[PEN-L:33501] Re: Huck Finn

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

> I always thought a little bit too much had been made of Huck Finn,
> and not quite enough of Puddinhead Wilson.  It's been decades since
> I read either, but I have a clear recollection of the latter as much
> more subversive of the times.  Ditto for A Connecticut Yankee.
> Perhaps both were less amenable to commodification in the way Yoshie
> depicts, w/regard to the Hannibal, MO representation of Twain's
> work.  I nearly wrote a Senior honors thesis on Yankee, before being
> completely swept up in revolutionary mania.
>
> mbs

*****   Mark Twain, _A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court_,
Chapter 30 "The Tragedy of the Manor-House"

...The painful thing observable about all this business was the
alacrity with which this oppressed community had turned their cruel
hands against their own class in the interest of the common
oppressor. This man and woman seemed to feel that in a quarrel
between a person of their own class and his lord, it was the natural
and proper and rightful thing for that poor devil's whole caste to
side with the master and fight his battle for him, without ever
stopping to inquire into the rights or wrongs of the matter. This man
had been out helping to hang his neighbors, and had done his work
with zeal, and yet was aware that there was nothing against them but
a mere suspicion, with nothing back of it describable as evidence,
still neither he nor his wife seemed to see anything horrible about
it.

This was depressing -- to a man with the dream of a republic in his
head. It reminded me of a time thirteen centuries away, when the
"poor whites" of our South who were always despised and frequently
insulted by the slave-lords around them, and who owed their base
condition simply to the presence of slavery in their midst, were yet
pusillanimously ready to side with the slave-lords in all political
moves for the upholding and perpetuating of slavery, and did also
finally shoulder their muskets and pour out their lives in an effort
to prevent the destruction of that very institution which degraded
them. And there was only one redeeming feature connected with that
pitiful piece of history; and that was, that secretly the "poor
white" did detest the slave-lord, and did feel his own shame. That
feeling was not brought to the surface, but the fact that it was
there and could have been brought out, under favoring circumstances,
was something -- in fact, it was enough; for it showed that a man is
at bottom a man, after all, even if it doesn't show on the
outside....   *****
--
Yoshie

* Calendar of Events in Columbus:
<http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>
* Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html>
* Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/>
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/>