The Unexpected Wisdom of Huck Finn (Week 7)

Mark Twain’s 1884 novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn opens with quite an unusual preface in which Twain himself addresses readers and humorously sets up expectations for the novel by the brief notice that reads “PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.” This early crack actually does mildly prepare the reader for the flavor of humor that is to come, though readers do not encounter the trademark dialect of the book until page 1, when Huck himself says “YOU don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.” The novel immediately begins with Huck’s distinct Southernisms and pulls readers into the setting of Huck’s childhood whether they like it or not. The first time I ever approached this book as an adolescent, the dialect is the very thing that challenged me about the story – it forced me to slow down, to hear the words being spoken, to go syllable by syllable just as if I was encountering a real person speaking to me, and I had to slow down in order to understand what they were saying.

The dialect is an important factor in the success of the novel. Situated firmly within the genre of American Realism, Twain departed from usual conventions by not including an educated mediating narrator, a la Thomas Nelson Page. Rather, Huck does serve as a mediating narrator, just not an educated one. Huck functions as a sort of guide to his own story. Twain writes Huck humble, and real, and Huck takes readers through his landscape with a charming authenticity made more so through his manner of speaking. In addition to this, Huck functions as a pseudo unreliable narrator – Huck believes in what he says and does, but Twain crafts moments where there is a sense of dramatic irony between Huck and the readers. However, rather than being a type of dramatic irony where readers know something about another character or plot in the story, the irony exists in that adult readers simply know more about the world than gullible, superstitious Huck. A moment where this occurs is when Huck and Tom and the gang are playing in the woods, and Tom convinces Huck that genies are real. Huck suspends his disbelief, and after a few days cannot stand not knowing so he goes into the woods to find out. Huck states that he “rubbed and rubbed til I sweat like an Injun, calculating to build a palace and sell it; but it warn’t no use, none of the genies come. So then I judged that all that stuff was only just one of Tom Sawyer’s lies.” Huck is endearing in his childlike beliefs, and this charm coupled with his young and distinct dialect serve to make Huck a narrator that readers wish to follow. Adult readers may know things about life, but Huck knows plenty about being a kid in the late 19^th century, and Huck himself is ultimately able to teach readers about his way of life if nothing else.

Images taken from: http://todaysinspiration.blogspot.com/2009/10/norman-rockwells-illustrations-for.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huckleberry_Finn

All addition information taken from the class materials for Dr. Beringer's ENG 405 class.