Cliches about Truth
There are many clichés about the truth. "The truth will set you free." "The truth hurts." "You can't handle the truth." Often times, in our society, the truth is portrayed as a harsh, stark reality that, while liberating, stings. Seldom is it suggested that the truth is funny. But that is the principle that governs Mark Twain's writing in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. By presenting familiar, honest situations, while making the sheer silliness apparent, he induces recognition of the folly of our ways. Huckleberry Finn deals with slavery, a grim subject to say the least, but is so full of satire that it allows a more honest view of the topic than a strictly serious account would. He exposes the hypocrisy of the very institution of slavery, as well as slave owners and white culture. Through the use of satire, Mark Twain displays the hypocrisy and absurdity of the practices of the time.
At the beginning of the book, Huck is living with the widow and her sister,
Miss Watson. The two women are trying to "civilize" him and acclimate
him to societies demands. Miss Watson tells him about God and heaven and hell,
supposedly in a attempt to get him to forsake his sinful ways and follow the
"right" path. But she does not display in herself the very virtues
she promotes. She is impatient with Huck and does not answer his questions
that would help him to understand the religion she wants him to embrace. Instead
she just expects him to swallow it whole without chewing it up in his mind
first. For example, she tells him to pray and he will get whatever he wants,
but when he tries to pray for fishing hooks, it doesn't work. "I tried
for the fishing hooks three or four times, but somehow I couldn't make it
work . By-and-by, one day, I asked Miss Watson to try for me, but she said
I was a fool. She never told me why, and I couldn't make it out no way."
(pg. 8) Even more obvious, is the shameful way she treats her slave, Jim.
She, who preached to Huck of kindness, good deeds, and honesty breaks the
one promise she made to her slave, all because of her own greed. Jim tells
Huck, "Ole Missus-dat's Miss Watson-she pecks on me all de time, en treats
me pooty rough, but she awluz said she couldn' 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 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'."
(pg. 33) No one seems to notice in the book that Miss Watson's actions directly
contradict her principles.
Twain does not only satirize slave owners, but the institution of slavery
itself. He explains it in ways that are factual, but in such language that
the absurdity of it is revealed to the reader. After Jim has run off to avoid
being sold down the river by Miss Watson he explains to Huck that since he
has hairy arms and a hairy chest, he is destined to have money. When Huck
counters that Jim hardly has a cent Jim tells him, "Yes-en I's rich now,
come to look at it. I owns mysef, en I's wuth eight hund'd dollars. I wisht
I had de money, I wouldn' want no more." (pg. 36) Obviously this seems
irrational when put in that context, but it is the premise that slavery was
based on. Twain gives the same impression, in a more serious way, at the end
of the book. Throughout the story, the reader gets to know Jim as a person,
and not just as a slave, as the white people around him regard him. He is
a friend of Huck's and so Huck's moral battle (whether to follow the laws
of society and turn Jim in or keep his promise and his loyalty to his friend
and help Jim along to freedom) seems terribly obvious and simple. But Huck's
conscience is plagued either way, so that even after he is telling his ultimate
decision to Tom Sawyer, he had to qualify it. "…there's a nigger
here that I'm a trying to steal out of slavery-and his name is Jim-old Miss
Watson's Jim…I know what you'll say. You'll say it's a dirty low-down
business; but what if it is?-I'm low down; and I'm agoing to steal him, and
I want you to keep mum and not let on." (pg. 170) To the outside observer,
reading the book in a different time period, it is shocking that only something
that is so apparently wrong, could be considered right by so many people.
The preposterousness boggles the mind.
The sarcasm that Twain employs is apparent in nearly all of the situations
he describes, often making fun of white culture as well as slavery. At one
point in the book, Huck has assumed a false identity and is staying with a
new friend he made named Buck. Buck is a Gangerford, and his family is involved
in a long standing feud with the Shepherdsons. Buck explains a feud to Huck
in this way: "…a feud is this way. A man has a quarrel with another
man, and kills him; then that other man's brother kills him; then the other
brothers, on both sides, goes for one another; then the cousins chip in-and
by-and-by everybody's killed off, and there ain't no more feud. But it's kind
of slow, and takes a long time." (pg. 82) Even as he describes it, and
recognizes the eventual disaster it will lead to, Buck is not dissuaded from
wanting to kill as many Shepherdsons as he can before he himself is killed.
Another time in the book, Huck listens to his father, an abusive drunk, who
had done nothing with his life, and beats and steals from his own son, rant
and rave about the outrage of a free black voting. "…they said he
was a p'fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed
everything. And that ain't the wust. That said he could vote…I says to
the people, why ain't this nigger put up at auction and sold?…And what
do you reckon they said? Why, they said he couldn't be sold till he'd been
in the State six months…Here's a govment that calls itself a govment,
and yet's got to set stock-still for six whole months before it can take ahold
of a prowling, thieving, infernal white-shirted free nigger…" (pg.
21) It doesn't occur Pap Finn that the way he described the free black man
(prowling, thieving, etc.), were it accurate, would be remarkably similar
to an accurate description of himself, minus the white shirt.
Mark Twain understood that one of the most effective ways of getting people
to look at themselves honestly is to separate them from their lives, and present
their own actions in a way that reveals their nonsensical nature. He does
just that in Huckleberry Finn, using comedy to convey important life lessons,
making Miss Watson, slavery and aspects of white culture look downright foolish.
This is not a method exclusive to the 1885, when the book was published. To
look closely and with an objective eye at many of the things that go on at
Skyline, one would find a large amount of humor there as well. Things that
seem of dire importance and cause great dramatic distress would be unmasked
as absurd. When things are always treated with the seriousness they supposedly
deserve, the reality of the situation can be lost. But through the method
of satire Twain employs, the curtain of solemnity and gravity falls, and all
that is left is the nakedness of human's often self-indulgently imbecilic
behavior.
EG, 12-01
