-summary of the novel : Huck escapes from the lonely cabin in which his drunken,
brutal father had imprisoned him. On Jackson's island he meets Jim, a runaway
slave. Together they float down the Mississippi River on a raft, occasionally
stopping at the banks. In these brief episodes, Huck participates in the lives
of others, witnessing corruption, moral decay, and intellectual impoverishment.
He learns from Jim of the dignity and worth of a human being. Life on the river
comes to an end when Jim is captured. Huck, reunited with Tom Sawyer, helps
him to escape, subordinating society's morality to his own sense of justice
and honour. g1c2ci
The youth experience of the novelist is presented in the work THE ADVENTURES
OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN, novel about life on the Mississippi. The Southern traditions,
the situation of the Negro slaves, the life during the XIXth century in the
South of the United States, all is presented in a humorous but full of understanding
manner. The following excerpt from "Chapter 16" dwells on Huck's rather
pragmatic behaviour in a very dramatic situation. As the raft taking him and
Jim downstream approaches the mouth of the Ohio River, Jim grows more and more
excited because he believes that when he can head up the Ohio he will be out
of slave, and therefore be free. Huck, in his turn, begins to realize for the
first time that he is actually helping a slave to escape. His conscience, formed
by the mid-19th century American Southern society, goads him until he decides
he will turn Jim in as a runaway slave. But when he is faced with the actual
situation of having to inform on Jim to two Negro hunters, Huck finds himself
unable to carry out his abominable plan and improvises an elaborate story that
makes them believe there is smallpox on the raft. By enlisting himself in Jim's
cause, Huck becomes a self-proclaimed social outlaw. He goes through two moral
crises in which he is denounced by his conscience, but he finally decides to
"go to Hell" -; that is to defy the laws of God and of man and
to stay loyal to Jim who has by now become his alter ego.
The novel is written in the first person narrative, thus the feelings of the
main character (Huck himself) are expressed more directly, offering the whole
story authenticity and freshness. The scene presenting Huck's inner struggle
is very impressive and of a peculiar dramatism. Huck leaves his raft "feeling
sick", disgusted with himself and with the idea of cheating his friend
so cruelly. Still, he thinks it is his duty to inform the authorities. Very
soon, he meets two men in a skiff. The men are white, they carry guns and they
are looking for "runaway niggers". When he is asked if there are any
men on his raft, Huck answers that there is only one. At this point he still
doesn't know what to do. But when he is asked if his man is white or black,
he hesitates for a while, trying to "brace up and out with it". The
clash between his feelings of friendship towards Jim on one hand, and his prejudices
as a Southern boy, on the other, now reaches its climax. Huck regards his incapacity
of telling the truth as a matter of courage after all, thinking he isn't man
enough, but in fact his loyal heart can't accept to betray a true friend. Finally,
he takes a decision, in spite of his prejudices, and he tells the two men that
his man is white.
The attitude didn't seem very convincing, as the two men expressed their wish
to see for themselves the man on the raft. Huck immediately wish to see for
themselves the man on the raft. Huck immediately invents a story: the man on
the raft is his father, he says, and his father is ill. He lets the two men
guess that the so-called father has got the smallpox, a very unpleasant and,
at the same time, very dangerous disease. The two men leave in a hurry, feeling
pity for Huck and giving him some money. As they don't want to catch the disease,
they don't even have a look on the raft. Jim is saved but Huck's soul is tormented
by various questions: had he done right or wrong? Would he have felt better
if he had given Jim up?
He decides he had done wrong according to the Southern rules concerning runaway
slaves, but he realizes he would have felt miserable if he had betrayed his
friend in need. Huck is in fact the victim of the social prejudices, but he
is aware of the contradiction between his feelings of brotherhood towards and
these prejudices. He can't help regarding Jim as a human being, a faithful friend,
and thus finally he acts like a man helping another man. Huck is guilty from
the point of view of the Southern prejudices and laws, but from a human point
of view he is innocent, because he saved Jim's life.
Huck is an objective narrator. He is objective about himself, even when that
objectivity is apt to reflect discreditably upon himself. He is objective about
the society he encounters, even when, as he often fears, that society possesses
virtues and sanctions to which he must ever remain a stranger. He is an outcast,
he knows that he is an outcast.
Possessing neither a wide background of economic fact and theory, nor a comprehensive
knowledge of scientific or philosophical methods, he had a genuine contempt
for all pretense and hypocrisy, and exposed to humorous view the tyrannies of
chivalry, of slavery, and of religion. Mark Twain is the greatest American voice
of his day.