Many lessons to be learned from Huck Finn

Intro (1 page)

Although this book is regarded as “one of the central documents of American culture” and is one of the greatest anti-racist novels in american history, because of the era it is set in, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has become a book of great controversy (Trilling). The late 1800’s were a period of racial tension in the United States, and Huck Finn was one of the first literary critiques of how embedded racism is in our culture. The use of Mississippi dialects, picaresque short stories, and complex characters, make Huck Finn a book that experts still argue over.

Racist? No! (3 pages)

• Huck’s relationship with Jim evolves from slave, to acquaintance, to father figure:
• “for in Jim he finds his true father” - Trilling,
• “what he considers the clear dictates of moral reason are not merely the engrained customary beliefs of his time and place.” - Trilling
• Huck and Jim become a pair, with Huck referring to Jim’s freedom as “our” job and “we” must continue on and they’re after “us”
• “There ain’t a minute to lose. They’re after us!” - Huck Finn.
• “His unpremeditated identification with Jim’s flight from slavery is an unforgettable moment in American experience” - Marx.
• “After all this long journey...here was it all come to nothing, everything all busted up and ruined, because they could have the heart to serve Jim such a trick as that, and make him a slave again all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty dollars. (200-01) - Huck Finn.
• Huck as a character transforms within, going from wanting to turn Jim in and thinking that is the right and moral thing to do, to “going to hell” to help a “nigger” escape
• “He has a great sense of sadness of human life” - Trilling
• Language used is simply from the era: the warning by Twain at the beginning of the novel

Taught in schools? Yes! (3 pages)

There are a significant amount of lessons to be learned from Huck Finn. The style, history of racism, and society’s bondage are all morals that can be taught.

• Literary style: going from the river to ashore
• Historical depiction of slavery
• Society’s structure and rules
• “his escape from society is but his way of reaching what society ideally dreams of for itself,” - Trilling,
• “He belongs neither to the Sunday School nor the Reformatory” - Eliot
• Points out what was coevally wrong with America
• “Twain couldn’t solve the problem that America couldn’t solve” - David Bradley in terms of what do with the institution of slavery, it’s wrong but how do we deal with changing it?
• The ending makes Huck return to society (Tom) and fall back into his old habits. On the river he was a changed boy, with Jim, but once back at a white supremacist farm with Tom, he falls back into society’s mold
• “the conscience of a southern boy in the middle of the last century” - Trilling