Masculine Cowards and Mass Performativity in Huck Finn (Week 8)

Mark Twain’s novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is definitely a product of the late 19^th century. Firmly established within the genre of American Realism, Twain used his platform of cultivated, childlike perspective and careful Southern dialect to satirize popular aspect of culture during the time. One such aspect is this fascination of readers in the 1800s with public spectacles. As noted in Dr. Beringer's ENG 405 class PowerPoints, spectacles took many forms, from seemingly happy occasions such as circuses to horrific human rights crises, such as lynch mobs. Occurrences such as these appear in Huck Finn’s story, with one prominent incident being the speech of Colonel Sherburn to the lynch mob in chapter 22 of the novel.

At this point in the work, Colonel Sherburn is being sought out by a lynch mob for killing a townsman named Boggs. The crowd gets to his house and rushes his fence, destroying it, when Sherburn makes an appearance on his own roof, shotgun in hand, to address the mob. Colonel Sherburn addresses the crowd:

“You didn’t want to come. The average man don’t like trouble and danger. YOU don’t like trouble and danger. But if only HALF a man — like Buck Harkness, there — shouts ’Lynch him! lynch him!’ you’re afraid to back down — afraid you’ll be found out to be what you are — COWARDS— and so you raise a yell, and hang yourselves on to that half-a-man’s coat-tail, and come raging up here, swearing what big things you’re going to do. The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that’s what an army is — a mob; they don’t fight with courage that’s born in them, but with courage that’s borrowed from their mass, and from their officers. But a mob without any MAN at the head of it is BENEATH pitifulness. Now the thing for YOU to do is to droop your tails and go home and crawl in a hole. If any real lynching’s going to be done it will be done in the dark, Southern fashion; and when they come they’ll bring their masks, and fetch a MAN along. Now LEAVE— and take your half-a-man with you”— tossing his gun up across his left arm and cocking it when he says this.”

            This passage, just a portion of two more pages of similar dialogue, expresses an interesting satire on society, both that of the time in which this novel was published, and applicable still to today’s society. At the time, Twain established a dialogue regarding the perils of conformity in a more appropriately individualist society as well as of the conventions of mobs in general, especially those in the southern region with the jab toward the KKK. However, there also seems to be a critique of performed masculinity within this passage. Sherburn repeatedly derisively uses the word “man” to call out what he finds cowardly about the crowd. This hits them in such a way that it actually disarms the crowd – it shames them into submission, precisely what Sherburn wanted. In addition to shaming the spectacle goers through rhetoric that shames the spectacle, Sherburn also jabs at the masculinity of the mob, calling out the necessity of large numbers to feel safe, the cowardice that keeps them from attacking him as he speaks, and the masculine performativity of this whole show. The critique then shifts from one of the show itself to a critique of the necessity of a show to feel masculine in this moment. By calling out this insecurity, Sherburn literally disarms the mob, and lives to shame other townspeople another day.

Image taken from: http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?67169-Boxing-Guard/page2