I see a River, Flowing for Injustice
Chanie, a recently “freed” slave, blocks a blow from her former mistress, Mrs. Barnes as she tries to leave the plantation.
“You unworthy little… You deserve much more than just my hand against your skin” the lady of the house bellows. As the mistress grabs a sharpened shingle to inflict greater harm, Chanie grabs it in self-defense.
“No, ma’am! Please ma’am! Please!”
Mr. Barnes bursts through the door. “What’re try’n do to mah wife. –‘Turn that shingle loose. You god damned old bitch, or I'll knock you in head with this walking stick’” “…She let go of the shingle and suffered Mrs. Barnes to continue beating her.”
She miraculously escapes, covered in scars from the trauma; she seeks solace and flees to town to report the injustice. A man stops her, “I believe as much as the next man y’all deserve your rights, but you oughta return to your home. Ain’t no one gonna help you out here,” as he hides behind his navy blue uniform, returning, unfeeling, to his post—declining to help the powerless woman as she returns to the beating and torture of her former, and falsely enduring, personal tyrants (Testimony of Chanie and of Mary Ann in case of William Barnes).
This very real scenario, even here eliminating the most graphic elements of the testimony, describes the very evils that writer and satirist, Mark Twain would have witnessed in the aftermath of emancipation: unhinged bigotry, situational apathy, and overwhelming cruelty. Of these ills, the southern writer found the situational apathy—the ignorance or uncaring view on the horrors of his society, as the most pressing. He displays his contempt for the society, disillusioned by recent war, and its incapability to learn from its own inhumanity and cruelty. In his novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain descries the lasting problems of the hypocrisy in ignoring the cruelties of the world, while allowing its influence to dictate a person’s views and actions. And, in a mocking of his contemporaries, uses an illiterate, son of the town drunk, Huck, to give them a guide to finding a solution to this hypocrisy. Huck finds his solution by experiencing the horrors of his surroundings off the meandering banks of corruption. With his fellow absconder, the run-away slave Jim, Huck finds his personal sense of morality and ethics, and Twain’s answer to his society’s problems, through interactions with those along the path of the river: a transcendent morality influenced not by the hypocrisy and follies of society, but by conscious removal from that influence.
Twain’s view on the “how to” of rectifying society’s ills may seem romantic and far-fetched. Indeed, his proposed separation from the society’s beliefs does include an air of Transcendentalism: where an inner spark, and not outside influence, dictates a person’s actions. However, unlike Transcendentalism, where all of man’s ideas and morality comes “not through the five senses,” or even “the powers of reasoning;” Twain advocates the utilization of exactly those things that Transcendentalism rejects to arrive at the same understanding. Through Tom Sawyer, a romantic character in his novel, and his contrast to Huck, before and after he finds himself averted to his own society Twain displays the follies of completely ignoring the outside world, and the importance of its experience in social reasoning.
Tom lives by the fictional accounts of swashbucklers and seducers, not real experiences or basic “powers of reasoning”; Huck in the beginning, tries to find through logic, answers to how Tom works and takes all of Tom’s romantic notions as truth. When Huck questions Tom’s miniature society of friends—the “gang”—Tom shoots him down with the belittling question “‘Do you reckon you can learn ‘em anything? Not by a good deal,’” (11). Of course Huck cannot. But Tom cannot either. Both the boys follow rules set by others (Tom follows the law of novels, Huck follows the law of Tom) and neither has the personal experience to determine truth. Only when Huck seeks to test the truth of what he is told, does he gain any ground in finding the answer to ultimate truth.
Also early in the Tom’s act, he relays a fiction of an oncoming fleet of Arabs and genies appearing at a simple rub of a lamp. Huck takes this entire fabrication as truth (Twain 16). He tries to experience the presence of a genie by going away from his friends and “rubbed and rubbed” until “[he] judged that all that stuff was only just one of Tom Sawyer’s lies,” (Twain 18). As Huck initially believed Tom’s romantic fabrications, the southern society Twain catered to often believed the romantic lies of slavery. One antebellum southern plantation owner even asserted, in naivety, or convenient delusion that, "I am almost ready to acknowledge that the African is happier in bondage than free… Here [in the South] they are well-clad, moral, nearly all religious and temptation…cannot approach them,” (O’Sullivan). The lies Huck believes, he tests through experience. The lies Twain’s readers believe, they believe in blind faith. As disparate the consequences of believing these two lies (one justifies the dehumanization of another, and the other justifies the rubbing of a rusted oil lamp), Twain avers that deliverance from the constraints and evils of those untruths, lies in objective experience and tests of the validity of those truths. Huck has not yet learned any great truths by his experience, but the readers now become aware of Twain’s how-to to reach that transcendent truth.
