THEME OF DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD'S PERCEPTIONS IN THE NOVELS OF MARK TWAIN

SUBMITTED FOR THE AWARD OF THE DEGREE OF Mnittx of pi)tlogoptip IN ENGLISH

BY Madihur Rehman Suhaib

Under the supervision of Mr. Raza Imam Reader

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH ALIGARH MUSLIM UNIVERSITY ALIGARH (INDIA) 1892 ^^CaaED-20Q2 2 9 APR 199^

DS2140 Preface

The present dissertation is a study of the therne of development of child' s perceptions in the xr.ajcr novels of Mark Tv/ain, particularly The Adventures of Tom 3a-,r>-er and The Adventure.3_of Huckleberry Finn. The developrrent in child' s perceptions is basically a grov/th in his conscious­ ness. As the interaction between, the child and his social environment increases, "che child begins to face the cruest:icr- of his relationship with the environment. The environnent makes certain demands on the child v.inich he resents. A3 a result of the conflict between the desire to belong and the resistance to society' s efforts at rrculding his personality to its oiinn perceptions, the consciousness of the child grcv.-s and his perceptions develop. The direction of the gro'.vth in his consciousness — whether he decides to reject society in favour of his instincts or struggles to gain control of his envircnm.ent, compromising to some extent with the environ­ ment in order to do so — depends upon the personality of the child and his social bacl-ground.

In this dissertation special attention has been paid ''-^ The Adventures of Tom Sav/yer and '^ne Adventures of Huc.

these two novels. It has also been argued that there is no gap between the two novels and thematically they are irore closely related than the other novels of Mark Tv/ain.

I take this opportunity to thank all those v/ho haya helped in the preparation of this dissertation. The Chairman of the Department, Professor A. Tariq, has been very supporting and encouraging throughout the period. I am highly indebted to my supervisor, Mr. Raza Imam, for giving roe unlimited access to his time. I am specially thankful to my friend and my fellov/ student of Mark Twain, Dr. M. Asim Siddiqui, for providing me with all the material that I nee­ ded. I am also thankful to my friend Mr. Shafaat Ali Khan, for typing the dissertation with care, as if it was his per­ sonal work. I am indebted to all friends and well-wishers without whose support and encouragement the completion of the -fjor'k would have become infinitely more difficult.

C Madihur Rahman Suhaib ) 0 N T 3 N T 3

Page lb,

Frafaca i

Ghaptar I 1

Ghaptar II 36

Ghaptar III 88

Conclusion 175

Bibliography 186

•ki

INTRODUCTION

Child characters and the process of their initiation held a strong fascination for Mark Twain. Again and again we find him making children protagonists of his works and follov/ing their journey from innocence to experience. The fi^iventures of TpTn oavxyer. The Adventures of HuckleberrA; Finn, The Prince and the Pauper, Joan of Arc, Pudd' nhead Wilson, The I^sterious Stranger, Life on the Mississippi all revolve around child characters and their experiences. So is also the case with such minor vrorks as Torn_Sawyer Abroad, Tpm Sawyer Detective, Tpm Sawyer Anonqst Indians etc. But they are hardly more than hasty and clumsy attennpts at capitalising on the popularity and commercial success of The Adventures of Tom Sa^^vver.; hence they hardly deserve any critical attention. Life on the Mississippi and Joan of Arc also lie outside the sphere of this study. The former, though having a strong fictional strain. Is an autobiogra­ phical work and cannot qualify for being called a novel. Tne latter is a fictional work but it does not , dramatize the development of the child's perceptions through experience. Its protagonist is a highly idealized character, shown from the very beginning as an extraordinary child with a well-defined mission in life. There is even a hint of the super-natural about her personality. Such an idealised character cannot but be immune to the external social, economic and political forces. She has an element of divinity in her that does not require experience for development.

Of the rest of the novels, though all of them deal with the theme of grov/th of child' s consciousness in one way or the other. The Adventures of Tom 3av/ver and The Adven­ tures of Hucxleberrv Finn are the most closely related. They both have early nineteenth century South-West America as their social setting; ail the major characters of the former are repeated in the latter, the protagonist of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn being second only to Tom himiself in importance in The Adventures of Tom. Sav.ver; and in both the novels Tv/ain dramatises the growth of child* s consciousness as the child accumiulates experience while try­ ing to find his place in a not very congenial social envi­ ronment. The themie of growth of child* s consciousness' also ixsrcrpcrates an analysis of the nineteenth century American Society, its attitudes and primary concerns, and its miotiva- tions. In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn the attitudes of society are presented as fundamentally opposed to the child's perceptions and responses. The other novels, though dealing with the growth or child' s consciousness to soma extent, ar either both in thematic orientation and social setting or in one of therri.

The Prince and the Pauper has Tador England as its social setting. Though such problems as cruelty of -an to man, greed, heartlessness and callousness of mankind, which recur in almost all the works of Mark Twain, form the thema­ tic core of the novel, and it attempts to present the effects of all these socio-n-;oral problems on the de^elopir.er.t of child's perceptions, the special and temporal distance of the book' s social setting from. Twain' s own society does take away from it the urgency and the cutting edge of the social and moral satire that is one of the chief characteristics of Tne Adventures of Tom. Saw\'er and The Adventures of Huckle­ berry Finn. The plot of the novel revolves around t'.vo child characters who, though identical in physical features, are as different frcmi each other in their social starus as any two characters can be. One of them, Tom Canty, belongs to the lowest stratum: of society, being a miember of a family of beggars, while the other is the Grovm Prince of Sncland, belonging to the highest echelon of the ruling class. They are similar to each other in one respect though : they both are dissatisfied with their present circumstances and have a strong desire to experience the opposite. They both get a chance to actually have their desire fulfilled v/hen Terr, bv accident, gets enterance into the castle and .-eets the Prince. They exchange their clothes and, with them, their roles. The actual Prince gets kicked out of the castle as a beggar and Tom is taken to be the real Prince. Tneir respective ordeals begin. They both are ill-equipped to deal with the social surroundings in v.-hich they find them­ selves and, consequently, both are supposed to have gene ma: Tom: finds much in the castle abhorrant and repulsive; -here is miuch to which he cannot relate himself. But slowly, ever the weeks, he becomies assimiilated in his new surroundings, so m.uch so that tovvards the end, for fear of losing his new­ found glory and pov/er, he refuses to recognise his m.other, the only person apart from^ his sisters who has genuine lcv€ for him and had tried to protect him fromi a cruel father anc an equally cruel grand-m.other while he had still not changec places with Prince Sdward. Prince 3dward, on the other hand, goes out into the world over which he is shorrly expec ted to rule and sees all its drawbacks and shortcomings, particularly the mdsery, the heartlessness, the cruelty and the creed which characterize it. He lives with the scums ci society and comes to understand the causes which maive them what they are, especially the role played by the rigid lav/s of his father in destroying' the happiness of the commicn people and turning therri into sub-humans. The effect of the experience is to make him mora humane and considerate.

The novel also incorporates an analysis of the six­ teenth century Snglish society, its perceptions and its mode of conduct. Where The Prince and the Pauper differs from The Adventures of Tom: Savp/er and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is in its failure to give any deeper, universal significance to the experiences of the tv/o prota­ gonists J it does not provide a study of the effects of these experiences on the gro'.vth of the consciousness of its protagonists in the context of a child's struggle to find his place in his social environment. Take, for example, Tom; Canty and his experiences. Critics have miade attem^pts to draw parallels between his behaviour, his dream.s and his efforts to translate his dreams into reality in his gamies, and Tc~ Sa-.vyer's behaviour, his dreams and his efforts to translate his dreams into reality.~ Such comparisons, at best, can be superficial only since the social context of To-; Sav.yer's dreams is missing in the dream^s of Tomi Canty. Tom Savjyer's dreamis and his efforts at translating these dreamiS into reality have a strong social context. They are the e£crts c£ a ch-ild who finds him.self pitted against a po^Y-erful socio-Gultural environm.ent. He is engaged in a struggle to find his place in a society to whose dictat he does not v/ant to submit, and yet he cannot discard and reject it. His dreaiiis reflect this conflict in his consciousness. Tom Canty's 'drearns, on the other hand, do not reflect any such conflict, and nowhere in the novel do v.'e get the impression that Tom Canty is at all concerned v/ith finding a place in a hostile and yet impossible to reject environment. The environment is hostile, no doubt, and Tom Canty feels a misfit in it, but his dreams and his games which incorporate these dreams are no more than an escape from a harsh reality. It is ov/ing to this difference that Tom Sa^^yer feels at home and comipletely at ease when his dreams are realized and he actually becomes a hero, but Tom Canty, on the realization of his dreams, feels as m.uch out of place in his new surroun­ dings as he had felt in his original surroundings. Bven when he finally seems to like his nev/ surroundings so much that he refuses to recognise his own mother for the fear of losing them, it turns out to be a superficial change : he cannot sustain his new role and breaks down easily when confronted v/ith the real heir to the throne.

One may also be tempted to drav/ comparisons between Edward and Huckleberry Finn, Edward' s c3ream of achieving 'freedom' is translated into reality when he is thrown out of the castle, v/hile Kuck, who feels cramped and imprisoned at the house of widow Douglas, gets a taste of "freedoin" v/hen ha travels do--7n the river on the raft. Both come face to face with certain unpleasant and repulsive realities of life, and in both cases there is a v;ide gap- betv/een expec­ tation and reality. The experiences of each of the prota­ gonists, as he confronts the world of reality, have a' strong element of violence, cruelty, heartlessness, treachery and greed. The Prince and the Pauper, in so far as 3dward is concerjred, ends exactly where it started, i.e. in the castle. After his journey through society and life, the Prince returns triumphantly to his real home to be coronated on account of the death of the king, his father. The Adven­ tures of Huckleberry Finn also ends in a social setting very similar to the one in v/hich it started, v/ith Aunt Sally expressing the desire oradoptixig and "sivilizirg" Huck. The death of his father in his absence also enables himi to get his share of the treasure and put his decision of rejecting society into practice. One may also be tem.pted to drav/ comparisons between Edward' s relationship with Miles Hendon and Kuck' s relationship v;ith Jim. In both the cases it is a complex protector-protected relationship with the roles of the participants often getting reversed. In the case of Huck and Jim, in many instances Jim acts as the protector of the young lad, such as when he predicts a storm coming and persuades Huck to take refuge in the cave beforehand, while 8

in other instances he himself has to depend upon the white boy for his o'wn safety. Similarly^ Kenden acts as the protector of Ed'ward throughout his journey through society, but has to depend finally upon Edward, his ward (now the king) for acquiring his inheritance and his rightful place in society.

But, as in the case of two Toms, such comparisons can only be superficial. . The social context of Huck's desire for freedom is at least vague if not missing, in the case of Edward. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the protagonist's feelings of being morally and physically cram­ ped are stror^gly emphasized, and the basic conflict bet-.-,-een his perceptions and responses and those of his envirorirent • is forcefully presented. Such a conflict between the pro­ tagonist and his environment is missing in The Prince and the Pauper. Edward' s desire for freedom is passive. Ke, unlike Kuck, does not work actively to get av/ay from the enx'ironment v/hich gives rise in him. to a feeling of being cramped and imprisoned. 'ATiile Huck plans and executes his escape from the log hut in the woods where his father keeps him^ locked, Edward does nothing to escape from the castle. /Jhen he does get away from it, it is not of his o-wn volition he is mistaken for Tom Canty and kicked out by the guards at the gate. Actually, Edward does not want to get away from his eri^/ironrrent; he is not even cor^cerred with the search for his place in his environment — his place has already- been deter.-nined by his birth and he accepts it mtitely. That is v/hy he makes a strong and violent protest v;han ha is forced cut of the castle by the guards. The novel is niore about the grow-th of a king's consciousness rather than a child' s.

It is cv/ing to this difference in the sensibilities and perceptions of the protagonists of the two novels that

— n :::a =1—^'---^— — .=s s of their experiences on their consciousness aisc show a rr^arked difference. For Huck the journey down the river is essentially a search for an alternative environiinent, more conducive to his perceptions and responses. He starts cut en. his journey after rejecting the society of St. Petersburg and all that the widow and, after her, ?ap symbo­ lize, Consequently, he shov;s no desire to rejoin society at the end and decides to run av/ay for the Territory "ahead of the rest" v/hen he comes to learn that Pvjnt Sally is going to adopt hi.- and "sivilize"* him. His experiences cf the journey also contribute towards convincing hir, that it is not possible for him to rind a micre conducive alternative envirorj-ent. Hack, moreover, is torn betv/een the desire tc belong on the one hand, anci the impossibility of finding an alternative to a society to which he cannot belong, on the 10

other. 'The growth in his consciousness results from this conflict ana leads him to the rejection of both, the society as well as the search for an alternative enviroriment.

