Anyone who has read Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn can agree that the ending of the book not quite what they were hoping for. The impromptu arrival of Tom Sawyer, the freeing of Jim, and departure of Huck, have left many wondering what Twain was thinking when he finished writing the novel. Personally, I liked where Twain left it. For me, it didn’t end; rather, the story had only just begun. The ending relates so much to who Huck was and still is: a young, dirty, cheeky, adventurous boy who lived to live. T.S. Eliot, who is somewhat on my side, said because the character of Huckleberry Finn had no beginning or end, the ending must not have one either. On page 288, he says, “Huck comes from nowhere and is bound for nowhere..he is the independence of the vagabond..therefore, he can only disappear..” I agree with Eliot on this. The character of Finn embodies the epitome of someone who thrives off of living life on the edge, or in Huck’s case, on a raft down the River. How can he be held back? It is in Huck’s very nature to discover a new place, roam it for awhile, and then “disappear”. If Twain had left us with a different ending, Huck would not be able to follow his future adventures awaiting him down the River. He went on to say that “It is right that the mood of the end of the book should bring us back to that of the beginning”. Going back to the beginning at the end gives Huck the freedom he has a sought, found, and fought for. Twain’s ending enables him to fight further still.
Marx, one who didn’t quite get what they were hoping for in the end, argued on page 299 that the ending of Twain’s novel was not unified and “lacked coherence and meaning; blurring the end”. He disagreed with Eliot over trying to “justify” the ending and giving it “reason” (pg 300). He felt the conclusion to be frustrating; neither plausible nor reasonable, leaving him completely unsatisfied (pg 302). To him, the quest for freedom that Huck was on could simply not be attained in the wilds of the Mississippi. He said his quest for freedom down the River in the raft was in fact “virtually doomed”. If Marx is right, no one should ever attempt freedom. In the book, the Raft and the River are 2 crucial elements that allow Huck and his companion Jim to escape from their difficult lives and Marx says the raft and the river are clues for us to see they will never succeed in their path to find freedom. He says the raft “lacks power and maneuverability” and cannot carry the “weight” of what it is carrying. You could say the “weight” on the raft is Huck’s companion Jim, a runaway slave travelling with a young white boy down the Mississippi. Perhaps he should have left Jim on a bank somewhere and continued on his journey. You could also say that the River is Huck; unpredictable, wild, and even calm at times. You could read into the metaphors in many different ways but the actions of Huck and his companion remain the same. They are on a quest for freedom. Freedom from abuse, freedom from slavery, freedom from racism, from backwards politics, from stuck-up religion, from the confines of social status, and I believe they reach these freedoms despite the ending in the book.
Some may call Huck the backwoods Peter Pan of the south who is chased by his father with a knife, rather than by washed up pirates. Or he could be called a young Christopher McCandless (Into the Wild); leaving all social society and its restraints behind him as Huck did. The point is, though fiction or real life, these boys all shared one thing in common: they lived to live.
So you take Eliot's view that Huck represents something powerful and lasting - Lester doesn't care much for this view. I think the reason Marx thinks Huck and Jim are doomed, however, is not that all quests for freedom are but that their particular quest, consisting of Huck growing up and Jim becoming free in a racist, slave-holding South, couldn't succeed. But is it imaginable for the novel to be as intriguing and powerful if Huck really left Jim behind?
ReplyDeleteI also find the ending somewhat fitting for the book and true to Huck's character. Although, I had to read a decent amount of critical analysis to wind up being okay with the ending. The open-ness of the ending is what can be bothersome. There is no real conclusion to what Huck, or Jim will do now that they both have achieved the freedom they desired. This type of vague ending is often what frustrates readers, but also incites imagination.
ReplyDeleteDespite all the criticisms I've heard (and deemed to have valid points which I will definitely dig into), I will also agree that I enjoyed the book. As I read the ending and so forth, I more or less just enthusiastically shook a finger at the page. The whole story was pretty absurd overall (although obviously not without some great food for thought and for topics to ponder), so when I learned that Jim had been, for example, free for months, I did not think much of it since I was just enjoying the story for what it was. I regret somewhat that I didn't read it more critically, but I will venture to say that this perhaps was not an entirely bad thing either. When I wore the glasses of "fun reading," the discrepancies did not seem nearly as big a deal. I could analyze why Huck seems to revert back to his old self when he encounters Tom again, but I didn't read the novel in a way that I was looking for consistency. Actually, when Tom returned, I was pretty excited about what kind of tomfoolery they would get into next.
ReplyDeleteNow, this is not where my line of thought stops, but needless to say, I really enjoyed the story too, scruples and all :)
I would say that for reading this book for the first time I did not have an expectation for the ending. The ending is, as always, up to the author and we as readers I think forget that. The author has the decision to use words to make any moment come to life, why should we as the readers expect endings to be fulfilling for us? The endings are the authors decisions and maybe, just maybe Twain wanted us to get all confused about the ending. Maybe he felt it was necessary to end the book this way in order for the novel to be complete or fulfilling for him as the author. I am sure he was attached to Huck, since he was the main character, and so knew Huck better than any of us and so as the author I believe he knew what he was doing with the ending even if we don't.
ReplyDeleteThough I do want to clarify, I was frustrated when Tom returned because I just wanted Huck to stand up, stop Tom, and save Jim but those were wants that Twain knew Huck could not fulfill because they were not what Huck would have done if this was a real life event. But either way you are correct in that Huck lived to live and did not want society to control him. That is one of my favorite traits of Huck.
Kara,
ReplyDeleteI like how you said that the book hadn't ended, but the story had just begun. Since reading the ending, I feel like this is exactly what Twain had in mind. Huck is a somewhat mysterious character at the beginning, and the book ended on that same note. We don't know what Huck is going to do or where he's going. And I think that's kind of what Twain was going for when he wrote this ending. Unfortunately, we will never know what happens to Huck, so we will never grasp this full story, this legend of Huckleberry Finn.