Huck, at this point, does not realize the power of his simple action of testing Tom’s outlandish assertions. He does not realize the power of his unfettered mind, free from the clutter of romantic ideals. Lance Morrow, recognizes in his essay “In Praise of Huckleberry Finn” that “Huck, who spells it ‘sivilized,’ is one of the most truly civilized characters in American letters,” at this point in the novel, however, he cannot ascertain his civilized, moral itches—he, like Twain’s intended readers, only understands what society has told him is true. While Twin’s readers are exposed to a breadth of human experience, and the mental capacity to distinguish and discover a solution to the wrongs, their adherence to the bigoted society does not allow them to see the wrongs clearly or act in a way that moves to right those wrongs. However this stepping stone, displayed by Huck’s questioning of Tom, brings the readers and Huck a step closer to reaching this goal.
However, pure experience, Twain asseverates, does not make for an unbiased truth. Huck’s upbringing and surrounding authority figures try to impress on him, repeatedly, their version of truth. Their understanding, however, lies mainly in hypocrisy. To realize the truth, Huck must remove his own thoughts on morality from the already tainted views of his elders—a task he begins at the onset of his imminent journey. The two women who unofficially “adopted” Huck try to civilize him as best they can, despite Huck’s apparent comfort in wilder, freer, aspects of life. These two women are Miss Watson: a gaunt, severe, pious Christian slave holder, and her sister, Widow Douglas: a slightly less severe, more allowing, caretaker of Huckleberry. Miss Watson, a Christian slaveholder—a common hypocrisy in the southern pre-Civil War—tries to civilize Huck in the same way that she learned to accept Slavery: through words, scolding, and a warped gospel, whereas the Widow Douglas simply exhibits and allows Huck to experience the grace and kindness of humanity. Their joint influence on Huck allows him, and the reader, to ascertain the “good and evil,” “right and wrong” of society.
As Huck returns from a late night gallivanting with his juvenile society, he returns to “a good going-over in the morning from Old Miss Watson... but the widow… didn’t scold,” the latter action, causes a response: he thought he “would behave a while if [he] could,” (13). Twain displays the inadvertence of Miss Watson’s scolding, from the hypocritical Christian willing to believe the lies her society feeds her. Her attempted impressment mimics that of many slave owner’s impressment on their former slaves to remain subservient, but through Jim Crowe laws, forced indebtedness, and unspeakable violence (Kennedy 578, Chanie and Mary Ann vs. Barnes). As Huck, the protagonist favors the person who allows him to live free from outside influence—as symbolized by Widow Douglas’ relative lack of forced dominion.
Twain makes the leaders of society; represented in the new judge in St. Petersburg, change his outcome for the worse. The new judge, instead of listening to the appeals of the town to revoke the custody rights of Pap Finn, the town drunk, and a “a monster of the American id,” claims that since he “didn’t know the old man; … the courts mustn’t interfere and separate families if they could help it;”” (Morrow 3, Twain 26). Pap epitomizes bad parenting and a generally appalling nature, yet the judge still grants him custody of Huck. In this ruling, Twain A) mocks our legal system and B) mocks our way of setting rulings only by what society says is right (e.g. keeping families together despite experience with the parties involved suggesting other action). This outside influence of the judge clearly demonstrates the folly of not utilizing personal experiences in making decisions and maintaining a moral compass. In response to this dangerous ruling, Huck takes another step in gaining his moral sensibilities and betrays the ruling and escapes, faking his own death.
Huck, after escaping, meets Jim, a runaway slave of Miss Watson’s. He overheard that her plans to sell him down the river, far away from all he knew, including his already severed family. Huck and Jim, both flee from their oppression in St. Petersburg, Huck from the force of his abusive, self-indulgent, father, Jim from force of the threat of sale down the river. Twain’s intended audience sees this pair a poor child corrupted by a wanted criminal, when, in reality, Jim provides the very model and example for Huck to begin to formulate his morality.
On Jackson’s Island, Huck starts formulating the basis for his eventual realization: that Jim, viewed as a blemish on the nose of life’s complexion in society’s “perfect” world, deserves his trust and as much protection as a white, adolescent, allegedly murdered child can give. During a stint where Huck dresses as a girl, he lies to discover information while hiding knowledge of Jim, shunning society’s rules (Twain 45). The woman he meets tells him her husband planned to search the island later that night for Jim. This woman represents a normal Southerner, striving to do her neighborly duty by reinstating the status quo, to return property to its rightful owner. Only the set of morals her backwards society gave her justifies this action. She had not pursued any other course However, our protagonist’s reaction to her choice reveals how the separation from society, and his new experiences with Jim on Jackson’s Island, has affected him. He tells Jim that they must flee the island. At this point, Huck does not feel an entire moral obligation to Jim at this point, but disregards society’s rules just enough to aid Jim’s escape.
