Everybody comes out pretty much O.K. (Jim is freed from slavery), but it’s hard not to have a bad taste in your mouth as you close the book. How could Twain, so serious, morally, in the earlier part of the novel, have veered off into this cruel comedy? Bernard DeVoto, though he revered Twain, still wrote that in the history of English-language fiction there was “no more abrupt or more chilling descent.” Some critics, great ones, tried to defend the ending on formal grounds. T. S. Eliot wrote that Twain had to bring Huck back to where he started out: in a comic world, ruled by Tom. Lionel Trilling, with misgivings, said something similar. Leo Marx scolded both of them for this. As he saw it, we just have to admit that Twain had a “failure of nerve,” and backed off from what he had said, in the main body of the book, about race and morals. I believe that’s the best explanation.
What frightful nonsense. Huck and Tom don't act like perfect, serious moral representatives because they're kids. No need to quibble about the formal requirements for the book or anything like that; you just have to realise that this scene is here, not simply to describe Jim's vulnerability, but also to reveal the relative inexperience and naivety of his friends Huck and Tom. Indeed Tom pulls off a similar amoral trick in his own novel, when he appears for his own funeral. And same for Huck; his famous scene of moral realisation ("well then, I'll go to hell") is a startlingly paradoxical one; it's not that he realises rationally that slavery is wrong - it's that he values his loyalty to his friend Jim over that of his loyalty to, I suppose, 19th century Yankee society - the sort represented by church and state at the time, I suppose.
Everybody comes out pretty much O.K. (Jim is freed from slavery), but it’s hard not to have a bad taste in your mouth as you close the book. How could Twain, so serious, morally, in the earlier part of the novel, have veered off into this cruel comedy? Bernard DeVoto, though he revered Twain, still wrote that in the history of English-language fiction there was “no more abrupt or more chilling descent.” Some critics, great ones, tried to defend the ending on formal grounds. T. S. Eliot wrote that Twain had to bring Huck back to where he started out: in a comic world, ruled by Tom. Lionel Trilling, with misgivings, said something similar. Leo Marx scolded both of them for this. As he saw it, we just have to admit that Twain had a “failure of nerve,” and backed off from what he had said, in the main body of the book, about race and morals. I believe that’s the best explanation.
ReplyDeleteWhat frightful nonsense. Huck and Tom don't act like perfect, serious moral representatives because they're kids. No need to quibble about the formal requirements for the book or anything like that; you just have to realise that this scene is here, not simply to describe Jim's vulnerability, but also to reveal the relative inexperience and naivety of his friends Huck and Tom. Indeed Tom pulls off a similar amoral trick in his own novel, when he appears for his own funeral. And same for Huck; his famous scene of moral realisation ("well then, I'll go to hell") is a startlingly paradoxical one; it's not that he realises rationally that slavery is wrong - it's that he values his loyalty to his friend Jim over that of his loyalty to, I suppose, 19th century Yankee society - the sort represented by church and state at the time, I suppose.
You may be right. I haven't read Twain at all.
ReplyDeleteGreat writer. Probably everyone who reads him has their own personal interpretation of his books.
ReplyDelete