The Sound, the Fury and the Decline of the South

 

The Sound, the Fury and the Decline of the South

            Life: “it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” There is no question that Macbeth’s timeless lament was influential not only in the name of William Faulkner’s critically acclaimed novel, but also played a role in the theme and tone of the book. The Sound and the Fury give a powerful voice to the unresolved tensions that Faulkner held for the South via the unresolved tensions that the each Compson brother hold for their sister, Candace “Caddy” Cameron. Undoubtedly Caddy represents, at least to Faulkner, a spirited embodiment of the ideas of that quintessential Southern girl who tragically fascinates those in her orbit. More than that, however, Caddy symbolizes the beauty, virtue and decline of Faulkner’s South and her tragedy is the tragedy of the South.

            Decline is a prominent theme within The Sound and the Fury. One might argue that decline is the theme of the novel. With the exception of Dilsey, the black servant of the Compson family, the narrative of each main character in the novel is a story of decline. The family, we find out via the narrative itself and the appendices of the novel, has been in a state of perpetual decline since the Civil War. The father, Jason Compson, slowly degenerates via his alcoholism and dies from it leaving his family without a “center,” stable or otherwise. The mother, Catherine Compson, is a hypochondriac and the indulgence of her many “illnesses” by her family is a cause of near-constant strain until her eventual death. Quentin, anxious and angst-ridden even from childhood, feels the pressure of generations of failure on his shoulders, perhaps unjustly, until his impotence to overcome the past and preserve what little honor remaining in the present, moves him to commit suicide after his freshman year at Harvard. Jason, a wounded and conniving miscreant, spends most of the novel trying to get around adversity by way of scheme and plot rather than confront it directly. Whether his weakness in character is the cause of this failing strategy in life or the result of it is unclear, but the rock-bottom situation he finds himself in by the end of Book III couldn’t be clearer. The only real chance he ever had at getting a “respectable” job was disappointingly rescinded by no fault of his own and he eventually attempts to get rich by trading agricultural commodities and loses almost all of his money. What little he actually had saved, a sum that he swindled from his own niece, was retaken by said niece as she ran away with her traveling “carnie” of a boyfriend. Benjamin “Benjy” Compson, the novel’s “idiot” and the youngest Compson that “never grows mentally or emotionally past the age of three,”[1] is totally unable to communicate with his family or caretakers and experiences loss of nearly every imaginable variety, including his own testicles. It is Caddy, however, whose decline and loss seems to have the most profound effect on the rest of family, especially that of her brothers. It is this decline paradigm, this fixation with isolation, loss and a futility in defiance of destiny, embodied in the Compson family and Caddy specifically, that behaves as an outlet for the social anxiety of the South in the late 1920s that Faulkner must have at least observed or, perhaps, even shared.

            In Book I readers are introduced, rather awkwardly and abruptly by design, to the nearly incoherent narrative style of Benjamin “Benjy” Compson. It is clear early on from his section that he is attached, if not fixated, on his sister Caddy. His memories of Caddy show her to be extraordinarily considerate and compassionate towards Benjy, indulging his very needy disposition toward her with impressive patience even from an early age. This seems to be in direct contrast to the rest of his family, who seem to treat him with a certain disregard. As Eric Gary Anderson puts it, “his obvious physicality notwithstanding, [Benjy] is constantly described as fading or vanishing, constantly asked to go away, constantly being told to ‘hush.’”[2] While Benjy seems to be affected by disorder of various kinds, it is particularly any deviations from the norm associated with Caddy that bother him the most. He is upset when Caddy’s underwear gets muddy and wet, an obvious allusion and anticipation to the loss of her sexual purity that come later in the story. He is upset when Caddy can’t sleep in his bed anymore and is understandably more traumatized when Caddy is gone for good. But, perhaps, most distressing to Benjy is when Caddy begins to realize and experiment with her sexuality. She wears perfume to feel attractive and it upsets Benjy because she ceases to smell “like trees,” a sensory perception he associates with Caddy from his earliest recollections. Caddy, realizing that her perfume upsets Benjy, graciously gives the perfume away and this placates Benjy only for a time. Later, when Caddy begins to have sex – presumably with Dalton Ames as we find out in Book II – the smell of “trees” is lost for good and Benjy is irreparably damaged by this. There are a number of ways to read Benjy’s relationship to Caddy, none of which are necessarily exclusive, while the dynamic of this relationship is excellently suited for a variety of interpretations and from the very literal to the very metaphorical. It is not inappropriate to view Caddy, as will be explored throughout this essay, as an embodiment of the “soul” of the South, arguably Faulkner’s greatest love. In this light, Caddy’s maturation represents the conditions of the South leading up to the late 1920s. “Slavery, the defeat of the war, Reconstruction, and then decades of social, political, and economic trauma had held off the impact of the industrial revolution and its technological, urban-centered society. When finally change did begin to come to the Southern community, the social and moral drama of its advent, the dislocation of sensibility, was uncommonly intense.”[3] It was into this environment that Faulkner placed his novel: a time of anxiety, disillusionment, a sense of loss and an inability to cope with inevitable change. The same feeling that many Southerners had toward their beloved South is reflected in Benjy’s relationship to Caddy. Caddy, defiant and strong willed, yet remaining the beautiful, warm and welcoming girl of youth is forced by the nature of things to “grow up.” In that process, she lost her purity and, some might argue, her own tender soul. The fact that she had had unscrupulous relations with a war veteran and was married off to a young (albeit wily enough to discern her pregnancy) northerner is also potentially revealing as general Southern attitudes toward WWI and the North are well documented as antagonistic. It was to these two that Caddy’s loss of purity is specifically associated with and it was this loss of purity that affected Benjy deepest. Perhaps most exasperating to Benjy, and the reader, is his inability to communicate these disturbances to others. As Dr. Towner states matter-of-factly, “Every page of this novel contains people ‘trying to say’,” ostensibly without the ability to say it.[4] The fact that Benjy’s angst, with regard to the loss of Caddy, was so utterly ineffable may be symbolic of the Faulkner’s concern that the Southern community was unable to articulate their own feelings of despair over the inevitability of change and the “loss of innocence” happening in their midst. Lastly is the topic of Benjy’s castration. Of all of the allusions to be drawn, this might be the most direct. Benjy, in what appears to have been a genuine misunderstanding with a local girl, was forcibly castrated. In one of his fits, he unintentionally assaulted a young girl and was castrated for fear that he was attempting to molest her. Benjy, later, looks at himself in the mirror and bellows because he sees that his testicles are missing while Luster tells him, quite frankly, that they’re never coming back regardless of how much he cries about it. It seems that Faulkner may be attempting to give voice to the feeling of emasculation within the Southern community over any number of potential “misunderstandings.”