The moral test on the river pales in comparison to the test he encounters on the Tennessee banks of the Mississippi where he encounters a feud of dangerous proportions among the well-off members of southern society. This family war, reminiscent of that of the Montagues and Capulets on the streets of Verona, had existed “since the dawn of time” or, at least for a few decades (Twain 137). These two families, similar in name (the words Granger—Farmer and Shepherd—Sheep herder both have agricultural roots) and stature follow precedent blindly and shoot and kill each other for no reason other than the battle’s long withstanding legacy. Even the experiences of love, (a Grangerford daughter, and a Shepherdson son run away to get married together) and death (the deaths of “[Buck’s] father and his two brothers…, and two or three of the enemy”) lay no effect to cease the killings (145). When with them, Huck forgets, for the most part, all about how he wanted to save Jim, or, at least stay on the river with him to help him escape. This family, the greatest and the richest of the southern society, is absurd. After Buck’s death, Huck returns to the river with Jim, a life less lofty, but with the security of company who actually cares for his well-being. Another stepping stone away from the Antebellum society that the South revered (O’Sullivan). That experience brought him one step closer to realizing where he should be: with Jim, a person that society has ostracized.
Back on the river, Huck and Jim meet two con men, who declare themselves as The Duke of Bridgewater, and the heir to the dethroned King of France. Their lies push beyond society’s rules. But, unlike Huck’s lies, to protect an acquaintanceship budding on friendship, The duke and king massage the truth for the sole purpose of personal gain (Morrow 3). Huck sees through this. He understands the purpose of lying. He tries to protect Jim from the Duke and King’s deceptive nature. As Lance Morrow explains, censorship of any kind suggests a belittling of the protected, a lower class (Morrow 2). Huck’s naïve protection of his elder, his own protector, acts as a median between his former apathy to a full respect and care for Jim’s well-being.
These low-life scumbags sell Jim. Huck finds himself distraught. Caught in a moral dilemma, he finally pieces together his experience on the river. He sees the uselessness of Miss Watson’s teachings, the bigotry of his abhorrent father, the apathy of others toward Jim’s well-being, the long-standing violence of those above him, and the conniving of those morally below him. He finds, through all these measures, that his society is wrong. As he casts off a final urge to turn Jim in, to wreck the bond that formed between them, he condemns himself, he accepts this condemnation declaring “alright, then, I’ll go to hell,” (Twain 268). This final assertion of his determination to shun his society and aid his friend and father figure, displays Twain’s final step in Huck’s and the reader’s moral journey. He understands truth. He understands justice.
As Twain returns to the story of Tom, who assists Huck in releasing Jim from his newfound bonds, the reader reminisces the beginning of the story: as Tom had done things the “right” way “by the book” and Huck doesn’t understand it, but he goes along with it anyway. Now, Huck knows better. He finds Tom’s ways supercilious, unlike his view of them earlier. Then why does he go along with these crazy ideas of Tom’s? Because in order to show how far Huck has come, Twain has to show where he started. This can only be portrayed in Huck’s internal choice to allow Tom to learn by experience, not from books, not from some weird internal spark, but from the experience of blistering hands, and getting shot, that a romantic lifestyle, like the era right before this novel’s time, was not an efficient or good way to live. Huck also tries to tell Tom of his folly, but allows him to make his own mistakes. He has risen to a higher standard, he cast away his old following what other’s thought of him and accepts that they for the most part all naively follow the rules of their society, granting them limited, but valid morality.
Mark Twain guides his readers at checkpoints throughout his novel, to “unlearn” what the racist society has told them is just. The racist readers, Twain’s intended audience, previously seeing Jim as a nothing, an item to be bartered, now have the vicarious experience of . Twain understands the racist readers view on this state and, as Twain scholar Jocelyn Chadwick points out, only after Huck has spent a substantial amount of time with Jim, does he begin to unlearn what his entire society has taught him: that “Jim’s a man. Jim’s a person. He’s not 3/5 of a person… We actually hear him making those connections in his head,” (Mark Twain). After Huck removes his society’s preconceptions based on false outward influences, and finally listens to Jim’s experiences, he makes the moral connection, that Jim actually has a soul. As commonplace as that realization seems now, to Huck, it seemed unnatural for a black person to have a soul. The horrors of the “peculiar institution” as he previously saw it, seemed justified by this way of thinking—this false way of thinking.