2award, on the contrary, does net start out on his journey after rejecting the life in the castle and all that it syrri^olizes, hence he has no objection to re-entering it. 'The journey for him is sim.ply a process of learnirjg, of gaining xno'./ladge about the facts and realities of Tudor England. -he experiences of the journey make him. m.ore humane tov/ards his subjects as a king, no doubt, but there is no basic and fundamental change in his approach to life and society. He never has any conflict concerning society and his place in his envirorim.ent. In even the most adverse of circum.stances he behaves as what he is, the Crown ?rince of ingland, even if it mieans his getting ridiculed or treate roughly. Moreover, he alv/ays maintains a distance from, his surroundings and the incidents happening around him. through­ out his v;andering3 and never mixes up v/i-h others in any activity even v;hen he is forced to participate in it. The distress "hat ha shovvs over instances of cruelry and barba­ rity to which he is often a v;itness, is -he distress of a ruler v.-irnessing tha plight of his subjects; his emiotional involvem.ent at such moments is ne-/er the in\^olv3m.ent of a comumon person. Always, at such micmients, he thinks that on 11

ascending tha throne he V7ill_ bring about a chance for tha better in society by making the laws lenient and more humane. So 3dv/ard never forgets, even for a moment, that he is not a comnnon person but a prince who has powar, and, mora impor­ tantly, he dem.ands that he be treated in a befitting manner.

This fundam.ental difference between the approaches of Huck and Edward Is also reflected in their respective rela­ tionship with Jim> and Miles Hendon. The conflict in Huc3c' s consciousness between the conditioned part of his self and his uPiConditioned instincts is very miuch in evidence in his relationship v/ith Jimi. Tha conditioned part of his consci­ ousness com;pells him to regard «Jim. as a run-away slave, a niggex, helping whom to freedom is a sin inviting the seve­ rest of punishim.ents. On the other hand the instincts of his "pure heart" force him to see Jim as another human being, a friend, the only real ona he has ever had, v/ho has stood by him; in thick and thin and with whom he has spent some of the best m>oments of his life. The developnent of an authentic relationship betv/ean a white boy in search of his place in life and a run-av/ay slave in search of his freedom reflects the growth in the consciousness of the protagonist. 2dward, on the other hand, shows no- such conflict regarding his rela­ tionship with Kendon. It remains a relationship bet-ween a ruler and his subject from the beginning till the end. Tne 12

relationship undergoes no transformation because the effect of the experiences on the protagonist's consciousness is limited and does not lead to any reassessment of his basic approach to life. Sdxvard accepts all that H-endon does for himi as his due and, unlike Huck, does not shov/ any thankful­ ness for it. vniatever Hendon does for him can be repaid by giving him the permission to sit in his presence, without any alteration in the relationship itself. The granting of permission is not m.otivated by any concern for Hendon's dis­ comfort ; it is a gesture by the ruler acknov/ledging the services rendered by a subject. In the world from which Edward comes, gestures are very important : it is the grand- nes3 of the gesture, not the depth or extent of emotional involvement, which reflects the quality of a relationship. Since Sdv/ard is not able to transcend the consciousness of his environment, he resorts to gestures in his relationship with riendon.

So, The Prince and the Fauper is different, from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckle­ berry Finn in its social setting as v/ell as in its major thematic concerns. The growth in the consciousness of both Tom Canty and the Prince is superficial. It does not involve on the child' s part any critical evaluation of the basic attitudes, perceptions and responses of his environment. 13

The protagonists remain concerned v/ith the surface features of the life around them and never feel the need to reassess their own relationships with their environirants. The novel, v^hile presenting the affects of experience on the developunent of the child's percepticns does not go to the extent of exploring the possibilities before a child 'whose perceptions and responses are not in accord with the perceptions and responses of his environment.

The Mysterious Stranger is even more v;idely different from the novels. Like The Prince and the Pauper, it also has a social setting far removed from Tv/ain both in distance and time as it is set in Austria in the fourteenth century. Alth­ ough thematically the novel makes some child characters come face to face with an unpleasant and repulsive reality through Satan, it is not concerrjed so much with the effect of this un­ pleasant reality on the consciousness of children as with the reality itself. That is, the novel is rot so much a dramatisa­ tion of the growth of child* s consciousness as philosophical discourse on the deprevation of mankind and the worthlessness, even undesirability, of human existence. The child characters in fact do not even experience the unpleasant realities of depravation and degradation of mankind and the vjorthlessness of human existerce : they are either simply told about it or it is shown to them from a distance by Satan, x^ithout their 14

living thxough it themselves. Though, as a result of acq­ uiring this knov/ladge, they undergo a change in their out- loolc, the focus of attention in the novel is not OD the growth of child* 3 consciousness but on the problems of human exis­ tence which had become IH-^ain' s chief concern in his ad^/anced years.

The novel begins with a f ev; children who' are as yet completely innocent, having seen nothing of life or manjcind. They still have hope and faith in the essential goodness of humanity, and possess certain ideals. Then one day they meet Satan and he changes everything. He shows thera how insignificant man really is and hov/ absurd all his finer feelings and emotions are. He takes away their belief in the essential goodness of humanity and proves to thera that man is basically a mean, treacherous, cruel, selfish and calculating creature; that animals are far better than him and hence to describe any of his actions as beastly or savage is an insult to animals and beasts. Satan systema­ tically demolishes all the ideals that the children have. He goes into a tirade against morality and argues that all morality is a sham and a cover-up for selfish motives. He shows the children hcv/ cruel man can be to his f ellov/ human beings, and how he can torture them for self-advaixzemient or simply for pleasure. In this novel T\^rain also brings under 15

discussion the relationship that can exist between human beings and the Supreme Pov/er and argues, through Satan, that man can be no more than a play-thing for Him and that He cannot be in anyway concerned with the plight of individuals or of humsanity at large. The implication of the argument is that there is no hope for humanity at all, it cannot draw solace from the idea of a benevolent God. The children, as they slov7ly acquire knov/ledge about life and manjcind, com.e to lose hope and turn cynical. But sines' the knov/ledge does not come through experience the change in the percep­ tions and outlook of the children remains forced and the novel lacks social and historical authenticity even though it abounds in references to socio-cultural practices of the period.

Pujid'._nhead V^^ilson^ which deals with i^erica of the early E.in'ateenth :century, is closer to The Adventures of _Torn Sav.n/er and The Adventures of Huclcleberry Finn so far as its social setting is concerned, but thematic ally it is as far removed from the two novels as The Prince and the Pauper or The rwsterious Strarxjer. The plot of the novel is woven around an event of exchange of identities, the substitution of the new-born son of Percy Northumberland Driscoll, a des­ cendant of the First Families of Viriginia, by the illegiti­ mate offspring of a slave-girl in his house-hold, Roxy 16

Roxy e^cchanges the babies so that her son can get all the advantages of white aristocracy and does not have to face the deprivations and humiliations of slavery. The baby, christened Thomas a Becket Driscoll, gets all the privileges of the class but gro.ws up to be a selfish, calculating cheat and a scoundrel. The real Discroll, "Chambers" as he is called, faces all the deprivations and humiliations that characterise the life of a slave but grows up to. be an upright and honcut pernon. Torn commits a scarlQs of crimes and vil­ lainies : he maltreats Chambers after Chambers has saved his life; he robs his friends and the benevolent uncle who has brought him up and made him his heir; he sells his mother to be a slave on a cotton plantation down the river in order to prevent her from disclosing his real identity, and, at last, murders his guardian uncle and tries to get an innocent person accused of it.

The mysteries of both, the identities and the murder, are cleared up by Pudd'nhead Wilson, a lawyer. Pudd'nhead has a reputation for being a fool, although he has a pleasant personality and is very intelligent, perhaps too intelligent for the simple-minded people of Dawson's Landing, a small Missouri river town. He has lived in the town for the past tv;enty years but since there are no indications that he belongs to the upper strata of society, he cannot get'any.respect from 17

his fellow townspeople. The defence of the person falsely accused of the'murdei- cbrhmitted by Tom Driscoll .is his first case in twenty years. He brings out the truth in the open through the use of finger-prints, then a completely new 2 idea. The novel ends with Tom being sold down the river, Chambers getting his inheritance and his rightful place in society and Pudd' nhead achieving his long-over-due reputation and respect.

Pudd' nhead VJilson does, in a way, deal with the problems of an individual's rightful place in society but it does not dramatize an active search for this place by the child. Both Tom and Chambers grow up in environments to which, by birth at least, they do not belong. Their respec­ tive personalities are shov/n to be out of keeping with the social environments in which they grow up : Chambers growing up to be an upright and honest man while Tom grows up to be a rascal. But it does not lead to any conflict in the cons­ ciousness of the two boys. Owing to this absence of conf­ lict, there is no active search for the right place in society. Chambers gets his rightful place without in any way strivincj for it; neithei: is he responsible for the disc­ losure of the true identity of Tom. He comes to face a dilemma about his position in society only towards the end of the novel, after his true identity is disclosed and he 18

has got his due place. He becomes a misfit in his new social environment; nothing in his upbringing has prepared him for his new surroundings and the new role which he is required to play. His dilemma is deepened by the fact that now he is unwelcome in his old social surroundings of slave tenements. Chamber's dilemma is similar to Huck* s dilemma towards the end of The_ A.dye.nture_s. _Qf.„To_m Sawyer and in the beginning of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Like Huck, Chamber's language, his manners, his sensibility are all out of keeping with his new environment. But in this novel there is no effort at resolving logically the dilemma of the protagonist by making him face the situation squarely and searching for a way out of it. In The Adventures of Tom. Sawyer, when Huck finds that he cannot morally and emotio­ nally relate to his new environment, he takes the decision of rejecting it for the old one and once again runs away to hogsheads.. It is only Tom's promise of letting him join the robbers' gang which makes him go to the Widov/' s house again to try it out for a month. In The Adventures of. Huckleberry Finn we find him gettiixj slowly assimilated into the new environment although he still has contradictions with it which assert themselves when he is kidnapped by his father. He once again makes the conscious decision of run­ ning away .V7hen he is locked in a log hut by Pap Finn. The 19

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in fact^ progresses through a succession of rejections of different social environments as inadequate by Huck, the final being that of Phelp's plan­ tation. But Chambers makes no such decision despite the fact that he is not emotionally equipped to deal with his surroundings. He also does not make any efforts to get adjusted to them. So, his ordeal remains inconclusive without any direction given to it.

Pudd' nhead Wilson' also does not dramatise tho deveJop-- ri]ent of the child's perceptions tlirough accumulation of experi­ ence. Neither Tom* s villainy nor Chambers' uprightness are shown to be the effects of their respective social environ­ ments. They are, rather, the effects of heredity., The Implication, however, is not that Tom is villainous because of the nergo blood in him and Chambers is honest because he is born of v/hite parents. Tom has inherited his personality traits from Colonel Cecil, a white man of aristocratic e;

thematically Pudd* nhead Wilson is quite different from The Adventures o£ Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckle­ berry Finn..

John S. Wliitley has tried to draw parallels betv;een Tom Saviryer and Tom Driscoll despite the obvious thematic differences between the tv;o novels. In his own words :

In fv/ain* s grimly funny and last American novel, Pudd* nhead Wilson... there is another Tom, Tom Discroll, who is now very much the villain of the piece; thief, coward, and murde­ ter; he\is also discovered to be one thirty- second black and, Dawson' s landing being an obvious first cousin to St. Petersburg, he is promptly sold down river. Perhaps, at the last. Twain balanced the books, repaying Tom for all Jim's indignities. 3

This view owes itself to the fact that Vfliitley is not very kindly disposed towards Tom Sawyer. Here he casti­ gates him for what he does in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. But the Tom of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is completely different from Tom Dtiscoll, He has -, courage, a sense of moral responsibility and social commitment, and the willingness and capability to stand up for truth even in the face of threat to his own self. Moreover, all his actions, even those that may seem villainous or callous or inconsiderate, originate from his search for his place in society and his desire to control his environment in order 21 to escape its efforts at subjugating his will. Tom Dris- coll'3 vlllal ny is motivated purely by selfish and mercenary considerations: and it does not carry any suggestions of search for a place in society. So, such a comparison bet­ ween the tVvTo characters simply on the basis of similarity in their names can only be misleading.