            The tone, style and content of Quentin’s narrative in Book II take a dramatic turn for the darker. Quentin has a two-fold issue with identity: the first being that he suffers from an archetypal complex of being the eldest child, on whose shoulders the weight of the family rests in the absence of his father. The second, related to the first, is that he feels an incredible responsibility to uphold the honor of the family, Caddy’s honor in particular, to the point that he becomes obsessed with her promiscuity and subsequent pregnancy. As Michael Cowen points out, it is “’natural’ in the light of his early psychological conditioning in the romanticized Southern ‘code’ of chivalry, that Quentin should be obsessed with preserving his sister’s virginity.”[5] This entrenched “code” of chivalry becomes perverted within Quentin, something his father attempts to dissuade in him with a rather poor effort and with even worse results. This perversion degenerates so far that it leads him to claim that he got Caddy pregnant as if, somehow, her engaging in an incestuous relationship was less scandalous than simply being promiscuous. It is also not a poor reading to suggest, as Quentin’s father seems to, that the real reason Quentin is upset about Caddy’s pregnancy and promiscuity is because he, himself, is still a virgin. In this sense, Quentin’s masculinity is threatened in, perhaps, the worst way: he was beaten by his own sister in what has traditionally been considered as a “man’s game”: sex. Not only was he a man, or at least a male, but he was also the oldest. Not only does his sister show him up, but he is also left behind… left out of the game entirely. His masculinity, though in a much more subtle way than Benjy’s, is threatened much more deeply. “In the course of Quentin’s narrative, he… attempts to see himself as a Romantic hero, defier of fate, sacrificial redeemer of damned experience.” [6] These attempts, while growing more and more in his mind, have all failed miserably. From both of his failed “honor duels” all the way to his obsession with being the incestuous father of Caddy’s unborn child, Quentin is wholly unable to fulfill his idealized self-perception. In the end he kills himself, plunging off the side of a bridge into a river. “Quentin is oversensitive, introvert, pathologically devoted to his sister, and his determination to commit suicide is is protest against her disgrace.”[7] Perhaps in the same vein of criticism that led Mark Twain to criticize Walter Scott is Faulkner unveiling a belief that the old Romanticized “honor” and “chivalry” concepts have caused too much death and, until they die, will continue to be a problem for their community. “In many places in his section, Quentin rehashes his obsessive, fevered fantasy of an incestuous… encounter with Caddy. These images point up that even when physically removed from the South, he imaginatively transports his Southern home place with him to the North.”[8] This helps illustrate that the Southern community is not tied to a physical or geographic location, but rather exists ubiquitously. Quentin is that element of Southern society, even when he is in the very heart of the North, which holds fast to ideals, even to the point of absurdity and Faulkner makes no bones about associating the death of that element with the loss of his idea of the South.

            Even the, relatively, few lines of substantial dialogue from Mr. Compson unveil Faulkner’s disillusionment with the idea that is the South. Telling Quentin that women are never virgins and that purity is, essentially, a bad thing within nature, he is expressing the underlying frustration with the failure of Southern ideology to preserve Southern society, particular its glory and prestige. Mr. Compson rationalizes his daughter’s scandalous behavior, dismisses Quentin’s obvious cries for help, runs impulsively to the bottle as a coping mechanism for the collapse of his family and dies, unfulfilled. From Mr. Compson’s point of view, the “decay of the Compson family… is part of a universal cyclical rhythm of rising and falling, birth and death, from which no natural object can escape.”[9] In essence, the Compsons represent not only a potent example but also a microcosm of the Southern community in distress and decline. This, of course, applies equally to Jason (the son) and his particular brand of mischievousness. “…Because of his savage (and extremely funny) voice and demeanor, Jason attracts less readerly sympathy than Benjy and Quentin. That very fact acts as a caution to look beneath Jason’s cruelty for its sources and to ask again what he tells us that the others cannot and will not.”[10] It may be a little unfair, but it is not unreasonable to attribute Jason’s particularly malicious behavior with a certain lack of strength in character and an inability to resolve his “place” within the family as a youth. What is certain, however, is that he possesses an especially negative fascination with the bank job that he had lost when Caddy’s marriage was called off. It is here where we see Caddy’s disreputable activities take its first serious toll on Jason. Whatever hope was tied to his sister’s marriage, as it pertained to him, was quickly and ruthlessly dashed on the rocks when the marriage was cancelled on account of Caddy’s pregnancy. In one sense, the decline and loss of the Faulknerian idea of the South, left many feeling disillusioned, but it was also done, again, with the help of an inherently antagonistic Northerner. “He cannot acknowledge real grief or loss, so he rants against imagined wrongs done him.”[11] It is these perceived slights and wrongs that help insulate him from self-examination and provide a much-needed justification for his self-centered behavior. His “clever” little quips and axioms also betray his wounds and pain, especially with regard to women. “Once a bitch, always a bitch…” It may be a gross oversimplification to return to this opening idea from his section as a summary, but it may be suitable to see it as an exposé of his pain. It is uncharacteristic for someone to comment incessantly on that which they are truly indifferent about. Rather these kinds of statements tend to reflect a significant degree of affect with regard to the subject. Insofar as Jason sees women, in the very least the women of his family, as “bitches” it may have to do with his particular vulnerability with them and their ultimate inability to assist him in confronting and healing those wounds that he carries with him. His mother perpetually manipulated each member of the family with a sort of passive-aggressive, narcissistic masochism. Caddy directly affected his hopes of escape into a better life, however realistic they may have been. Quentin, his niece, not only plagued his thoughts but also “stole” his money and ran off for good with it. Despite the haunted status of that element in the Southern community that Jason represents, it is the one that remains within the community. It went from wounded to hardened, from hardened to abusive, from abusive to malignant and yet it doesn’t leave the community. Unlike Dilsey, who represents that undercurrent of perseverance with resignation, Jason simply continues to fester. Yet where Jason represents the “last man standing” in the Compson family, Dilsey certainly symbolizes the “individual dignity and [the] possibilities of human freedom.”[12] She has indeed seen the Alpha and Omega. She was there in the beginning and she is there in the end. She carries “the real weight of the family’s responsibilities” and, by the end of her section, is walking with “astonished disappointment” into the rain on Easter Sunday.[13] If nothing else, this element is ultimately unaffected by the decline of the South… persistent and enduring.

