Well, I have gone through this whole past week with a little nagging gremlin in my system that is convinced I’ve never used Blogger before in my life let alone ever being invited to contribute to one.
Clearly, technology these days is astounding.
I’m going to count my blessings though – if I’d written this a few days ago I wouldn’t have had anything nearly as interesting to share. Yes, Dr. F – that’s mostly for you and the (hoped) stability of my grade.
Reading through Julius Lester’s article (Morality and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) over the weekend has been a rather interesting experience. First, there is the ever-present issue of agendas in literature – I am no friend to criticisms that use a piece in order to argue a predetermined point. Lester, sadly, seems to only-just step to that side of the line. He remains concise and even-tempered up until the end of the article when his language shifts and becomes disappointingly combative. That said, I think he’s on to something.
Lester makes a point of something in Huckleberry Finn that I’ve been noticing for a while now too – the characters are increasingly unbelievable. Jim is a proud, free man on the raft but is an ignorant submissive otherwise. Huck is wise beyond his years and doesn’t understand “sivilization” but is also unwilling to combat social norms. Tom has a gallant spirit of Romance heroism but is also self-centered and naïve.
On top of that, every character is not only a walking contradiction but is also disconnected with reality. Nobody seems to realize that the Civil War is over, or have a very good grasp of geography for that matter. It seems as though, once Huck and Jim are on the river and separated from everyone else, they are effectively lifted out of reality – and when they come back into contact with the “real world,” it takes a fair amount of acclimatizing.
“They persist in believing that freedom from restraint and responsibility represents paradise. The eternal paradox is this is a mockery of freedom, a void. We express the deepest caring for this world and ourselves only by taking responsibility for ourselves and whatever portion of this world we make ours.” (Lester, 370)
Lester derails a bit when he asserts that this is a description of “too many other white American males.” The fact is, it’s a description of every American male, period, and an increasing number of young people in general. The characters in Huck Finn do, in fact, represent an ideal in which lack of responsibility is the definition of freedom. Huck embodies it, even Jim exists in it (he doesn’t really need legal freedom so long as he’s on the river), and Tom desperately creates it around himself. But these are characters are, by their nature, fantasies.
Fast-forward to the twenty-first century and we find exactly the same thing. Young people these days attempt to emulate examples they see on TV and in movies, where the notion of “freedom” is still that very same as they one Lester decries and that we see throughout the pages of Huckleberry Finn. But the very clear problem is that the characters living out these care-free lives are farces. Some are tragic; others (such as Twain’s) are comedic in their ability to get away with such blatant inconsistency. But when reality tries to emulate fantasy, and is unwilling to see why this is impossible, “All of us suffer the consequences as long as they do not” (Lester, 370).
Again, Lester’s frustration is aimed at white males – but the reality is far broader and more prevalent. And maybe Twain's world, be it comedic or nihilistic, which he presents in Huckleberry Finn does have something to do with it.