Unlike these novel. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, are very closely related to each other in more ways than one. Twain conceived the idea od variting the latter novel while he was still in the process of writing the former and, although The Adven­ tures of Huckleberry Finn was completed some seven years after the completion of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Twain started writing it immediately after completing his first novel of the adventures of ^'boy. it was the realization of the possibilities and the potential of the character of Huck Finn as the protagonist of a novel of his own which suggested the writing of another novel about the adventures of a. boy. This view is corroborated by the fact that Huck comes to play an increasingly more prominent role as The Adventures, of Torn Sawyer draws to its close. The focus of the novel gradually shifts to Huck, his feelings, his outlook and his perceptions as he comes in conflict with the environment at the widow's place after having been adopted by her. A3 Twain 22

developed the theme of compromise and adjustment between Tom Sawyer and his environment, he probably bacame aware of another possibility, that of rebellion against and the rejection of the same environment by the protagonist. So, as the focus shifts from Tom to Huck, the first gesture that Huck makes is that of rejection— not the fancied rejection of Tom, but an actual one: he runs away from the widoW/ discards his new clothes and goes to sleep in an empty hogshead. This act of rejection symbolized by running away is a recurrent motif in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and embodies Huck'3 search for his place in a hostile and uncongenial social environment. At the level of plot also The Adven-' tures of Huckleberry Finn begins exactly where The Adventures of Tom Sa;>rver ends, with Huck declaring that "You don* t know about me, without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer...." The first novel ends with Tom promising that they will have the "initiation" of the robbers' gang, which he is going to form, that very night. The initiation takes place in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Moreover, there is hardly any difference in the tone of the last chapter of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the first few chapters of The Adventures of. Huckleberry Finn. Mark Twain, in fact, conceived his second novel of boyhood as no more than a "kind of companion 23

4 to Tom Sawyer." The sub-title of the novel, "Tom Sawyer's 5 Comrade", underlines this point. Both, The Adventures q£, Tom Sawyer and The Adven­ tures of Huckleberry Finn., are set in the South-West Ajnerica of the third and fourth decades of the nineteenth century, that is^ around the time of Twain* s own childhood and boyhood. The plot material of both the novels has been borrowed from that period of Twain' s life. In the Preface to The Adventures of, Tom Sawyer, he himself claims that "Most of the adven­ tures recorded in this book really occured; one or two were experiences of my own, the rest those of boys who were school mates of mine." The Adventures of,Tom Sawyer^ in fact, drav;s heavily on his experiences of childhood and boyhood in Hannibal, a small Mississippi tov;n in the South America. Much of The Adventures of Huckleberry, Finn, in a similar fashion, is crafted out of Twain' s experiences of the Missi­ ssippi as a cub-pilot, particularly the great middle section of the novel. While explaining the different shades of the dialect used in the novel. Twain claims, "Tte shadings have raot been done in a haphazard fashion or by guess-work; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of si)eech. ..7 This is not an exaggerated claim. Twain really was inti­ mately familiar v/ith the life of the small, "one-horse" 24

towns along the banks of the Mississippi, which he has so vividly presented in The__J\dventure,3__q^

Apart from this, in his autobiography Twain himself tells us that the model for Phelps' Farm was provided by the farm of his uncle where he used to spend a lot of time during his 8 childhood.

During the period in which 'E}l^^J^^^Jl^S^^^s,Jl£^_!?P^

Sayjyer and 'Tlie A'^y.Q-"A^j^.^s.. ,PA ..^^pXl-'%^..Q^-^y. .^An-n. were v/ritten,

Twain was forced to ruminate over that part of his life v/hich supplied material to the two novels. 55l*-lJ^VG."'tu_r_e_s._oX .Tqm_

^awy^er_ was started in 1874, but when he had v/ritten about half of it, he found that "the tank had run dry" and he put it aside for two years. In 1875, on the instance of Hov/ells, he wrote a series of essays for the ^y^an_-y.jq,J^qn.-ttTlyp called

"Old Time on the Mississippi", based on his life as a boy in Hannibal. It was, probably, this endeavour to recollect impressions and facts of the early part of his boyhood which filled the tank up and enabled him to take up the abandoned novel again. When he did so he found that he had "plenty of material now and the book went on and finished itself without any trouble." The same pattern was repeated when ha wrote The._M\^ejxtux<2.S._o£..J^^^^ ^^® started this novel immediately after completing the previous one and the first burst of'inspiration s^w him through to what 25

is now the sixteenth chapter of the novel. After that the book refused to advance any further. Again he put the novel aside, this time for six years. In 1882 he visited the river valley again to collect material for another book — IjifA on. the. Mississippi,. The visit and the accompanying rush of old memories and impressions provided a fresh impetus that enabled him to write the great middle section of the novel.

The childhood to boyhood part of his life remained central to Twain's personality and imagination. Although in an undelivered letter of l87 6 to V^ill Bowen he wrote that nostalgia was "simply mental and moral masterbation", in an earlier letter that he had ^written to Bowen in 1870 he con­ fessed : "Your letter has stirred me to the bottom. The fountains of my great deep are broken up and I have rained reminiscences.... The old life ha,3 swept before me... the old faces have looked out of the mists of the past— and the songs I loved ages and ages ago have come wailing down the centuries". •'••'• As a matter of fact, his autobiographical works and letters reveal his fondness for going over this period of his life again and again. In k4.1« ,0."-the.Jli3.3_i_~ ssippi he wrote that he longed to be left to "dream that the years had not slipped away; that there had been no war, no mining days, no literary adventures", that he was "still a 26 pilot, happy and carefree" because a pilot "was the only unfettered and entirely independent being that lived on earth.... In truth, every man and woman and child has a master, and worries and frets in servitude; but in the day 1 ? I write of, the Mississippi pilot had none". So it is hardly surprising that the material for the two of his grea­ test works should be supplied by this period of his life. One reason for the richness of the two novels, and the vivid­ ness of their episodes and of their impressions is precisely that they make use of Twain' s ov/n experiences of his life in Hannibal and of his piloting days on the Mississippi. He deals with the theme of a child gaining experience through encounter with life in other novels as well, but all of them lack the richness of detail and the vividness of impression •that The Adyentjjres jpf. ^Torn A^vgej?, and The ..Myentu_res, pf^ Huckleberry Finn have. Twain himselE once said that he retained in his memory a "picture" of that part of his life which he had made use of in these two novels "as clear 13 and vivid as a photograph". Of course, it is not just his early life that has found expression in the two novels. Much of his nostalgic and idealized recollection of the earlier part of his life was occasioned by the disillusionment and dissatisfaction in the later part of his life. His dissatisfaction with 27

his present made him dwell longingly and caressingly upon his past extensively in his letters and autobiographical works even though the past in itself was not all that ideal— a time of freedom and lack of all restraint ~ ais he has made it out to be. There was much in it, as Walter Blair has pointed out, which was undesirable and repulsive to him. 14 His reminiscences of the "ideal" past therefore cannot but an escape from an even more undesirable and repulsive present,

This^ however, •' should not be taken to mean that the presentation of boyhood is idealistic in The Mvg.ritu.r.e.s jof. Tom Sa.yfyer_ and The Adventures of, HuGkleberry Finn. There is a marked contrast between Twain's descriptions on his own childhood in his letters and autobiographical works and the way he presents it in these two novels. In the novels, childhood is not at all a time of freedom and unalloyed joy. Both Tom and Huck are "harassed" and "hampered" and requ­ ired to be "respectable" in the respective novels. They both resent it and this resentment is expressed, in the case of Tom in his desire to control his environment, and in that of Huck in his decision to "light out for the Territory ahead of the rest".

Since both the novels derive their factual details 28

and thematic concerns from Twain's own life and dealt with questions which were of vital importance to him at the time of writing them- they have a unity of kind. Both of them- deal with the problem, of the place of an individual in a hostile socio-moral environment. They are in a way comple­ mentary to each other. But most of the critics tend to see a gap between the two novels and regard The_,,,Advent_ure^s of, HiicXlQJ^QrrxJ*iri.n_ as the better of the two. Even the most perceptive critics have regarded Tom as simply the "Good 15 Boy" in disguise or considered Tl2S,J^^^Q.t"i£®s,J2JLJ?5^ SavA/er a novel representing a reversal of the good-boy- succeeding-in-the-end myth. Even a perceptive critic like Cynthia Griffin Wolff, who agreera that it is not pos­ sible to fully appreciate The /'^dye^ntures of Fluck^leberrx Finn if v;e diminish the complexity of Tom Sawyer's world since "one explanation for the questing need that fills Huck' s own tale must be found here, in the fabricated town of St. Petersburg on the Mississippi", 17' differs only slightly from Leo Marx or T. s. Eliot whom she criticizes. In essence,, her argument too boils down to the view that The Adye^ntjare^s. of. Tom Sawy_er_ deserves serious attention beeause of its "greater" sequel. This ignores the fact that the novel deserves to be considered in its own right, irresi-iective of ^'^ -'^Y!^-"..tR^Q-S..o^ •^•^'^^iQl^^^^y. ^^"P,' Both the novels deal 29

v;ith the same material : the problem of a child, not corrup­ ted by experience and at odds with his environment, trying to find his p]ce. But they confront the reader with two different possibilities : the possibility of ultimate compromise in the case of one, and the possibility of ultimate rebellion in the cage of the other. IE The ^^Mvemtures of Jjuqkleberry Finn appears graater than The ^Adxenture_3_ pf,, ,Tom^ .Sawy_er^ it is because rebellion is always more attractive than compromise. But it should not blind us to the fact that the position which Mark Twain arrives at in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is valid in itself. Given Tom's limitations of birth and upbringing, the influences he receive in his impressionable, formative years and the ideas he imbibes, the growth of his conscious­ ness cannot take any other direction but the one it takes. The presentation of the growth of Tom* s consciousness is not only an acknowledgement of the power of the established order, probably a result of Twain' s own experience of New England society, but also an indictment of it. The established order is shov/n to be corrupt, callous and conditioned by certain degenerate traditions and ideas. The dramatization of the growth of the protagonist's consciousness,indicts it for being unable to even tolerate the creative urges of an uncorrupted and unconditioned heart, let alone support them.

The perception that The_J^verijbu.^^^ is 30

a children's book derives largely from a misconception of the representation of St. Petersburg society in the novel. Almost all the critics, with the exception of Bernard DeVoto and Cynthia Griffin Wolff, have regarded it as a benevolent and charitable one. When they do so, they judge it by their own standards and do not take into account Tom's feelings concerning it. They also overlook the fact that the St, Petersburg society is singularly inimical to the urges of a "pure heart" 'and does not provide the child with any channel for giving expression to his creative energies. Instead, it tries its best to hinder the uninterrupted flow of these energies. The role played by the social institutions — the home, the church and the school — is crucial in this regard and deserves a detailed discussion.