            The tragedy and decline that is Caddy Compson symbolizes, subtly yet powerfully, the tragedy and decline of the South in Faulkner’s time. The anxiety, the “growing up” and the loss of its original purity and innocence, the inability of its surrounding community to effectively cope with its decline: this is how these narratives reach out beyond their literal boundaries and give us a window into the world that Faulkner and his contemporaries wrestled in. They show us how each element in the community tried desperately resist her fate, unable to escape her gravity. They show us the death of Southern chivalry, the emasculation of that ineffable element seeking comfort from an ideal South that can no longer provide any, and the festering element of self-preservation by means of calcification. It was a grim prognosis offered by Faulkner. His generation seems to have escaped their decline, it remains to be seen whether ours will be so fortunate.

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[1] Theresa Towner, The Cambridge Introduction to William Faulkner, p. 17

[2] Eric Gary Anderson, “Violence in The Sound and the Fury and Sanctuary”, Faulkner and the Ecology of the South, p. 37

[3] Louis D. Rubin, Jr., Faulkner and the Southern Literary Renaissance, p. 64

[4] Theresa Towner, The Cambridge Introduction to William Faulkner, p. 24

[5] Michael H. Cowan, Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Sound and the Fury, p. 6

[6] Michael H. Cowan, Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Sound and the Fury, p. 10

[7] Evelyn Scott, “On William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury,” Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Sound and the Fury, p. 26

[8] Eric Gary Anderson, “Violence in The Sound and the Fury and Sanctuary”, Faulkner and the Ecology of the South, p. 36

[9] Michael H. Cowan, Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Sound and the Fury, p. 10

[10] Theresa Towner, The Cambridge Introduction to William Faulkner, p. 21

[11] Theresa Towner, The Cambridge Introduction to William Faulkner, p. 22

[12] Michael H. Cowan, Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Sound and the Fury, p. 8

[13] Michael H. Cowan, Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Sound and the Fury, p. 9, 6

The Martyrdom of Uncle Tom

The Martyrdom of Uncle Tom

A Close Reading and Interpretation

            Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the best selling book of the entire nineteenth century, held a unique position as one of the most influential critiques of slavery during the 1850’s. Its archetypal characters, use of irony, and allegorical employment of iconography all made this novel a compelling vehicle for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s condemnation of the chattel slavery system in America. One of the more challenging passages of the novel is the martyrdom of Uncle Tom at the hands of the evil slave master, Simon Legree. In this scene Stowe paints an allegory of the passion narrative of Jesus Christ as Tom is interrogated, threatened and, ultimately, killed. This imagery is intended to be utilized as a means to communicate an equally difficult message: that the dominating master is, himself, a slave to his own passions and the pious and faithful slave is set free in the midst of his suffering and death.

            Tom’s death, placed within the aptly named chapter “The Martyr,” is the culmination of a string of literary references to Tom’s position in the story as a modern-day Apostle or Christ. In a series of scenes Tom is presented to the reader as pious, submissive, selfless, and evangelistic. Tom’s unfortunate journey through the institution of slavery is intended to represent the apostolic journey through heathen lands and Stowe’s audience would have been able to recognize these allusions easily. Tom, unwilling to rebel or flee from captivity, places his life in what he believes to be the benevolent and ultimately providential hands of God. To the highly literate and devout audience Stowe was intending to reach, these intentional Biblical parallels would, again, not have gone unnoticed.

This is certainly the case with the martyrdom of Tom. In this scene Stowe presents a contrast between Tom and Legree and, through the description of body language, vocal inflection, and the vocabulary of each character’s speech. Legree is enraged and ready to commit murder while Tom is calm, in control, at peace, and resigned to his fate. The contrast is wide in this passage and the reader is led to a set of character archetypes that they would have recognized: the cruel and evil tyrant, bloodthirsty and full of intoxicating rage and the serene, faithful, and composed saint full of compassion and forgiveness. The conversation between Tom and Legree (358) communicates all of this, yet Stowe feels obliged to interrupt the building climax, via the narrator, in order to point out to the reader that there is a “spirit of evil,” “rage,” and “vehemence” in Legree about to be unleashed upon Tom (358). Stowe does not immediately return the reader to the cultivated sympathy of Tom’s suffering but, instead, chooses to inject the theological lesson of the crucifixion to the passage. Here she suggests that Tom’s execution is a vehicle by which slavery can be exposed and transformed from “an instrument of torture, degradation, and shame, into a symbol of glory, honor, and immortal life,” (358) in the same way that the Cross of Calvary transformed an instrument of Roman brutality. The analogy here is not satisfied to rest solely on the means, but also incorporates the ends. Just as Christ’s brutal execution brought to salvation the thief on the cross alongside him (and, not to mention, the salvation of all the world and the reunification of God’s “family”), so too does Tom’s execution facilitate the salvation of Sambo and Quimbo and the reunification of Cassy’s and George Harris’ families, a related and alternative theme within the novel that will not be discussed here.

These allegorical scenes do not only contain criticisms, but are also full of ironies and archtypal role-reversals that go to Stowe’s central theme and over-arching message. The first irony to explore is the social faux pas of an antebellum writer creating a fictional Christ-figure out of an African slave. While Stowe’s personal feelings regarding the idea of racial egalitarianism are vague and poorly defined within the novel, we can be sure that her audience – both northerners and southerners – existed in a highly “racialistic” (a term used by George M. Fredrickson in his essay entitled “Romantic Racialism of the North”, 429-438) society that embraced the overly-defined and rigid racial hierarchy which characterized Victorian-era social relations. In short, Stowe fully understood the shock-value of presenting to her audience a black enslaved Christ, and one could surmise that she did so for precisely the reason that it was so potentially outrageous. Another important device provided here is the role-reversal of Simon Legree and Uncle Tom. These two characters represent the furthest extremes of social conditions: one free and one a slave. In the martyrdom scene, however, Stowe attempts – and mostly succeeds – to illuminate the “truth” of the matter: that Simon Legree is the true slave and Tom is truly free. Establishing Simon Legree as a “superstitious man” earlier in the text (347), Stowe provides a psychological profile of fear and mental instability and contrasts it – both throughout the Legree plantation story arc and the martyrdom scene in particular – to the confidence and inner-serenity of the God-fearing Tom. At the climax of Tom and Legree’s confrontation Stowe shows us an out-of-control master, enslaved by his own unbridled passions and a coolly in-control slave, freed from fear and death by an unshakable faith in a benevolent and “wise, all-ruling Father, whose presence fills the void unknown with light and order” (347). The irony of this reversal is inescapable.

