composes a letter to Miss Watson, telling her where Jim is. When Huck thinks of his friendship with Jim, however, and realizes that Jim will be sold down the river anyway, he decides to tear up the letter. The logical consequences of Huck's action, rather than the lessons society has taught him, drive Huck. He decides that going to "hell," if it means following his gut and not society's hypocritical and cruel principles, is a better option than going to everyone else's heaven. *This represents Huck's true break with the world around him,* & Huck realizes that he does not want to reenter the "sivilized" world.
Mark Twain
Who wrote Huckleberry Finn?