The two novels, however, should be studied in the sequence in which they appeared for a proper analysis. For the Tom of The Adventures of Tom .Sawyer^ is radically diffe­ rent from the Tom of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In the sequel to his own novel, Tom plays a largely negative role despite the fact that Huck often uses him as a yard­ stick to measure his own achievements. The most negative aspect of Tom's character in the latter novel is romanticism carried to absurd limits. This streak is present in The. Adventures of Tom Sawyer also but there it is subdued and 31 has a social context. In his ovm novel, Tom's romantic fantacies are his defence against an oppressive social atmosphere. He indulges in these fantacies either to ward off the subjugating efforts of the social institutions or to escape the immediate, unpleasant reality and soothe his strained nerves. These fantasies express his resentment at his environment. In gieAdyjant^ujces .of. „Hup_kleberry Finn, the social context of Tom* s romanticism is missing; it is used simply to underline and highlight Huck's realism. That is why Tom* 3 romantic approach is exaggerated and carried to the limits of absurdity. A comparison between two passages one from each of them — can bring out tVie difference. In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer a conversation takes place between Tom and Huck in which they discuss Tom's plan of starting a robbers' gang. Huck asks Tom :

" And who'll we rob ?" "Oh, most anybody. Waylay people — that's mostly the'way," "And kill them ?" "No, not always. Hide them in the cave till they raise a ransom". "What's a ransom 7" "Money. You make them raise all they can, off'n their friends; and after you've kept them, if it ain't raised then you kill them. That's the general way..,," (239)

A remarkably similar conversation regarding ransom occurs in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn between Tom and Ben 32

Rogers. Tom is explaining "the line o£ business" of the g<^ng. Ben Rogers asks him;

"Must we always kill the people ?" "Oh, certainly. It's best. Some authorities think different , but mostly it's considered best to kill them. Except some that you bring to the cave here and keep them till tViey're ransomed". "Ransomed ? What's that ?" "I don't know. But that's what they do. I've seen it in the books; and so of course that's what we've got to do". "But how can we do it if we don't know what it is ?" "Why blame it all, we've got, to do it. Don't I tell you it's in the books ? Do you want to go to doing different from what's in the bookn, and get things all muddli^d up 7" "Oh, that's all very fine to say, Tom Sawyer, but how in the nation are these fellows going to be ransomed if we don't know how to do it to them ? that' s the thing I. want to get at. Now what do you reckon^ it is "?" "Well I don't know. But per'aps if we keep them till they're ransomed, it means that we keep them till they're dead". (57)

Tom has forgotten within the space of a few days what he knew in his own novel. This sort of emphasis on Tom's absurd romanticism, his blind adherence to what he has read in "the books", is simply a device to highlight Huck's rea­ lism and his reliance solely on his own experience, so that when he rejects Tom, he rejects a particular approach to 33

life. Since Tom' s romanticism now does not have any social context, to justify it, it becomes not only absurd but also inhuman and callous. It is this romantic approach to life which, in the last section of the novel, makes him treat Jim callously as a dehumanized creature on whom he can practice his romantic fantasies. But in his own novel Tom has a different character altogether, and must be judged by his actions in that novel, and not by what he does in Huck' s novel. Notes and References

1. John S. Whitley, "Kids' Stuff : Mark Tvjain'g Boyn" in Robert Giddings (ed) , Mark Twain ; A Sunituous' Variety (London, 1985), pp. 65-66."

2. "Cheiro", the famous palmist, makes an interesting claim in this regard, that Twain originally acquired the idea of using finger prints as a device to solve the mystery of the murder from him while he visited Cheiro for a reading of his own palm. See Count Louis Hamon "Cheiro", Cheiro' s Palmistry (Delhi, 1989) / pp. 238-39.

3. John S. Whitley, op. cit., p. 75

4. Peter Coveney, Introduction to Penguin Classics edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Middlesex, 19 67] p. 12.

5. See fascimile of the title page of the first edition of The Adventures of. Huckleberry, Pinn^ (Penguin Clanaics, Middlesex, 1987), p. 47.

6. Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, (Euranla Pub­ lishing House, New DellTi, n.d.) , p. i. All further refe­ rences are to this edition and are given as page numbers in parantheses in the text itself.

7. Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Penguin Classics, Middlesex, 1987) , p. 48. All further refe­ rences are to this edition and are given as page numbers in parantheses in the text itself.

8. Mark Twain, Autobioqraphy in Bernard DeVoto (ed.) The Portable Mark Twain (New York 1961) ^p^ 615.

9. Literary Consummations III, (NewTork, 1958), p. 54. 10. Peter Coveney, op.cit., p. 13. 35

11. Quoted by Peter Coveney, op,cit., p. 14. 12. Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (New York, 1950), pp. 118-19.

13. Quoted by Peter Coveney, op,cit., p. 13. 14. Walter Blair, "Tom Sawyer" in Henry Nash Smith (ed.) Mark Tvjain ; A Collection of Critical Essays^ 'Engelwood Cliff,. N,J. "19,65;, •• p. .67.;:

15. Henry Nash Smith, "Tom Sawyer" in Dean Morgan Schimmilter (ed.) , Mark Twain ; A Collection of Criti­ cism (Columbia, 197 4) , p. 93.

16. Robert Keith Miller, Mark Twain (New York, 1983) , pp. 54-65.

17. Cynthia Griffin Wolff, "The Adventures of Tom Sav/yer; A Nightmare Vision of American Boyhood", The Massachu­ setts Review (Winter, 80), p. 637. CHAPTER II

The Adventures qf Torn Sawyer has as its protagonist an uninitiated child not yet corrupted by society and its institutions/ and shows him in confrontation with the estab­ lishment. The established order is hostile to the natural urges and instincts of the uncorrupted heart. It cannot tolerate these urges and tries its best to stifle them and to condition the re sinenses and behaviour of the child in accor­ dance with its own perceptions and outlook. The child, on his part, resists these efforts and tries not to submit to the will of the socio-cultural environment. The conflict between the natural urges of the child and the establishment is rendered all the more difficult because in this novel, unlike in The Adventures of ,Huckleberry Pinn, the child does not stand outside the hostile environment, but confronts it from within, as a part of it. He belongs to the society v/hich he challenges and whose will he tries to defy. The growth of his consciousness, which is a result of this conflict, is directed by his immediate circumstances. Since he is a part of society and receives its influences in his formative years, he cannot remain completely inuiiune to its percep^tions and outlook and to the corruption in the social system. As he grows up within society and not oh its periphery, he 37

establishes strong emotional and perceptual bonds with his environment. His choices, as a result, are limited. He cannot discard society completely and run away from it; the daaira to bolong is too strong in him. And yot, ho cannot submit completely to the will of his environment as that would mean a loss of the self and abandoning the freedom of his spirit. 3o, the struggle of the protagonist could only b6 limited to the working out Of. a compromise so that he could retain the freedom of his spirit by escaping complete submission and yet remain a part of the social set-up. This position, as the child protagonist comes to realize, can only be achieved by controlling the environment; only then can be escape being controlled by it. Before proceeding to discuss the protagonist and his ordeal, let us first scan the environment which he is at odds'with.

There is a critical opinion that St. Petersburg, the town in which Tom grows up, is an idealized model of Hannibal, the tov;n where Twain himself grew, up. - A rather disgruntled and dissatisfied Twain looked back upon his childhood and adolescence v/ith nostalgia and this period of his life appeared to be an ideal period of complete freedom and lack of all restraint. Consequently, everything associated with this period of his life, including the place v/here it was spent, appeared to be perfect to him. Walter Blair, for 38

example, says : "Despite recognisable aspects, St. Petersburg is £or the most part far lovelier than Hannibal .... St. Petersburg and i.ts environs are realms of qui^it delight bathed in summer air fragrant with the aroma of meadows, v/oodlands, and flowers. Tlie Idyllic setting was one aspect of the book that lead Twain to call it simply a hymn, put into prose."

But a close reading of the text contradicts this opi­ nion. There are critics who have underlined the darker side of St. Petersburg, They have shown that it is not, after all, aa idyllic a town as it may appear to be at firnt sight. There are crimes like murder and the completion of and planning for the most hoinoua revenge possible. This darker side of the town is also reflected in the world of the child who often experiences such emotions as fear and terror. Calling attention to this side of St. Petersburg, Bernard DeVoto points out that the most significant episodes in the novel "revolve around body snatching, murder, rob­ bery, and revenge." He emphasizes the importance of such thematic material of the book as "murder and starvation, grave-robbery and revenge, terror and panic, some of the darkest emotions of men, some of the most terrible fears of children,"'^ in contributing to its realism.

But that is not all; the most striking feature of the 39

town is its insipidity and colourlessness. It is a "poor little shabby village," where "a new comer of any age or . either sex was- an impressive curiosity (>5^K). It is a non­ descript, utterly descrepit place, so much so that the country courthouse, "which was said to have a tin roof" appears a marvel to the children (41) . St. Petersburg, in fact, is not much of a town. "It is", as Cynthia Griffin Wolff points out, "a phantom town inhabited largely by ghostly presences," Except for the pranks and "adventures" of Tom and his playmates, it is devoid of all activity. All the hustle and bustle which is usually associated with towns that lie on commercial routes is conspicuous by its absence here. More sjiecifically, in the words of Wolff, it has "no news­ paper office with a garrulous editor, no general store owner to purvey gossip and candy, no lawyer lounging in an office 4 "buzsing with flies and heavy with the odor of musty books." One may go on adding to the list but it would only be to underline one fact : the town lacks all activity that may interest a boy and inspire him. Living in such a place, it is small wonder that Tom often complains of boredom. Even the long and eagerly awaited vacations "hang a little hea­ vily on his hand." He attempts a diary, "but nothing hap­ pened during three days, and so he abandoned it." (l65) . The children can do nothing but go on playing and replaying the 40

few, and far between, circuses and minstrel shows that visit the town. The lack of . ."variety and exciting incident" that Henry Nash Smith has marked in Tom's amorous experi- 5 ences is true of his games and amusements also --- they are all repetitive. He eternally keeps on playing Robin Hood and General, and- exchanging rubbish for rubbish.

Even crime would have been a welcome change in this atmosphere of stagnation and boredom. But except fo the kee­ ping of liquor in- temperance tavern, crime is infrequent in the dull town. The level of excitement which the news of the murder of the young doctor generates in the town the school -master declares it a holiday, for the day, the town would have thought strarxjely of him if he hadn' t — shows' that it is once-in-a-life-tirae happening as far as St. Petersburg is concerned. Even the "meancing fragments, " the "grisly emblems of crime and punishment," as Cynthia Wolff chooses to describe the prison and the abandoned slaughter house, are not that grisly and menacing after all : of the prison we are told that it is "a triffling brick den that stood in a marsh at the edge of. the village, and no guards were affor­ ded for it; indeed it waa seldom occupied" {'^6 ) ; and the abandoned slaughter house is a place in which frightened little children can take refuge and feel secure.

Tlie sense of boredom and stagnation also extends to, and 41

is cortipouncfed by, the social and the religious institutions: the school and the church, Tom Sawyer in church, obsering a fly in its minutest detail while the minister rattles on with the service is the ultimate imago of boredom and a sense of alienation from the surroundings. He has been through it so often that he can instinctively tell when it is going to come to a close without paying attention; and so "with the closing sentence his hand began to curve and steal forv/ard and the instant "Amen" was out the fly was a prisoner of war" (4R) . The school is no better :

The harder Tom tried to fasten his mind on his book, the more his ideas wandered. So at last, with a sigh and a yawn, he gave it up. It seamed to him that the noon rocesn would never come. The air. wag utterly dead. There was not a breath stirrlcig. It was the slee­ piest of sleepy days.... Tom's heart ached to be free, or else to have something of inte­ rest to do to pass the dreary time. (64) K

Here, everything — Tom's gestures to the thoughts and fee­ lings to the description of bis surroundings, even the short sentenc^es — conveys a sense of utter boredom' and alienation.

But insipidity and boredom is only one aspect of the St. Patersburg society. Another, and more nagatlvj, aopoct ±3 its hostility to the natural urges of a child's heart and its efforts at the regimentation of his responses and instincts. Institutions,such as the school, the church and the home. 42

strive to achieve this end. As far as the school and the church are concerned, they both lay down certain rigid codes of conduct to which the child is required to adhere. Any breach of the strict discipline or any deviance from the official code of conduct Invites instant approbation in the form of torture; physical in the case of the school and psychological-spiritual in the case of the church. So the school master remains ever-ready v;ith his switch to punish every single breach, real or imagined, of the strict school discipline. The school, since it is an institution of society, shares its attitudes and tries to instill the same in the child. Hence, just as paremits forbid thier children to have anything to do with Buck, an outcast who personifies every­ thing society considers base and abhorrent, so also playing with him is considered an offence deserving the severest punishment by the school master. Tom recieves such a punisliment when he confesses to have stopped on the way to school to talk with Huck.

Twain goes even beyond this in his indictment of the institution of school. The school master, who is a repre­ sentative of the institution he serves, carries a hint of sadism about him s he seems to actually enjoy physically torturing the hapless children. The punishments he inflicts upon the students are completely out of proportion to the 43

offences and do not carry any suggestion of being corrective measures. It is certain that this is a generalized feature encompassing th(S whole institution of school, and not an individual trait particular to the school master. PUs beha­ viour is reciprocated by the general prison-like atmosphere at the school. Moreover, his behaviour is accepted by the St. Petersburg society as natural, even desirable, and no parents ever protest Against it.