It is by playing on this intentional satire that Stowe intends to “preach” her most provocative message: that the vessel of Christ’s gospel – made not of words, but of love and compassion – cannot be defeated by the cruelty and domination of the “kingdom of man.” Her interjection about the natural proclivity of the African race towards the “Christian nature” on page 156, in conjunction with Tom’s own suffering and death, points to the message that, just as Christ’s body was shattered like a vessel to release the power of God’s spirit into the ancient world, so too are the bodies of these Christian slaves shattered in order to release God’s redemptive power into America for the transformation of all humankind. Even in the face of human cruelty and domination, the power of the Christian gospel is not only unrestrained but also propelled forward, touching and transforming the planet one human soul at a time. This scene in Uncle Tom’s Cabin is intended to communicate the superiority of the Christian gospel over all forms of oppression and domination.

Garrison v. Stowe

Garrison v. Stowe

A Comparison of Moderate and Radical Abolitionism

            In the decades leading up to the Civil War the cause of abolitionism took many forms and a variety of opinions. Two of the most prominent figures of the abolitionism movement in America were William Lloyd Garrison and Harriet Beecher Stowe. “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another” says Proverbs[1] and, “He who is not against us is for us,” said Christ.[2] As much could be said of American abolitionism. Garrison, himself, was a fiery prophet calling America back to holiness, lest God should visit calamity on the nation. To him, slavery represented the cancer of sin. It so deeply threatened the whole American body that, in his mind, it must be mercilessly removed no matter the cost. Stowe, however, saw the evil of slavery in the way that it disturbed the divinely sanctioned familiar institutions and enabled the unchecked physical appetites of slave masters. These two individuals, while joined in common cause, are a compelling example of the diversity and heterodoxy of antebellum abolitionism.

William Lloyd Garrison became personally acquainted with servitude in the form wage-slavery from an early age.[3] This experience informed his conviction that forced labor was “not only a crime, but the sum of all criminality,”[4] and he resolved to vigorously work toward the demise of the institution in all of its forms. Garrison’s writings reflect a man possessed with the singular purpose of egalitarianism in America. With respect to his uncompromising nature and his radical – and unpopular – rhetoric, Garrison has been often compared to British MP William Wilberforce. It is with their common revulsion in regards to chattel slavery, however, that the comparisons might end. Whereas Wilberforce worked within the halls of government to achieve abolition, Garrison decried the Constitution of the United States – the very foundation of the American government – as a “covenant with death and an agreement with hell.”[5] Government, in the mind of Garrison, was inherently dependent on the practice of compromise. The Constitution, itself as a legally binding government document, and its particular injunctions on the institution of slavery were rife with compromise. These compromises not only represented acquiescence to evil but he also regarded the Constitution as “the infamous bargain which… virtually dethroned the Most High God”[6] and declared, while burning a copy of it, “So perish all compromises with tyranny!”[7]

While Garrison looked to the radical social ethics of the New Testament for inspiration, he drew most heavily from the Declaration of Independence. The rhetoric of this document led him to insist that the American union was founded on the belief that “all men are created equal” and that all men lay claim to the inalienable rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” including the African slave population. Garrisonian abolitionism was certainly the most radical variation of abolitionism. It required not only the immediate abolition, but also demanded the education of blacks and believed in the equality of the sexes.[8] For his time, William Lloyd Garrison was certainly on the fringe of the movement.

His crusade against slavery led him not only to denounce the whole of human government – claiming, “the governments of this world… they are all Anti-Christ”[9] – but also the American body of Christianity. “What has Christianity done, by direct effort, for our slave population? Comparatively nothing.”[10] He ridiculed American institutional Christianity by claiming that it could tame the foreign wilderness but was powerless to emancipate the African slaves of a Christian nation. Garrison also levels a finger at the so-called free states on the Union. “We are all alike guilty. Slavery is strictly a national sin.”[11] Later he even accuses the North of being even more prejudiced than the South, because the “criminal timidity” of the North in confronting Southern slavery was the enabling force behind the entire institution.[12] Garrison’s avant-garde rhetoric and style was unsettling, even to other abolitionists, and was especially alarming when he attacked the virtue of American life. “Before God, I must say, that such a glaring contradiction as exists between our creed and practice the annals of six thousand years cannot parallel. In view of it, I am ashamed of my country.”[13] Garrison’s views were delivered both in the way of editorial columns and sermon-esque public speeches. William Lloyd Garrison is a polemic demagogue, both in his critical evaluation of ecclesiastical behavior in regards to slavery, but also his hostile disputation of the political reality. His inflammatory rhetoric, his avant-garde style, and his uncompromising principles hearken to the prophetic tradition of the Old Testament. This convention lends itself to reinforce Garrison’s particularly confrontational tone and cloaks his abrasiveness in a mantle of prophetic authority. Noting, however, that his brand of abolitionism never enjoyed a wide popularity, it seems that his polemic style came with the cost of sharing the pariah status of the prophets as well.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, daughter of Protestant evangelical preacher Lyman Beecher, was never a stranger to abolitionism or prolific writing. Her brother, Henry Ward Beecher, was a famous abolitionist theologian and her sister, Catherine Beecher, was also a noted abolitionist writer. Her father, Lyman Beecher, was not known for his sympathies to the abolitionist cause, but his contribution to the movement by way of progeny cannot be overlooked. Harriet’s own contributions – Uncle Tom’s Cabin chief among them – came to her audience in the form of the sentimental novel. This style of novel, also called “domestic fiction” was most prevalent in the late eighteenth to the mid nineteenth and placed a high value on an appeal to the emotional virtues, directly contrasting the rationalist arguments of the time. Through this convention, we can see that Stowe’s attitudes toward slavery were not so radical as Garrison’s and were born of an entirely different host. Whereas Garrison’s chief concern in abolitionism was the utter equality of mankind and the fulfillment of the Declaration of Independence, Stowe was troubled by the effect the institution of slavery had on the institution of the family. In this respect, among others, Stowe was very much a moderate – or centrist – abolitionist.[14] In her popular and influential novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Stowe portrays the chief sin of slavery as an interruption of the family. Slavery separated Uncle Tom from his wife Chloe; it separated George Harris from his wife Eliza and their son Harry and threatened to detach Harry from both of his parents. Slavery had orphaned poor Topsy, had divided Emily from her brother George, and Cassy from her daughter Eliza. Speaking directly to the issue Stowe states plainly, “The note-book of a missionary, among the Canadian [former slave] refugees, contains truth stranger than fiction. How can it be otherwise, when a system prevails which whirls families and scatters their members… These shores of refuge, like the eternal shore… may bring tidings of mother, sister, child or wife, still lost to view in the shadows of slavery.”[15]

