[PEN-L:33535] Re: Huck Finn

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

At 7:20 AM -0800 12/30/02, Devine, James wrote:
> 1) it's true that Tom Sawyer's evil (which is all within the
> conventional morality of the day) isn't opposed by Huck except in a
> weak way. One problem is that Huck always feels bad about not
> conforming to the conventional morality and looks up to Tom, who
> does, in addition to fitting the image of the golden boy of the
> time. (A golden boy of the sort defined by the class system of
> Hannibal.)

In the end, Huck (at least in _Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_) wants
to remain in neither Tom's world nor Jim's any longer, so he has to
"light out for the Territory" on his own.  He can't very well join
Indians in the Indian Territory either, though.

BTW, much has been made of Twain's portrayal of racism against blacks
in _Huckleberry Finn_, critics debating to what extent the book may
be racist or anti-racist or both.  What has been less often discussed
is Twain's racism toward Indians.  There is no redeeming quality in
his use of the Injun Joe character in _The Adventures of Tom Sawyer_.
With very few exceptions (a 1906 passage in his autobiography that
discusses the irony of Americans celebrating "Thanksgiving" after the
virtual extermination of the Indians,[1] "Captain Stormfield's Visit
to Heaven," etc.), Twains' portrayal of Indians and metaphorical use
of them follow the pattern of "Ignoble Savages," which is arguably
worse than the images of "Noble Savages" created by authors such as
James Fenimore Cooper that Twain sought to satirize.

One of the sequels to _Huckleberry Finn_ that Twain wrote, an
unfinished novel _Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians_, [2]
revolves around the following plot device: Tom, infatuated with his
romantic idea of "Noble Savages," talks Jim and Huck into traveling
on the Oregon Trail.  Tom, Huck, and Jim join the emigrant Mills
family.  All of them befriend the five Indian men (Oglala Sioux) who
act like the definition of Cooper's "Noble Savages."  The Indians,
however, massacre all except Jim and the Mills girls whom they kidnap
and Tom and Huck who narrowly escape.  The fiance of Peggy Mills (one
of the kidnapped Mills girls), Brace Johnson, comes back and meets
Tom and Huck.  Brace wants to know if Peggy at least took with her
the knife he gave her and hope that she has killed herself with it.
Huck discovers that Peggy didn't, and he hides the knife from Brace
so as not to disturb him.  Huck has come to know why Brace wishes
that Peggy killed herself -- Brace is sure that Peggy would be
brutally gang-raped, tortured, and then murdered by Indians otherwise
-- so he later talks Tom into pretending that they have discovered
Peggy's body and buried it at the next abandoned camp they find on
the Indians' trail.  Brace, Tom, and Huck continue their quest for
the Indians.  The manuscript ends.  Critics say that Twain was unable
to complete the novel, probably because he found it impossible to
write about the rape frankly.  That's worse than _The Searchers_!

> 2) it's possible that Twain was thinking in terms of the prices of
> the time in which he wrote, not those of the time about which he
> wrote. Or he decided to use prices that his readers would
> understand, those of the time he was writing in. So it's possible
> that Huck's gift to Jim would have been enough. (Of course, slaves
> didn't have a price in the US at the time that Twain wrote, i.e.,
> 1885. But Twain may not have been very clear in his own mind about
> prices.)

There are several passages in _Huckleberry Finn_ that directly refer
to prices of slaves and rewards for runaway slaves:

*****   _Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_, Chapter 8

"Well, you see, it 'uz dis way. Ole missus -- dat's Miss Watson --
she pecks on me all de time, en treats me pooty rough, but she awluz
said she wouldn' sell me down to Orleans. But I noticed dey wuz a
nigger trader roun' de place considable lately, en I begin to git
oneasy. Well, one night I creeps to de do' pooty late, en de do'
warn't quite shet, en I hear old missus tell de widder she gwyne to
sell me down to Orleans, but she didn' want to, but she could git
eight hund'd dollars for me, en it 'uz sich a big stack o' money she
couldn' resis'...."   *****

*****   _Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_, Chapter 20

Then he [the duke] showed us another little job he'd printed and
hadn't charged for, because it was for us. It had a picture of a
runaway nigger with a bundle on a stick over his shoulder, and "$200
reward" under it. The reading was all about Jim, and just described
him to a dot. It said he run away from St. Jacques' plantation, forty
mile below New Orleans, last winter, and likely went north, and
whoever would catch him and send him back he could have the reward
and expenses.

[Go to
<http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/images/modeng/public/Twa2Huc/twah201.jpg>
to see the illustration for this scene from the first edition.]
*****

Notes

[1]  "Thanksgiving Day, a function which originated in New England
two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they
really had something to be thankful for -- annually, not oftener --
if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians,
during the previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated by
their neighbors, the Indians. Thanksgiving Day became a habit, for
the reason that in the course of time, as the years drifted on, it
was perceived that the exterminating had ceased to be mutual and was
all on the white man's side, consequently on the Lord's side; hence
it was proper to thank the Lord for it and extend the usual annual
compliments" (Mark Twain's Autobiography, ed. Albert Bigelow Paine,
New York: Harper and Brothers, 1924).

[2]  The unfinished novel is in print, if the curious reader wants to
check it out: _Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians And Other
Unfinished Stories_, <http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/2476.html>.
Also see _Twain's Indians_:
<http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/railton/projects/rissetto/twain3.html>.
--
Yoshie

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