The result which the school tries to get through physical torture, the church tries to achieve through spiri­ tual torture. It threatens the child with the image of hell where all those who are not "good", that is, who do not conform to the prescribed code of conduct, must go. Clearly, as in the case of the school so also here, the inten­ tion is to evoke fear in the heart of a child, the fear of breaking the rules. This fear is a major v/eapon of subju­ gation and is used as a deterrant against instincts and natural urges of child that run counter to the established order.

But fear alone cannot guarantee compliance with the wishes of society, if amything, excessive' suppression may give rise to feelings of rebellion and defiance. So, in case this strategy fails, both the school and the church offer a 44 reward to children as a temptation to do what is required of them : a prize for the best essay in the case of the former, and a bible, and the envy of equals and admiration of the superiors,for memorising two thousand versos in the case of the latter. Memorizing tv;o thousand verses is a tedious job, unbearable to any but those children who are considered "good" by society. The prize is meant to goad them into doing something they do not want to do. It is not, as it may seem at first sight, an innocent, completely reli­ gious exercise. The cleverly hidden motive of the exercise is made clear by Judge Thatcher when he tells Tom : "And you never can be sorry for the trouble you took to learn them; for knowledge is worth more than anything there is in the world; its what makes great men .and good men; you'll be a great man and a good man yourself, some day, Thomas, and then you'll look back and say, It's all ov/ing to the preci­ ous Sunday-school privileges of my boyhood — it's all owing to my dear teachers that taught me to learn — it' s all ov/ing to the good superintendant who encouraged me, and watched over me, and gave me a beautiful Bib2B 7- a splendid elegent Bible to keep and have it all for my own, always — it is all owing to right bringing up !' (44) . It is very important for society that its members be "successful", because persons who are successful according to society's perception of success pose 45 the least threat to the existing social fabric. Accordingly, all the efforts of the institutions of society are directed towards compelling the child to be "good", i.e. successful. The school essay prize also has the same aim. The best essay is the one which uses the largest number of high-sounding words and, above all, the one which has the harshest moralis­ tic discourse "wagging its tail" towards the end of it, that is, the one which reflects the attitudes of society most clearly. As in the case of the church, so also here, the emphasis is on regimentation oE child' s resfx^nscs and subju­ gation of his v/ill; the moulding of his personality in such a way that his development does not talco a diroctlon hostile to the interests of society. Seen in this light, the school and the church are not "merely inconvenient and tedious" as, 7 Henry Nash maintains, but overtly coercive.

A more potent threat comes to the child not from the church or the school but from another social institution : the home. Aunt Polly's treatment of: Tom may, at first sight, appear charitable and Mnd. Robert Keith Miller, for example, says that it is hard to imagine that Tom is "ill used by the kindly Aunt FolJ.y." This view ov;es itself to the, fact that Tom is not physically abused by his guardian. The punishment that he receives from her is meant to bo a corrective measure and is not out of portion to the 46 offence. It is given reluctantly, and carries with it a measure of compassion and concern for the victim. Bu the institution of home fails to do its primary duty by the child, that is, provide emotional support to him in his formative years, just as the school and the church fail to do what they should do, that is, effect intellectual and apiritual growth, respectively. St. Petersburg's is not only an intellectually and spiritually deprived society, but also an emotionally starved one. It explicitly prohibits any show of emotions towards the child on the premise that doing so would spoil him. Aunt Polly, boincj a part of this society, shares its outlook and perceptions and hence cannot even think of going against its dietats though there can be little doubt that basically she is a well-meaning person. Only once in the v/hole book does she really strike Tom, and it is for sometViing he has not done. When she discovers her mistake she does not try to undo the injury by saying something kind. Instead, she very cooly remarks : ""Well, you didn't get a lick amiss, I reckon'". Saying something kind and lovinj "would be construed into a confession that she bad be^^n in the wrorKj, and discipline forbade that" (30-31). The fault is not Aijnt Polly's. She only acts in accordance v/ith the current ideas of child rearing. A3 a matter of fact. Aunt Polly finds herself in a dilemma : 47 whether she should give expression to her natural urges of love and affection towards the boy or stifle these urges and do her "duty by him'* as her "conscience" demands of her. That she decides on the latter course of action just goes to shovj how well-entrenched these ideas are in the St. Peters­ burg society and how well this society can manage to bring the individuals round to holding the standard views and opi­ nions and act in accordance v/ith them even while their ins­ tincts lead in the opposites dit€Jction.

Aunt Polly is one with the school and the church in forcing Tom to accept the establishment. She employs subtler methods to achieve this result. As Tom himself complains :

She never licks anybody — whacks 'em over the head with her timble -- and who cares for that I'd like to know. She talks awful, but talk don't hurt — anyways it don't if: she don't cry. (21) That Tom finds this sort of behaviour infinitely more painful than physical torture is evident from the fact that on many an occasion he brightens up on the prospect of getting a "whacking". But it seldom comes. All that Aunt Polly does to upbraid him on his unruly behaviour is to emphasise hov/ he hurts her : "

His aunt wept over him and asked him how he could go and break her old heart so; and finally told him to go on, and ruin himself 48

and bring her grey hairs with sorrow to the grave, for it was no uno for Vier to try any more. (90-9 1) ^

This is emotional torture. Tom finds it "worse than a thousand whippings, and Tom* s heart was sorer now than his body." Clearly Aunt Polly's modus o.prendi is to appeal to Tom's emotions, to kindle in him a feeling of guilt, to deve­ lop his "conscience". She uni^onsciously realizes on the basis of her own experience that conscience is the surest antidote to instincts and the natural urges of an uncorrupted heart. And just like the school and the church, her strategy is also a two-pronged one — she too offers Tom an apple as a reward for completing his job of white-washing the i^ence.

It is this formidable force which Tom finds himself pitted against. All these social institutions are but mere components of the larger social establishment and simply ref­ lect its attitudes; they have no existence independent of the establishment, but are mere instruments instituted to safe­ guard its interests and serve its purposes. By opposing and defying the institutions Tom opposes and defies the establishment itself. That Toin is genuinely opjxDsed to the establishment and is not simply the "non-conforming natural man who conforms all the .time"^ is clearly established in the first seven chapters of the book which servo as a sort of an 49

introduction to the major theme of the novel and shov/ Tom at home, in the church and in the school.

The most prominent strain in these chapters is a sense of alienation from the surroundings, of being impri­ soned. There is more than one reference to imprisonment and captivity. When, for example, Tom gets home quite late at the end of the first chapter itself, with his clothes all dirty and ruined, we are told that his aunt's "resolution to turn his Saturday holiday into captivity at hard labour became adamantine in its firmness" (19) . Again, at the beginning of chapter VI, we find Tom miserable :

Monday morning found Tom Sawyer miserable. Monday morning always found him so — because it began another week's slow suffering in school. He generally began that day with wishing he had no intervening holiday, it made the going into captivity and fetters again so much more odious. (51)^

This sense of being imprisoned is all the more pronounced because the boy is forced to do things at home, in church, and in the school which he does not want to do, like washing, wearing full clothes, ("He was fully as uncomfortable now as he looked; for there was a restraint about whole clothes and and cleanliness that galled him" (30)), sitting through a prosaic and dull sermon, memorizing verses, sitting in the classes, etc., etc. He himself complains about "being made 50

to do everything he didn't want to do'* (3 6) .

Tom reacts to all such situations either by running away from them (he runs away from home and comes late in night and plays hooky) or by finding some diversion (he plays with the pinch-bug ' in church during ^^he sermon and with the beetle in school) . But, more importantly, the resentment against society and its institutions finds expre­ ssion in his relationship with his half-brother, Sid. The rivalry between the two boys is not just the ordinary rivalry between two half-brothers, one "good" and the other "bad". It symbolizes Tom's conflict with the official culture of St. Petersburg. The good boy Sid is everything Tom dislikes — a strict observer of the rules of conduct set down for the young boys by society, unquestioningly obedient, orderly, self- righteous and snobbish. Clearly, Sid is on the side of the establishment in Tom' s battle with it : when Tom almost suc­ ceeds in turning the tables on Aunt Polly as she tries to pin him down for playing hocky, it is ha who points out that the thread with Which Tom's shirt Collar is sewed is ii.ot of the same colour with which she sewed it in the morning. This results in Tom getting punished. Rightly enough. Aunt Polly is more considerate towards Sid and lets him have sugar at his will while she raps Tom's hand every time he tries to steal some. Moreover, Tom gets punishment from her — the only time she 51

really beats him •— is for something which Sid has done not he. Tom's resentment against the establishment, which can­ not find expression in physical violence against such figures of authority as Aunt Polly, the school master and the priest, is vented against Sid. His pelting his half-brother is a symbolic act of torturing the enemy.

But for all his antagonism to the St, Petersburg society, Tom cannot reject it completely, because he is a part of it, and by virtue of belonging to society he receives its influence in his formative years. In that he is different from his friend Huck who stands at its periphery. The forces that represent the official culture of St. Peters­ burg and itr, will and which are the instrunents of society against the unconditioned instincts of a "sound heart" gra­ dually show their effect on Tom. Slowly and imperceptibly, against his conscious effort, the socio-cultural environment starts noulding his porceptions. The mere fact that he is a part of it — at least physically — proves a disadvantage. So, on one occasion, when Aunt Folly's apjsal to his eirotions is particularly strong, Tom "cried, he pleaded for forgive­ ness, ixromised to reform over and over again, and then reci- eved his dismissal, feeling that he had won but an imperfect forgiveness and established but a feeble confidence" (9 1) . This, clearly, is an indication of budding "conscience" in 52

Tom's young heart. Aunt Polly succeeds where the school fails; her emotional torture proves to be more rewarding than the physical torture of the school master. She sue-; ceeds in arousing a feeling of guilt in Tom' s heart; and guilt is the ultimate destroyer of innocence. The destruc­ tion of innocence means the shakling down of the spirit to custom, to tradition, to the fear of "what will the people say ?", because it is this innocence which is the fountain head of the freedom of spirit. Aunt Polly, inadvertantly, because her own innocence has been destroyed by society, initiates the process in Tom.

Religioh too plays its role. Tom might reject its symbol, the church, and find the pinch-bug and the dog more interesting than the sermon, he might even try to cheat it by claiming the Bible without memorizing the verses, but he cannot shut out religion itself. It becomes a part of his thought-process in so subtle a way that Tom himself remains unaware of it, and hence incapable of resisting it. Owing to this influence of religion his responses and reac­ tions become conditioned. Take the fly ocono, for example. The prayer is boring and Tom is immensely interested in the actions of a fly that has alighted on the back of a pew, but "as sorely as Tom's hands itched to grab for it they did not dare — he believed his soul would be instantly destroyed 53

if he did such a thing while the prayer wan going on" (48) , Similarly on many occasions he decides against committiixf suicide not because death is something horrible in Itself but because his Sunday-school record is not exactly clean which, of course, means going to hell.

The combined effect of all the institutions — the home, the school, the church — then, is a conditioning of Tom's mind. This conditioning finds expression in his social attitudes. At one point he remarks rather off­ handedly : '"I never see a nigger that wouldn* t lie"' (5 6) . This sort of generalization Indicates prejudice which is a direct result of the conditioning of the thinking process. Here, clearly, Tom' s Child has receded to the background and his Parent has taken over.-1 0 Similarly, for all his admiration for Huck's: frfeedom and all his envy of the latter's "gaudy outcast condition", Tom "did not care to have Huck' s com­ pany in public places", and hence he leaves Huck behind while he goes to the taverns on Injun Joe's trail (19 6) because it has been drilled into his mind that it is shame­ ful and inappropriate for the boys of "respectable" families to have anything to do with Huck. Clearly the social atti­ tudes of his environment are a part of Tom's personality, and his perceptions and actions are conditioned accordingly.