Yet, in direct contrast to Garrison’s charge that every slaveholder is a “man-stealer,” Stowe offers us not only a spectrum of evil in slavery, but also “exploits the reader’s capacity for tenderness, compassion, or sympathy by presenting… an unrealistic view of its subject.”[16] In Stowe’s understanding of slavery, not all slaveholders were evil and not all expressions of the institution were malevolent. The slavery of Kentucky is called “the mildest form of the system” – a concession Garrison would have balked at – and Stowe also refers to the relationship between master and slave there as “goodhumored indulgence” and “affectionate loyalty.”[17] Both George Shelby and his son are presented as the paragon of Christian slaveholders.[18] They are kind, treat their slaves well – if perpetuating their slavery did not, in fact, contradict that estimation – and George, Jr. eventually frees the entire estate.[19] Augustine St. Claire, while not particularly religious, was also good-natured and treated his slaves well, some of them even sharing his own wardrobe and supply of little luxuries.[20] Certainly Garrison never conceived of this lax sort of environment in a Deep South plantation. These kind slaveholders are presented, in Stowe’s narrative, as men never willing to break up the stability and family of their African charges, but only forced to do so when confronted with hard circumstances. It was only in the last pages of the novel that the slaveholder of Garrison’s imagination was revealed for her readers in the form of Simon Legree. While far from relieving the institution of slavery of its earned reproach Stowe, unlike Garrison, was willing to acknowledge that there was a complex and heterogeneous reality that accompanied it. In this, Stowe must have been hoping to gain recognition from both camps by presenting herself as an honest purveyor of social reality. In this, she and Garrison could never have agreed.

Her attitudes on the equality of all mankind were, likewise, divergent. In her narrative, Stowe never outright challenges the legitimacy of the slaveholders nor does she give us a single African character that would be considered an equal to a white character. The slaves are described with intrinsically inferior labels, such as “loyal,” “favored,” or “petted” and only the radical George Harris insists on his right of being a freeman. George is certainly given the position of a protagonist, yet only as it pertained to the preservation of his family and the reclamation of his own unique manhood. Tom, on the other hand, is obviously the favored hero of the novel and is given very passive and acquiescent characteristics. It is in Tom, however, that Stowe intends to formulate her own imaginations of the African race.

Garrison describes blacks in terms of “complexion”, “hue”, “color”, and “clime” whereas Stowe readily assigns each man a “race.” This is, perhaps, the fundamental difference between the two. The clearest presentation of this belief is in George Harris’ speech given near the end of the novel. “To the Anglo-Saxon race has been intrusted [sic] the destinies of the world,” claims Stowe.[21] On the other hand, she trusts “that the development of Africa is to be essentially a Christian one. If not a dominant and commanding race, they are, at least an affectionate, magnanimous and forgiving one.”[22] Whereas she ordains the white race with the administration of the world’s governmental order, she proclaims that the black race will evolve along a path of Christian piety and be vessels of redemption, which shares the personality of Christ wherever they go.[23] The genre that Stowe utilizes is the novel. Prior to the naturalistic writers of the late nineteenth century, such as Theodore Dreiser and Stephen Crane, American novels were meant to be vehicles by which a series of didactic ethical lessons could be introduced. Intentionally sentimental novels, like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, have the advantage of establishing their ethical principles within an allegorical framework. The persuasive efficacy of a novel like Stowe’s is dependant, almost solely, upon the skill of the author in cultivating a connection – via the characters and plot – with the readership. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the best-selling novel of the nineteenth century, selling “more copies than any other book in the world except the Bible.”[24] While Mark Twain blames the Civil War on the romantic writings of Sir Walter Scott, Abraham Lincoln attributed it to Stowe. Upon meeting her at the White House, President Lincoln is claimed to have said, “So you’re the little lady that wrote the book that made this great war.”[25]

            There is no doubt that both William Lloyd Garrison and Harriet Beecher Stowe wanted the unconditional abolition of slavery in America. But there can also be no doubt that they both wanted to achieve this end by incompatible means and for incompatible reasons. Garrison would see the governments of the world burn to the ground in order that all men and women be free, a truly liberal position. Stowe, however, would see slavery removed in order to preserve the more fundamental social institution of the family, a fairly conservative position. These positions are as different as their two conventions and it is illustrated in each of their writings. While both Garrison and Stowe are appealing to the more emotional sensibilities of their readership, one could hardly imagine Garrison parceling up his “truth” and hiding them among several hundred pages of domestic fiction. Likewise, we can see Stowe’s attempt to portray her views to American readers as anything but confrontational. Yet, despite their exclusive and unique ideologies, they found common cause together for the elimination of slavery in America.

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[1] Proverbs 27.17, NASB

[2] Mark 9.40, NASB

[3] A House Divided, page 327

[4] A House Divided, page 335

[5] A House Divided, page 335

[6] A House Divided, page 345

[7] A House Divided, page 335

[8] A House Divided, page 347

[9] The American Intellectual Tradition, Fifth Edition, page 267

[10] A House Divided, page 339

[11] A House Divided, page 342

[12] A House Divided, page 341

[13] A House Divided, page 340

[14] A House Divided, page 351

[15] Uncle Tom’s Cabin, page 372

[16] A House Divided, page 346; Encyclopedia Britannica, entry for “sentimental novel”

[17] Uncle Tom’s Cabin, page 7

[18] Uncle Tom’s Cabin, page 8

[19] Uncle Tom’s Cabin, page 380

[20] Uncle Tom’s Cabin, page 142

[21] Uncle Tom’s Cabin, page 376

[22] Uncle Tom’s Cabin, page 376

[23] Uncle Tom’s Cabin, page 156

[24] Uncle Tom’s Cabin, page viii

[25] Harriet Beecher Stowe: The Story of Her Life, page 203

The Themes of Huck Finn

The Themes of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

An Interpretation

Mark Twain’s boyhood adventure story, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, has, for many generations, progressed in the minds of literary, historical, and sociological scholars from a simple children’s novel to a powerful window into the past. This book was able to introduce themes and subjects of incredible social importance in a way that is accessible for readers of every educational level. A few of the various themes addressed in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are: religion, superstition, and cultural morality, family and relations, and – perhaps most sweepingly of all themes – slavery and freedom. While many of the themes are not directly addressed or spoken about, especially slavery and race-relations, Twain uses the novel to present a very raw and personal view of each theme not only to bring context and depth to the characters, but also to help the reader evaluate the world that the novel reflects. Twain gives us a vision of the world as it is, and then gives us a world within a world – in the form of Jim and Huck’s adventure together – to show us how the world could be. Twain brilliantly uses Jim and Huck’s relationship as the means by which he introduces a fresh perspective for the other themes of his book, while simultaneously reinforcing the connectedness of humanity and the commonality of human existence.            

One of the first themes that any reader will immediately identify is that of religion, superstition and cultural morality. It is obvious from the first few pages of the book that Twain intends to skewer the prevalent religious ideology of his day in satire. The theme that becomes evident in passages dealing in religion is that, for the most part, it is more trouble than it is worth. Huck introduces his ideas of religion in the form of being taught Bible stories by Miss Watson, starting with Moses. Huck believes that learning about Moses wasn’t really of any practical kind of use because Moses was dead, and “bothering about Moses, which has no kin to her, and no use to anybody, being gone” while attempting to dissuade Huck from the bad etiquette of smoking is backwards in his mind (Norton, 109). Huck’s views about religion are pressed even further when he recalls that he isn’t interested in going to Heaven, “the good place”, if Tom Sawyer wasn’t going to be there and Miss Watson was (Norton, 109-110). There is, of course, a certain scandalous quality to this kind of presentation. It’s one thing to challenge the validity of learning about dead prophets, it’s quite another to say you’d rather go to Hell with a friend than go to Heaven with an overbearing tutor. In keeping with Huck’s apathetic attitudes about Christianity, he remarks that he finds the idea of prayer to be fruitless. If you could simply pray for something to happen that you wanted or needed then there should be no want or need in the world. “No, says I to myself, there ain’t nothing in it” (Norton, 115). In regards to Christian righteousness, Huck finds the injunction of the Widow that he should live charitably unfavorable and inconvenient because, as Huck put it, “I couldn’t see no advantage about it – except for the other people.” This passage, however, serves the reader with a double-meaning: while the text is, on the surface, insinuating that there is little good in being charitable in a religious sense, it also illustrates the point since Huck is the one reflecting on this notion and he is the beneficiary of religiously-motivated charity of the Widow (Norton, 115). Huck makes very clear that his impressions of the Biblical narratives he’d learned in Sunday school were markedly fictitious. Since Tom Sawyer’s fiction tales had a seemingly outlandish quality to them, Huck associated them with the equally mythical Bible stories (Norton, 117). Despite Huck’s internal contemplations and – mostly – rejections of the Bible stories he’s been told, he does argue with Jim over the greatness of King Solomon; though the reader can assume that it was simply because he wanted to be right in the argument, not necessarily because he actually believed it (Norton, 155).

The introduction of Jim on the Widow’s estate, however, establishes the first real indictment of western Christianity in the novel. Jim’s superstitious beliefs act as a direct contrast to the Christian religion of the “sivilized” world Huck had become acclimated to. On the one hand, Jim’s belief in witches and devils is influenced by Christian conceptions of the pagan and demonic, but they also serve as a contrast in terms of their practicality. Huck reckons that Christian doctrine, at least as he’s experienced it through Miss Watson and the Widow, is mostly impractical and useless. Jim’s brand of superstition had a certain kind of expediency to it: if one was scared of witches – and someone that didn’t know better probably would be – then one would scarcely want to be ridden “all over the world, and [tired most] to death” by one (Norton, 111-112). On the other hand the reader is, subtly, led to see the underlying contempt with which they are supposed to regard the legendary or mythical aspect of religious narratives. This whole witch-narrative of Jim’s starts because of a fairly harmless and innocuous prank played on Jim by Huck and Tom. The story started off as Jim saying he was put into a trance and rode “all over the State”, and then it grew into him being rode down to New Orleans. “And after that, every time he told it he spread it more and more, till by-and-by he said the rode him all over the world.” This is intended to illustrate a cautioning of religious legends that may have, in Twain’s estimation, evolved in the very same way (Norton, 111-112). But beyond the abstract pragmatism of Jim’s particular superstition, we see that Huck also finds a kind of deeply personal utility in it as evidenced by the divining nature of Jim’s “hairball.” In this scene we see that Huck is worried that his Pap would be coming back to upset the “new ways” that he was just starting to get used to so he went to Jim for guidance as a fortune-teller (Norton, 118). It is not difficult to see that Huck places a more significant degree of faith in the “hairball” than in praying to the Christian God since he is even willing to trade something nominally valuable for its powers of divination and even hopes to deceive it with fake money (Norton, 119). The irony of this particular scene should not be understated: the reader is supposed to see the humor of Huck wanted something with mystical powers of knowledge to not know that it is being deceived. It is clear that the reader should take away from this that superstition and mysticism are better than the institutional doctrine of religion (in terms of efficacy), but – in the end – are really all the same.

It is in this context of spirituality, however, that the heavy cultural and moral questions are introduced. Huck Finn is, amongst other things, undoubtedly famous for his “whoppers.” In nearly any society, the cultural mores and morals frown upon lies of any size or nature, but here the reader is intended to see lies as having a sort of redemptive quality to them when used in beneficent and noble purposes. Huck, paradoxically, employs a clever talent for lying in his aims to achieve clearly virtuous goals. He dresses up like a little girl and lies to “the woman” in order to find out how many people were looking for him and continues when he finds that they’re all looking for Jim (Norton, 141-142). He lies to the town watchman about his family being trapped on the Walter Scott in order to get Jim to shore without being noticed (Norton, 152). Perhaps most important among these whoppers is the lie he tells to the skiff-bound bounty hunters at Cairo about his family being sick in order to keep Jim from being caught, even though he has a substantial ethical crisis in the midst of that situation (Norton, 170). Huck later reflects that, while he feels bad for breaking the cultural taboo of helping a slave escape to freedom, he would feel even worse if he had betrayed Jim and concludes that there’s no use in “learning to do right, when it’s troublesome to do right [which he means by obeying the dominant social customs regarding slavery in the south] and ain’t no trouble to do wrong [by which he means to help Jim]” (Norton, 171). It is here that we see his whoppers being employed most nobly and where the true battle of ethics and morals would be waged. The reader of the late nineteenth century was, very much so, intended to reflect upon the redemptive nature of conscientious defiance of the social norms and Twain introduces those questions magnificently. In analyzing Huck’s ethical quandaries, Andrew Jay Hoffman builds on the argument of Arthur Berger by insisting that “Huck’s heroism is of a moral nature… his [ambivalence on moral questions] matters less than his ridicule of society on one hand and his moral awareness on the other. Being who he is, knowing what he knows, is Huck’s heroic action.” (Hoffman, 7) Huck’s moral dilemmas also lead him to endanger his own wellbeing, and potential comfort level on the journey, when he tells Mary Jane of the “rapscallions’” plot to defraud her and take her money. Moreover, in contrast to his cavalier attitude to his own wellbeing, Huck goes to great pains to protect Jim from being discovered and places himself at even greater danger for it (Norton, 231). Perhaps Huck’s most difficult struggles are with the heavy moral questions regarding his culture’s attitude on slavery. Those struggles, however, will be discussed later.            