This conditioning of Tom's responses and his outlook 54

and perceptions makes rejection of society impossible. He may resent the efforts at the subjugation of his will but he cannot break free from the system that makes these efforts. Eocept for once^ when he goes to the Jackaon' s Inland for becoming a "pirate", Tom does not make any effort at run­ ning away. His protest against society and its institutions is reduced to fantasizing about running away under the influ­ ence of the romantic literature which he is so fond of rea­ ding. Deprived of any real-life heroes whom he can fancy himself following as an example^ he falls back upon romantic literature, upon a world of fantasy which seems infinitely more alluring and charming than his own dreary surroundings. This world of make-believe provides him with larger-than-life size heroes whose qualities of courage and nobility and whose life of adventure he can admire and incorporate into his games. They excite his imagination, and his fancies revolve around them. He cannot contemplate his future but as a pirate or a robber, leading a life of adventure and freedom. Translated as they are into games, they provide him a chance to give vent to his pent-up feelings of "rebellion and rage that never fully surface in his dealings with Aunt Polly and the other figures of authority, in the matriarchal world." •1 -I Under the influence of the romances, Tom fantaaizea about running away and becoming an outlaw, the breaker of rules 55

who cannot be controlled by society and its institutions. An analysis of the nature of Tom's fantasies can show how dependent he is on the society which he resents.

It is important to note that even during the wildest moments in his fantasies, while he joins the Indians to "hunt buffaloes and go on the war path in the mountain ranges and the trackless great plains of the Far West", or becomes a pirate, the fantasies inevitably turn towards coming back to society :

And at the zenith of his fame, how he would suddenly appear at the old village and stalk into church, brown and weather-beaten in his black velvet doublet and trunks, his great jackboots his crimson sash, his belt brist­ ling with horse pistols, his crime-rusted cutlass at his side, his slouch hat with waving plumes, his black flag unfurled with the skull and crossbones on it, and hear with swelling ecstasy the whisperings, "It's Tom Sawyer the Pirate — the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main I" (72)^

Here fantasy has taken the place of the actual act of run­ ning away. That such fantasies occur mainly during the hard moments and provide Tom a sort of emotional tranguillity and calm his strained faculties shov/s that they are an escape in themselves. No matter what the fantasy, it is the act of returning, inextricably intertwined with the aciniration of his playmates and village folks in general, rather than the 56

act of going away which has a special attraction for Tom Sawyer and soothes his ruffled feelings.

Admiration and recognition; a consummate desire to extract from society these tv/o things is basic to Tom' s cha­ racter. Robert Keith Miller is right when he say3 of Tom j "Ilio n(\YQ\itw:ori oil havQ on^a thing In comiiioin: tb-ay t

After every painful incident Tom thinks of dying or running away. But in each instance the focus is on others rather 57

than on himself; it is not the freedom itself, the relief from the burdena of this life/ but the sympathy or admira­ tion that he mdiy gain through it which is so alluring to him. Just like the exalting of hi3 woes and self-pity in the above quotation, acJmiration and,rec::ognition are also a sort of emo­ tional petting, a filling in of the emotional blank created by the absence of explicit love and affection. Just the con- ciousness that it is there, hidden in the heart of Aunt Polly is hot enough for him; on th(3 threshold of adolescence as he isy he must have the assurance of expressed love.

But whatever the origin of this quest for admiration and recognition may be, there? is no denying the fact that it testifies to Tom* s dependence upon his society. He longs for its accolade, and it gives him immense satisfaction when after his return from the , Jacksoh's : island,, or on fin­ ding, the hidden treasure, he i^.' glorified .by it. •,, As the Old Hundred is sung, he stands glowing under the envious glances of the juvenilis and (Confesses in his heart that this is "the proudest moment of his life". Tom's attitude is not simply a product of an alDnormal ambition but a product of all the forces that have worked upon him and to whose effect he could not have remained completely immune if only because, willingly or otherwise, he ±3 a part of society and does not, like iluck, stand at its periphery. 58

The impossibility of complete rejection of society and the strength of emotional-psychological bonds that exist betv/een it and Tom is proved by the Jackson's Island episode. No doubt, at one level, as Smith points out, the episode may be taken as symbolic of the "Natural man beleaguered by soci­ ety, but able to igain happiness by escaping to the forest 13 and the river..','. The descriptions of nature depicting it as beautiful, benevolent and friendly and the exultation and jubiliation expressed by the children give credence to this view. But at another level, the episode underlies Tom' s attachment to society and the strength of his social relation­ ships. After the description of a day full of joy and frolic, we are told that "...when the shadows of night closed them in, they gradually ceased to talk, and sat gazing into the fire, with their minds evidently wandering elsewheiw. xhe excitement was gone, now, and Tom and Joe could not keep back thoughts of certain persons at home who were, not enjoying this fine frolic as much as they were. Misgivings came; they grew troubled and unhappy; a sigh or two escaped, unaware" (116-17). Tom is worried about certain persons at home "v/ho con be hurt and troubled" by his actions, and Tom is committed enough to try not to hurt their feelings. The kiss which he imparts on the lips of his aunt as she lies there iroanlng, the love and pity which he feels for her (122) testify to the strength of 59

bonds which have developed between Tom and society. Aunt Polly's own efforts at kindling "conscience" in his heart have played a rriajor part in the development of these bonds. It is this conscience which makes him sad at the height of his amiTiusement and which prompts him to take the journey back home to inform his aunt that he is not dead but has merely run away to be a pirate. It is these bonds and Tom's conscience which make the action of running away to the island an act of escape, not of rejection.

Unfortunately for Tom, the very thing in which he seeks refuge from regimentation and subjugation draws him into regimentation not very much different from the one which society tries to impose upon him. Romantic literature, by ofJfering him a world more beautiful than the real one, att­ racts Tom. But it is also a world far removed from the rea­ lity of life and hence unjudgeable by the standards of expe­ rience. So, it becomes practjcally Impossible for Tom to reject any notions contained in it. Moreover, Tom seizes upon it because it gives him an edge over his playmates, a weapon with which to fight off their doubts about his authority as a loador. So, "it is so in all the books" becioiaos an irrefutable argument whenever Tom is confronted v;ith a challenge to his supremacy, A characteristic argument occurs between him and Joe while the two boys are playipg 60

Robin Hood; Tom is the hero and Joe is "Guy of Guisborne", an opponent, and the two are engaged in a duel :

By and by Tom shouted : "Pall : fall 1 Why don't you fall 7'• "I shan' t 1 Why don' t you fall yourself ? You're getting the worst of it." "Why, that ain't anything. I can't fall; that ain't the way it is in the book. The book says, ' then with one backhanded stroke he slew poor Guy of Guisborne. You're to turn around and let me hit'you in the back." There was no getting around the authorities, so Joe turned, recieved the whack and fell, (75) ,c

Everything must be done by the book even when what the book says, is beyond the comprehension of the children because doing otherwise, as far as Tom is concerned, would mean get­ ting "all muddled up." The romantic literature combines its energies with the social institutions to inculcate in Tom a suspicion of his judgement, a fear of going against the authorities. Tom also shows marked diffidence in shaking off acquired notions even when they are invalidated by expe­ rience. The incidence of burying a marble clearly reveals this trait. In accordance with a common superstition, Tom buries a marble "with certain necessary incantations" and digs it up after a fortnight, • believing that all the marbles he had ever lost would have gathered themselves together by now. Though he finds the original marble still 61 alone, yet he does not shate ofE the superstition but tries to justify it by sayirig that "some vdtch had interfered and broken the charm" (73) . This lack of reliance on expe­ rience testifies to the influence of social institutions and romantic literature in inculcating in him a distrust of his own judgement.

The romantic literature also acts as a safety-value. By giving Tom a chance to express his pent-up resentment against society in harmless fantasies and childish games, it prevents the ejqsression of this resentment in his social relations. Just as his diversions in school and church keep him within the boundries of these institutions by rendering their stiflir'ig atmosphere bearable, so also his fantasies and games which are the products of the romances he has read prevent him from becoming a rebel. He himself realizes it subconsciously as his conversation with Huck reveals when he baits him into going back to the wldow'.s by offering him a place in his robbers* gang :

".... But Huck, we can't let you into the gang if you ain't respectable, you know." Huck' s joy was quenched. "Can't let me in, Tom ? Didn't you let me go for a pirate ?" "Yes, but that' s different. A robber is more hightoned than what a pirate is — as a general thing. In most countries they're awful 62

high up in the nobility — dukes and such." "Now, Tom, hain't you always been friendly to me ? You wouldn' t shet me out, would you, Tom ?. You wouldn' t do that, now wou_ld you; Tom 7" "Huck, I wouldn't want to, and I dqn^t. want to — but what would people say 7 Why, they'd say, ' Mph 1 Tom Sawyer's Gang 1 pretty low characters in it '.' They'd mean you, Huck. You wouldn't like that, and I wouldn' t. " Huck was silent for some time, engaged in a mental struggle. Finally he said : "Well, I' 11 go back to the widder for a month and tackle it and see if I can come to stand it, if you' 11 let me b' long to the gang, Tom. (252-53);^

The passage raises an important question also. Tom rejects Huck's appeal for letting him join the gang by saying, "what would people say." This phrase is an integral part of the basic vocabulary of a conformist. So, has Tom lost the battle 7 Has he finally submitted to the will of society 7 The answer of most of the critics is in the affirmative. According to Henry Nash Smith, "Mark Tvs^ain has written the Sunday-school story about the Good Little Bay Who Succeeded all over again with only a slight change in the hero's make­ up and costume."^'* Cynthia Griffin Wolff puts the blame for Tom's "failure" on Mark Twain' s shoulders: "The fault £Tom turning out a conformist J is Twain' s, of course. Tom has earned the right to 'be somebody'; but his creator's vision has faltered. Twain averts his attention from the 63

struggle that should be central and shrinks from uncivilized inclinations. In the end/ his hero must settle for secu- rity in a world that will always be run by its women." These critics think that it would be logical for Tom to be a rebel. It is a view that seems to be inspired by The Adven­ tures of Huckleberry Finn. But The Adventure^ of Tom Sawyer, has it ov/n terms of reference and should be analyzed accor­ dingly. Tom is not a rebel and his quest, unlike that of Huck, is not for freedom or an alternative, more conducive social environment : he is too securely tied down to the St, Petersburg society, both physically and emotionally, to seek either freedom from it or an alternative to it. Twain makes this point very clear from the very beginning. The nature of Tom* s conflict with his environment catagorically establishes that Tom's struggle is not for breaking free of it but for controlling it.

The desire to control is central to Tom' s character. He seeks control everywhere : in his social relationships (with Aunt Polly and his playmates) , in school, in church — over every one and everything. Even his giving in is an effort to gain control, to turn a situation to his advan­ tage. As has all along been pointed out, he cannot reject society and rebel against it; and yet he cannot submit comp­ letely to its will and act according to its die tats. In 64

such a contradictory situcition, the only way out is gaining control over the situation : only then can he escapje subju­ gation while remaining a part of the social set-up. As we have already seen, Tom faces a very formidable force in the form of social institutions and gaining control over such a formidable force requires immense resourcefullness. That Tom is an extraordinarily resourceful child is abundantly clear. On quite a few occasions we find him hard put, but generally he is able to stand his ground. So when Aunt Polly tries to nail him down for having gone swimming during the school hours through her "low cunning", Tom proves to be too much for her : "Tom it was'middling warm in school, v/arn' t it ?" "Yes 'm". "Didn't you want to go a-swimming, Tom?" A bit of scare shot through Tom — a touch of uncomfortable suspiaion. He searched Aunt Polly' s face, but it told him nothing. So he said : "No 'm -- well, not very much." The old lady reached out her hand and felt Tom' s shirt, and said : "But you ain't too warm now though." And it flattered her to reflect that she had discovered that the shirt was dry without anybody knowing that was what she had in mind. But in spite of her, Tom l

Aunt Polly was vexed to think she had overlooked that bit of circumstantial evi­ dence, and missed a trick.'.Then • she ,had a new inspiration : "Tom you didn* t have to undo your shirt collar where I sewed it, to pump on your head, did you ? Unbutton your jacket 1" The trouble vanished out of Tom's face. He opened his jacket. His shirt collar was securely sewed. "Bother 1 VJell, go 'long with you. I'd made sure you'd played hooky and been a-sv/im- ming. But I forgive ye, Tom. I reckon you're a kind of singied cat, as the saying is — better'n you look. This time." (13-14)

So Tom' s presence of mind and his shrewdnooji, which he has acquired tlirough numerous such encounters, enable him to stand on his own and control the situation to his advantage. Giving in to some extent, or, at least seeming to give in, can be an effective way of controlling the situation. Tom often plays along and does as is required of him to avoid a bigger catastrophe, that is, punishment.' As we are told just after the episode quoted above. Aunt Polly "was half sorry her sagacity had miscarried, and half glad that Tom had stumbled into obedient conduct for once," But Tom has not really stumbled into obedient conduct; it is a shrewd move calcula­ ted to put his aunt off her guard, thereby beating her at her own gcima.