Certainly one of the most provocative themes discussed in the novel is that of family and relations. From the very beginning of the tale we’re given a protagonist with a very unconventional family structure. Huck has no stable male figures in his life: the Widow is his guardian and provider, Miss Watson is his de facto educator, the local judge is his financial warden, and Pap is usually off in the wilderness or in towns behaving as a vagrant and a felon. Huck’s first stable male figure is brought in – rather scandalously for the time it was written in – as an uneducated, superstitious, dirt-poor, black slave. We immediately find that Huck’s conceptions of family are damaged by the unconventional setting in which he was reared and it was through Jim that Huck is introduced to a more traditional appreciation for the role of a father and husband when he observes Jim’s heartache over his family. Interestingly enough, Huck, in his own relationship with his father, could be seen as Pap’s slave: disallowed from further education, all wages and property were seized by his father, and it was perfectly acceptable for Huck to steal all of his “master’s” property and flee for freedom (Norton, 122-131). Elaine and Harry Mensh, on the contrast of uneducated Pap and educated free blacks, claim, “It is ironic that the most learned black man cannot vote in Missouri while a Pap can.” (Mensh, 71) To watch Huck’s progression in the novel is to observe a variety of different “families”, presented counter-intuitively to the reader for the purposes of challenging the traditional concepts of relationships and re-imagining the concepts of love. Certainly the intention in the novel is to show that the traditional family structure can be as unhealthy as the unconventional can be healthy and it is illustrated well in the novel. Huck began this story in a state of “freedom” under the careful eye of the Widow and Miss Watson almost in a sort-of “gradualistic” fashion, but was forcefully removed from his healthier living environment because of the social customs affording his father sole “guardianship” over him. This reflects a sort of devolution from a state of gradualism to a more paternalistic form of slavery under his father and “master” (Norton, 122). Huck was forced to work for Pap, in slave-like fashion, as Pap – depicted in a very stylized “antebellum slave master” manner – was off pursuing his own personal gratification vis-à-vis alcohol, vice, and causing legal mischief in order to acquire Huck’s fortune-in-trust with Judge Thatcher (Norton, 123). While Pap was out, attempting to secure his “rights”, Huck made a clean getaway to freedom. Not only did Huck get free from Pap, but also looted Pap’s supplies on the way out (Norton, 131). Scarcely can one imagine a reader of the late nineteenth century immediately drawing the parallel of young Huckleberry Finn to that of the antebellum slave, but rest assured that at least some did eventually.

Huck, not realizing the parallel of his own situation with Pap to that of Jim’s (and, especially of Jim’s family) with their masters, initially thinks very low of Jim when Jim, due to his excitement of thinking they had reached Cairo, began to celebrate his freedom and tell Huck about his plans to get his family free – either by buying their freedom or by having an Abolitionist “steal” them (Norton, 169). But later Huck observes that Jim is tortured by the fact that his family is languishing in slavery while he is living out his dream to become free. It’s obvious from this situation that Jim is very homesick for his wife and children, and Huck speculates that Jim “cared as much for his [family] as white folks does for their’n. It don’t seem natural, but I reckon it’s so.” This particular remark insinuates to the reader that Huck’s conceptions, not only of family in general, but also of the families of slaves are being challenged and reshaped by his experiences with Jim (Norton, 211). As Arthur Pettit remarks in his critical analysis of Twain, “Mark Twain & the South”, “The surest indication that this black man has finally been accepted as human is Huck’s willingness to accept his fallibility.” (Pettit, 113) The reader is left to wonder if perhaps these paradigm shifts on family are becoming more acceptable to Huck because of Jim’s assumption of the role as protector and caretaker in their relationship. This fact is illustrated best by Jim’s overwhelming concern for Huck in the course of events. The two are separated and reunited numerously and each time the scenes are painted very emotionally and tenderly. They stand in an obvious contrast to Huck’s interactions with his erratic and self-absorbed father. Carl Weik, in Refiguring Huck Finn, argues that the contrast between the “negative white” and good black is an intentional that there is “little question” that the color of skin is related to values and intentionally reversed. (Weik, 109) He furthers his point when he argues that Twain intended to show the “shocking reality of the situation [that] black can become ‘white’ and white ‘black.’” (Weik, 110) When the two chance upon each other on the island, Jim immediately takes charge for their wellbeing and makes a shelter in a cave and dinner – Huck remarks that their arrangement is very nice and Jim reminds Huck that he would be out in the rain without any food if it wasn’t for Jim’s initiative (Norton, 138). Jim says his heart was broken and he was apathetic to his own fate because he thought he’d lost Huck (Norton, 160). Jim silently tracked Huck all night by swimming in the river after the raft was hit by a steamboat. He then arranged for the raft to be brought ashore and Huck to be spirited back to him safely by the slaves on the Grangerford estate (Norton, 184). After the major feud engagement between the Shepherdsons and the Grangerfords, Jim rescued Huck and got him away from the violence, grabbing him and hugging him as his own child (Norton, 187). There should be no doubt that Jim became the closest thing to a real father that Huck had ever had. Furthermore, the imagery is, in retrospect, very moving as the reader finds that Jim knew all along that Pap had died and that, now more than ever, Huck didn’t have anyone to take care of him (Norton, 139). Additionally, Jim withheld this information from Huck as a sort of protection for him until his safety and wellbeing was secured (Norton, 294).

While many themes are discussed in the novel, slavery is without a doubt the mortar by which all other themes are bound and, at the same time, it is a theme of its own. Jim is the main focal point of the theme of slavery in the novel and his interactions with Huck are the medium by which Huck expresses his views on the institution, but it is also the vehicle by which the reader can see Huck’s views challenged and forced into change over time. “Nigger Jim is the conscience of Huckleberry Finn… [Jim and Huck’s relationship] is the central theme of Huckleberry Finn and the most appealing dream of interracial brotherhood in our literature.” (Pettit, 109) Huck certainly brought his own prejudices and preconceptions of slaves to the relationship with him, yet their relationship flourishes in spite of these inlaid stereotypes. Huck, initially, regarded Jim as “so stuck up” because of his witch-fame which had, as Huck sees it, essentially ruined Jim as a servant (Norton, 112).  Huck believed – especially when he had been successfully out-argued – that “you can’t learn a nigger to argue” (Norton, 156) yet it also, at times, seemed to Huck that Jim had an “uncommon level head” for a slave (Norton, 154, 161), which would insinuate a growth in his estimation of Jim not as a “nigger” or a slave, but as a person. Jim also defied Huck’s preconception about the natural docility of slaves as he was stubbornly independent in his opinions and was not easily persuaded into believing what whites wanted him to (Norton, 155). Huck finds it hard to “humble [himself] to a nigger”, but was glad he did it afterwards and that he had mended his friendship with Jim (Norton, 160). Huck initially viewed Jim (like most slaves) in a utilitarian sense: as the butt of his jokes and the diviner of his fortunes. Yet when he finds out that Jim has run off, his personal oath to Jim overrides the legal, social, and culturally moral obligations and becomes his first decision to treat Jim as a person and not as a slave (Norton, 134). What’s interesting about this is that, perhaps in a subconscious way, Huck is already beginning to see Jim as an actual person: he makes an oath with Jim. An oath to a non-person would be no oath at all, so regardless of the fact that Jim was legally and socially a slave – and regardless of Huck’s preconditions about slaves, slavery, and abolition – Huck was beginning to regard Jim as a person. While Huck has no problem comprehending the place of slaves in the larger social context, he doesn’t consciously identify slaves as individuals that should be at his beckon call as the slave provided for him at the Grangerford estate had a “monstrous easy time, because I warn’t used to having anybody do anything for me” (Norton, 181).

The moral or ethical question of slavery is never directly addressed or dealt with in the novel until the very last scene on the Phelps’ farm, even though the issue itself is the primary theme of the novel itself. Outside of Jim, the only other slaves mentioned in the novel are very minor characters and are mentioned rather incidentally, the masses of slaves and slavery are not discussed at length. Huck refers to slaves as “niggers” and speaks of “niggers” as of lesser importance, unimportance or – generally – as separate in value from “people” (by which he means whites), but not in an outright spiteful way (Norton, 251). Huck even relates Jim’s nobility in sacrificing his freedom for Tom Sawyer’s life as being “white inside” (Norton, 284, emphasis added). Huck certainly reflects the cultural attitudes about slavery prevalent in his time when makes remarks about “abolitionists” with the utmost disdain (Norton, 134). To be an abolitionist – or worse, a “nigger stealer” – was to have no character, no intelligence, no education, no respectability, no pride and no shame as he remarks, with surprise, that Tom Sawyer would ever involve himself in such a venture (Norton, 258). Yet by the end of the novel, and through his relationship with Jim, Huck’s core cosmology is challenged – especially in regards to slavery – and the reader is able to take part in young Huck’s growth as a sort of subtly didactic attempt to repaint the canvass of race-relations in a more progressive and civilized way. Huck, over time, not only begins to see Jim as a person, just the same as him, but also as a dear friend and loved one.

Huck understands that slavery is part of the law and that to free a slave is legally, socially, and morally wrong in his culture – but his feelings about Jim lead him to break these taboos. Huck even believes (perhaps accurately) that he will be an outcast from his community if anyone ever finds out that he’s helped Jim escape from Ms. Watson and, thus, does not enlist the help of Tom Sawyer to have him freed (Norton, 245). Huck has several opportunities to turn Jim – the slave – over to the authorities as a runaway slave, but his crisis of conscience and loyalty to Jim – the person and friend – prevails (Norton, 169-170, 171-172). Drawing on his pragmatic view of religion, and in a very powerful passage of the novel, Huck decided that it would be better for him to “go to hell” than to give up Jim to Miss Watson, even if it was for the intention to free him from Phelps (Norton, 246). Huck’s culturally-endorsed view that Jim exists, like most slaves, for the enjoyment of whites is challenged throughout the novel, but most specifically when his pranks against Jim backfire and hurt their relationship such as the snakeskin prank (Norton, 140, 172) and the trash prank (Norton, 159-160). After Jim’s capture, Huck is horrified at the reality that Jim had been put into slavery “again all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty dollars” (Norton, 245) and later decides once and for all, that he “couldn’t strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind.” He then resigned himself to the fact that he and Jim were in this together, for better or worse, and they had to stick with each other (Norton, 246). This advance reaches its final stage when Huck, abandoning all social taboos declared to himself that he “would take up wickedness again… and for starter, I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog” (Norton, 246-247). All of these passages reflect the growing directness with which the novel begins to address the issue of slavery and freedom, but none of them reach the fever pitch that Tom Sawyer – in the final scene at Phelps’ farm – ascends to as he rises “square up in bed, with his eye hot, and his nostrils opening and shutting like gills, and sings out to [Huck]: ‘They hain’t no right to shut him up! Shove! – and don’t you lose a minute. Turn him loose! he ain’t no slave; he’s as free as any cretur that walks this earth’” (Norton, 291, sic).

There is a certain temptation for easy dismissal of the importance of the theme of slavery in this novel since – by the time it was written – slavery had already been abolished in America. The reader, however, should not ignore the remaining prejudice of the Reconstruction Era along with the terrifying reality that the absolute rights of blacks in America had not yet been secured, legally or culturally. Many in the south continued to hope – and, frighteningly, some still do – that their cause and heritage would be reinvigorated at a later time: that slavery would resume and the south would secede again. In a sense, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was a persuasive vehicle by which each reader in the American public would begin to evaluate his or her own values in light of the novel, thus growing out of their initial preconceptions in the way that young Huck did. Likewise, one cannot escape the fact that Twain incorporated all of these deep and, in some ways, profoundly radical values into a childrens’ book, thus opening more impressionable minds to the vision of Huck and Jim, a vision of how the world could be.