Another example of Tom dodging the corrective measures 66

of his aunt is the much celebrated and oft-quoted white­ washing scene. By forcing Tom to whitev/ash the fence, Aunt Polly wants "to turn his Saturday holiday into captivity at hard labor" as a punishment for playing hooky. This is obviously intended to purge him of the "Old Scratch", to make him give up his troublesome ways and to turn him into a docile, good boy like Sid and the Model Boy Willie Muf frarson. But again, Tom proves to be too much not only for Aunt Polly but also for the other children of the to\\fn whom he tricks into doing his work for him : "they came to jeer, but remained to white-wash". V^at is more, they actually buy the "favour" from him for their most precious possessions. In the bargain Tom earns his aunt' s goodwill, and gets an apple as a reward for "doing" the work. And while she is delivering "an improving lecture upon the added value and flavour a treat took to itself when it came without sin through virtuous effort", Tom "hooks" a doughunt (27) , The doughnut hook­ ing is his v;ay of asserting his independence and showing' stubborness in the face of the efforts at subjugatin:! his will to his environment.

So far as the school and the church are concernad, Tom has a whole repertoire of amusements and diversions to render their stifling and borirxj environment bearable. To see them simply as childish pranks is to miss their real 67

significance. They are also a means of controlling the environment so that it does not become unberarable. On the. one hand those diversions and amusoinents keep Tom within the boundries of the school or the church and on the other make him dififerent from the "good" boys Sid and Jefferson as they enable him to escape subserviance to the purpose and the will of these institutions. So/ in the church, during a very boring sermon, we have Tom playing with a pinch-bug which provides relief not only to him but also to others like him "uninterested in the sermon" and brings the sermon to a dead stand-still : "The discourse,was resumed presently, but it went lame and halting, all possibility of impressive- ness being at an end." Tom is triumphant and goes home "quite cheerful, thinking to himself that there was some satisfaction about divine service when there was a bit of variety in it"(50-5l).

At school and church too his efforts to gain control of his environment are not confined to just pranks. As in the case of Aunt Polly, he never lets go of an opportunity at school and church to turn a situation to his advantage. At school one such opportunity offers itself when, on coming late and confronted with the inevitable query corxierning the cause of it, he suddenly discovers Becky Thetcher, his new­ found love, sitting alone on a bench for tv/o. On the spur 68

of the moment he decides against telling a lie as usual and confesses thn truth that he stopped to talk with Iluck Finn on his way to school. It is something strictly prohibited, a crime inviting the severest of punishments. But he tells the truth knowing that as a part of his punishment he will be asked to sit in the girls' section of the class, and the only place vacant in that section is beside Becky. This is what actually happens. He is made to sit beside Becky whom he succeeds in seducing by taking advantage of this oppor­ tunity.

The Sunday-school offers tickets of different colours for memorizing different numbers of verses from the Bible. When a student has collected enough tickets to show that he has memorized two thousand verses, he can ej

These efforts of Tom at getting the better of his society are, however, confined to the first few chapters of the novel. They show how a child resists the efforts of society to mould him into its acceptable member. The ulti­ mate course that the development of Tom' s personality takes unfolds itself j.n the subsequent chapters in three basic story-lines : Tom' s courtship of Becky Thatcher; Tom'switnes- sing of the murder of Dr. Robinson by Injun Joe in the grave­ yard and the events related to it; and the hunt for treasure. These three story-lines^ while, not ignoring the earlier traits of Tom's personality, underline further aspects of the deve­ lopment of his personality which, towards the end of the book, come to present a composite whole as the three different story-lines become linked and come to a common ending.

The tv/in themes of struggle for control and achieve­ ment of social respectability are the most important aspect of Tom' s courtship of Becky Thatcher. ^-^ile the former is manifested in the development of Tom's relationship with Becky, the latter is manifested in the relationship itself. Tom tries to gain the commanding position in his relationship with Becky just as he does in his relationship with his aunt; he tries to bo the one who dictates the terms of the relationship. 70

Thiij becomes clear at the very outlet, in the seduction scene v;hen he is.made to sit beside Becky as a "punishment" for talking to Huek on his v;ay to school. Becky at first is hostile and tries to be indifferent. But Tom cleverly mani­ pulates the situation in such a way that she is forced to take interest in him i

Now the boy began to draw something on the slate, hiding his work with his left hand. For a time the girl refused to notice; but her human curiosity presently began to mani­ fest by hardly perceptible signs. The boy worked on, apparently unconscious. The girl made a sort of noncommittal attempt to see, but the boy did not betray that he was aware of it. At last she gave in and hesitatingly whispered : "Let me see it." (61-62)

Once Tom has forced her to "give in" and shed her indiffe­ rence, it 'is plain sailing for him and the interest of Becky almost effortlessly culminates into an affair. But immedi­ ately after winning her heart, Tom committs the folly of mentioning his previous affair with Amy in a reckless moment of exaggerated enthusiasm, and the developing relationship suffers its first set-back. Tom's response, after the ini­ tial efforts at winning back Becky' s love fail, is to be indignant and act tough in keeping with his desire to control those around him. It is now that he learns the lesson that personal relationships are not built and sustained by 71 controlling the other individuals and dictating the terms of relationship but through caring for others and sharing their sorrows and misfortunes. This point may be illustrated by relating the sequence of events around which the development of Tom* s relationship with Becky is built.

When Tom unwittingly tells Becky of his previous affair with Army and Becky's reaction makes him reallae his mistake, he first tJties to mollify her by a show of his love for her but when his clumsy advances fail and Becky does not come around, he cannot sustain his effort and goes out lea­ ving her behind weeping. He goes to the woods. Once there, he thinks over the whole thing, and his feelings and thoughts are characteristic : he first thinks of dying temporarily, not so much because death would mean a release from the trou­ bles of this life, but because it would make Becky feel sorry. Next, he thinks of running away at first to be a sol­ dier, then to join the Indians to hunt buffaloes, and finally to become a pirate. Again, the focus of attention is on Becky : "How would she feel then I" (7 2) . So, for Tom, both death and running away are tools of controlling his relation­ ships. His running away is always associated with the thou­ ght of a triumphant return.

Both of these desires, that is, running away and 72 returning as a hero, and dying temporarily are fulfilled when Tom runs away to Jackson's Island after being snubbed by Becky once more. He runs away to be a pirate with Joe and Huck but as far as the village is concerned the boys have drowned and are dead. In a fine dramatic gesture, the boys return to attend their own funeral and are instantly transformed into heroes. As Tom had envisaged, Becky is duly impressed by the new status of Tom and tries her best to make-up. But since authentic human relationships cannot be built around dramatic gestures and unequal positions of individuals, Tom fails to avail of the opportunity Becky offers him for making up. By the time he realizes his mis­ take, it is too late; Becky has changed her mind and her hurt feelings at Tom' s treatment of her transform themselves into a desire to take revenge. The relationship is revived only after Tom makes the sacrifice of taking Becky' s punish­ ment for tearing the school-master's book. The whole episode is shaped in such a way that Tom' s genuine feelings of love and care for Becky come to the surface and all the socio- psychological crap that has covered them so far is brushed aside :

A whole hour drifted by, the master sat nodding on his throne, the air was drowsy with the hum of study. By and by, Mr. Dobbins straightened himself up, yawned, then unlocked the desk, and readhed for his book, but seemed 73 undecided whether to take it out or leave It. Mont" oi; th"^ piipi.l-fi rjlnncfit'I np .1. nivjui rl.l y, but there were two among them v/ho v/atched his movements with intent eyes. Mr» Dobbins fin­ gered his book absently for a while, then took it out and settled himself in his chair to read'. Tom shot a glance at Becky. He had seen a huntfed and helpless rabbit look as she did, v/ith a gun levelled at its head. Instantly he forgot his quarrel with her.- Quick — something must be done • done in a flash, too 1 But the very imminence of the emergency paralyzed his inven­ tion. Good '. — he had an inspiration I He would run and snatch the book, spring through the door and fly. But his resolution shook for one little instant, and the chance was lost — the master opened the volume. If Tom only had the wasted opportunity back again 1 Too late I There was no help for Becky now, he saw. Tl-ie next moment the master faced the school. Every eye sank under his gaze. There was that in it which smote even the innocent with fear. There was silence which one might count ten; the master was gathering his wrath . Tlien he spoke :

"Who tore this book ?" There was not a sound. One could have heard a pin drop. The stillness continued; the master searched face after face for signs of guilt. "Benjamin Rogers, did you tear this book ?" A denial. Another pause. "Joseph Harper, did you ?" Another denial. Tom' s uneasiness grew more and more intense under the slow torture of these proceedings. The master scanned the ranks of the boys — considered a while, then turned to the girls t "Amy Lawrence ?" A shake of the head. 74

"Gracie Miller ?" "Susan Harper, did you do this ?" Another negative. The next girl was Becky Thatcher. Tom was trembling from head to foot with excitement and a sense of the hopelessness of the situation. "Rebecca Thatcher" (Tom glanced at her face — it was white with terror) — "did you tear — no, look me in the face" (her hands rose in appeal) — "did you tear this book 7" A thought ran through lighting through Tom'fl brain. He Bprnixg to \\ifi ]!(wt and shouted — "I done it". (154-55)^

Though this act of benevolence earns Tom the adoration and gratitude o£ Secky, it is certain that it is not the desire to earn her adoration and gratitude but a genuine concern for her safety which prompts Tom to act in such a way.

The relationship is further strengthened through ano­ ther act of caring by Tom. It revolves around the incident of Tom and Becky getting lost in the cave. It is Tom's con­ cern for Becky' s safety and well-being v/hich make him go on struggling to find the way out of the cave and not lose hope. He encourages Becky and tries to allay her fears. The whole chapter is full of passages that show the depth and extent of Tom's love and concern for Becky :

She [Becky] sank to the ground and burst into such a frenzy of crying that Tom was appa­ lled with the idea that she might die or lose 75

her reason. He sat down by her and put his arms around her;' she burled her face in his bosom, she clung to him, she poured out her terrors, her unavailing regrets, and the far echoes turned them all to fearing laughter. Tom begged her to pluck up hope again, and she said she could not. He fell to blaming and abusing himself for getting her into this miserable situation; this had a better effect. She said she would try to hope again, she would get up and follov; wherever he might lead if only he would not talk like that any more. For he was no more to blame than she, she said. (223-24) ^

Tom finally succeeds in getting Becky out of the cave through the courage and endless efforts, inspired in him by his con­ cern for Becky. This earns him the gratitude of h^r father as well, and towards the end of the book he turns into a patron of Tom. So this story-line shows the growth in Tom' s consciousness viz-a-viz human relationships. If an indivi­ dual is to live a purposeful life, he cannot do without authentic personal relationships because such relationships are necessary for giving life a direction, and for personal happiness. But for establishing authentic relationships, a measure of personal committment is necessary. Such relation­ ships cannot be established and sustained through striving for control, because conflict between the individuals is alien to such relationships. Tom's relationship with Becky, also shows that he has no intention of discarding society, for a strong and committed relationship with such, a member of this 76

society as Becky must of necessity act as a bond with soci­ ety itself. Becky is the daughter of a judge, a rejaresen- tative and a guardian of the interests of society. Since Tom has decided to commit himself to Becky, it means that he has also committed himself to society. Hiis fact is more clearly presented through the next story-line which revolves around Tom witnessing the murder of Dr. Robinson and the related events.

Tom's relationship with Becky testifies to his desire for social acceptability. As the preceeing examples show, it is not a passing fancy like his affair with Amy Lawrence, but is more abiding in nature. At one point Tom reveals his firm intention of marrying Becky (180) . The choice of Becky as a life partner is significant in itself. She is the daughter of Judge Thatcher, a very respectable and x^owerful man in the society of St. Petersburg. Tom's association with him can only help him in realizing his ambition of control­ ling his environment. It is proved right when, towards the end of the book, we are told that "Judge Thatcher hoped to see Tom a great lawyer or a great soldier someday. He said he meant to look to it that Tom should be admitted to the National Millitary Academy and afterwards trained in the best law school in the country, in order that he might be ready for either career or both" (250) . So, v/hile on the one hand 77

Tom' s relationship with Becky ^affects a growth in his perso­ nality and consciousness and schools him in t^^art of sus- taining personal relationships, on th^;^^imer, 'it t;s3|§^him one step nearer his goal.

The story-line which concerns ^l5^;^qrdar. gL£^d>^^^Robin- son, and the episodes related to it, highlights the growth of Tom's consciousness regarding social responsibility and commitment just as his courtship of Becky highlights the developnent of commitment and a sense of responsibility in personal relationships. Here, his conscience^ a result of Aunt Polly' s emotiopal blackmail, comes into play and deve­ lops in the boy a sense of social justice and a sense of social commitment. TITG story begins with Tom and Buck witnessing the murder ot Dr. Robinson by Injun Joe. Their first response is to scramble for their own safety. In the abandoned slaughter house, the tv/o boys sign an "oath in blood" to keep mum about the whole af fair : there is no doubt in their minds that if they so much as uttered a single word about the business the half-breed would kill them. As Huck puts it : "Tom, we gp_t to keep muij. Ypu^ know that. That InJun devil wouldn't make any more oE drowring as than a couple of cats, if we was to squeak 'bout this and they didn' t hang him" (85) . But another dimension is added to the murder of Dr. Robinson when Muff Potter is implicated in 78 it. Now Tom's conscience comes into play and he is faced with a very difficult choice s either to keep mum and let Muff Potter be hanged as his instinct for self preservation dictates, or to expose the whole affair and tell the truth about Injun Joe to save the innocent Muff and invite the wrath of the half-breed as his conscience demands. This con­ flict between instinct and conscience is so deep-rooted and lies so heavy on Tom's mind that his "fearful secret and gnawing conscience disrupted his sleep fo as much as a week after this." He keeps dreaming of the dreadful crime and utters such words in his sleep as : "Don' t torment me so — I'll tell. "(95). Moreover, when his schoolmates incorporate the crime into their game, we are told j

It seemed to Tom that his schoolmates never would get done holding inquests on dead cats, and thus keeping his trouble pre­ sent to his mind.... Tom never was coroner at one of these inquiries, though it had been his habit to take lead in all new enter­ prises; ... Tom never acted as a witness — and that was strange;... Tom ever showed a marked aversion to these inquests, and always avoided them when he could. (9 5)

At first Tom tries to workout a compromise between Instinct and conscience by doing as his instinct dictates and trying to appease his conscience through small acts of kindness towards the unEortunate Muff. But it is a very unstable compromise and cannot last. When Muff thanks him and Huck 79

for their friendliness and kindness, the pricks of consci­ ence become too much for him and he tells Muff's lawyer the truth and then appears in court as a witness to testify in favour of Muff and against Injun Joe.

There is another dimension to this episode. This act of testifying against Injun Joo turns Tom, the social antago­ nist, the individual at odds with his environment, into the protector of that very environment. It shows that the basic contradiction between Tom and his environment is resolved. His struggle is the struggle for supremacy; and to gain sup­ remacy over the environment, the environment must be protec­ ted. So, Tom does not threaten the basic structure of society, he is a part of it and the disintegration of society would mean his own destruction. The real danger to the welfare of society is provided by Injun Joe. Cynthia Wolff, who thinks "Injun Joe is Tom's shadow self, a potential for retrogression and destructiveness that cannot be permitted abroad," overlooks the fact that there are irreconcilable differences between the two. Injun Joe does not belong to the St. Petersburg society, he is an outcast who can never be integrated into it. He is not concerned with dominating or gaining control, his intentions are nihilistic and dest­ ructive. Tom is not only not the "shadow self" of Injun Joe, but is the very antithesis of all that the latter symbolizes. 80

When Tom realizes the threat posed to society by Injun Joe, ho comes forward and challenges him. He assarts himself in the face of the danger and forces the criminal to run. Moreover, it is because of Tom, though indirectly, that Inj'un Joe is finally and completely destroyed. When Tom and Becky get lost in the cave. Judge Thatcher gets it securely locked to avoid further mishaps of this kind. Injun Joe is trapped inside and dies of thirst and hunger.

Injun Joe's death • is necessary as Tom cannot get control of social environment unless the threat to the struc­ ture of society is- removed. He gets the treasure only after Injun Joe dies. This connection beUween Tom getting the treasure and death of Injun Joe is significant. Getting the treasure signifies Tom's final movement towards the realization of his ambition, and he cannot take this final step unless the last hurdle from his way, i.e. Injun Joe is removed. Tom has tamed the impulses of negation within him­ self, now he must contend with and conquer those external forces that are inimical to the welfare of society if he is to truly control the environment. So, the present story­ line dramatizes the growth of Tom's consciousness in the social sphere. Power — the p>ower to control the system — brings with it responsibility towards the system. If an individual desires to control the system, he must also be 81

prepared to discharge his duties. Tom desires to control the system,and, as this story-lino establishes, he is pre­ pared to discharge his duties towards the system even at a considerable personal risk.

To be able to control the system one requires not just a strong personality, powers of mind and of heart, personal and social commitment,, but also certain material resources. In the society in which Tom lives, money or wealth can be an effective means of social control. Though Twain introduces the chapter dealing with Tom' s pursuit of treasure in a very generalized way : "There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's life when ho has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure" (17 6)^ it is evident that for Tom it is not so casual a desire, that in this respect, as in so many others, he is different from other ordinary boys of his age. Tom is pretty sure of what he would do with the treasure once he finds it. When Huck says that he will spend his share on such things as a pie and a glass of soda every day, Tom asks him : ""Well ain' t you going to save any of it ?"• and to Hack's query, '"Save it ? Wliat for 7"' he replies, ""Why, so as to have some­ thing to live on, by and by"' (179) . The difference between the approaches of the two boys clearly indicates the diffe­ rence in their social backgrounds and their aims in life. 82

Huck knows that saving any part of the treasure will not do for him because if he saves it, it will be taken away from him by his father. He himself says so (179-80), and he is not entirely wrong. Moreover, since, unlike Tom, he has no social ambition, he is not concerned about using the money for his advancement. But Tom has certain well-defined social aims and his plans for the treasure reflect his prio­ rities ; '"I'm going to buy a new drum, and a sure-'nough sword, and a red necktie, and a bull pup, and get married"' (180) . That is, all the things which signify power like the sword; things which can earn him admiration and envy like the new drum, and things which denote social status and respecta­ bility like the red necktie, the bull pup and getting married. The motivation for digging for the treasure also comes from romantic literature which Tom has consumed in a formidable quantity and which provides motivation and material for most of his adventures. In a romantic tale, finding a hidden treasure always gets a boy from a poorer background social respectability and influence. Since acquiring social res­ pectability and influence is essential for Tom to achieve his goal, so digging for a hidden treasure becomes a serious effort for him . «ahd is not just a boyish fancy.

The boys get the treasure when Injun Joe is safely disposed of. As soon as this happens Huck, who has all along 83

been treated with contempt and whose company has not been considered fit for the boys of respectable families, is accepted as more than an equal in society. He, along with Tom, is "courted, admired, stared at." His sayings are "treasured and respected." His biography is published in the local newspaper (249) . If wealth can earn Buck social acceptance and respectability in the heavily prejudiced St. Petersburg society, it can do wonders for Thomas Sawyer. The fact of his acquiring this wealth impresses Judge Thatcher and prompts him to act as his patron as much as Tom's ability to save Becky's life and get her out of the cave. He would have had difficulty in concieving "a great opinion of Tom" if he had remained a poor boy. He invests his money at six per cent and makes great plans for his future. This last fact is made possible only because Tom has acquired the means to turn the plans into a reality.

Getting the treasure also turns Tom into not just a hero this time but a leader. The incident creates a stir in the village and "many of the citizens tottered under the strain of the unhealthy ejc^itement. Every 'haunted' house in Sb. Potorsburg and the nolgbbouring villayQa waa dissected plank by plank and its foundations dug up and ransaked for hidden treasure — and not by bpyp, but men — pretty grave, unromantic men, too, some of them" (248) . The credit for 84

creating the stir must go to Tom alone because, as usual, he plays a leading role in the hunt for treasure; it is he who all along exhibits a consciousness of the true signifi­ cance of getting the treasure. For Huck the pursuit is only an interesting passtlme ("Huck was always willing to take a hand in any enterprise'that offered entertainment and required no capital, for he had a troublesome superabundance of that sort of time which is not money" (111)). Jiven whan the two of them come to know that there is a treasure to get, Huck is often inclined to let it go for the fear of Injun Joe. But Tom doggedly pursues it. It is he who suggests that they tail the murderer to find out where he has hidden it; it is he who goes to the tavern room; it is he who pursu-' ades Huck to keep a watch on the tavern to ascertain that Injiun Joe has moved out; it is he who finally unearths the treasure hidden in the cave. So the credit for getting the treasure and the subsequent developnents must go to him.

In this scheme of affairs, Judge Thatcher' s remark that Tom's lie to shift the blame of tearing the book from Becky' s shoulders to his own "was worthy to hold up its head and march down through history breast to breast with George Washington's lauded Truth about tVie hatchet" (249), should not be shrugged off as merely a comic exaggeration; 85 it may well be a pointer to the future. Earlier in the novel, when Tom tells the truth about the murder of Dr. Robinson^ there is another pointer : "There were some that believed he would be President, yet, if he escaped hanging" (175) . ITiQt Tom has escaped hanging is certain; now he may well be on his way to the second possibility. This view is validated by the fact that Judge Thatcher means "to see to it that he should be admitted to the National Mi11itary Academy and afterward trained in the best law school in the country, in order that he might be ready for either career or both"(250) . Within the framework of The Adventures of Tom. Sawyer there is no reason to believe that this plan is not going to work. As we have seen, Tom has clearly defined his priorities, and they are to gain social power and respectability. He has made the necessary compromises and tacitly accepted the code of conduct prescribed by '.society. (Towards the end of the book, when Huck complains of the irksome ways of the widow, Tom refuses to understand his feelings and callously remarks, '"VJell, everybody does that way, Huck."' When Huck does not accept it as a valid argument and asks him to go and beg off for him with the widow, Tom remains unsympathetic and says, '"Oh, Huck, you know I can't do that. ' Tain't fair; and besides if you'11 try this thing just a while longer you'11 come to like it"' (251-5 2) . Evidently, here Tom is acting 86

as a representative of St. Petersburg society.) And he has got the means, that is, money, to achieve his goal of cont­ rolling the environment.

So The Adventure of Tom Sawyer is not just a parody of Sunday-school stories. Twain has tried to explore in it the problem of a child trying to find his place in a not Vfery congenial social environment to which he belongs. The novel deals with the possibilities before a child who has enough freedom of spirit to not to accept the dietats of society unquestioningly and yet is tied down to it securely enough to be unable to reject it completely. The position that Twain arrives at may not be to our liking, but it is a valid position, nevertheless. Given Tom' s limitations of line'age, and the formative influences he recieves in his early and impressionable childhood, his development and the grov;th in his consciousness cannot take any direction but the one it takes. His story is the story of a child who tries to act at first according to his natural instincts but gradually realizes that if ha has to gain a position in society ha has to earn its admiration. It is also the story of a child who has the qualities of leadership and through experience learns that complete surrender v/ould make him a docile follower; if he has to be at the top he must manipulate situations to his advantage, show courage and audAcity and acquire wealth. 87

Botes and References

1. Walter Blair, "Tom Sawyer" in Henry Nash Smith (ed.) , Mark Twain : A Collection of Criticism (Englewood Cliff, N.J., 1963), p. 63?

2. Bernard DeVoto, quoted by Henry Nash Smith, "Tpm Sawyer", in Dean Morgan Schimitter (ed.), Mark Twain ; A Collec­ tion of Criticism (Columbia, 1974) , p. 93, and Robert Keith Miller, Mark Twain (New York, 1983), p. 60.

3. Cynthia Griffin Wolff, "The Adventures of Torn Sawyer : A Nightmare Vision of American Boyhood", The Massachu­ setts Review (Winter, 1930) , p. 638.

4. Ibid., p. 641. 5. Henry Nash Smith, op.cit., p. 86. 6. Cynthia G. Wolff, op.cit., p. 638. 7. Henry Nash Smith, op.cit., p. 92. 8. Robert Keith Miller, o,p.cit., p. 71. 9. Lyall Powers, "The Sweet Success of Twain's Tom", Dalhousie Review, vol.LIII, No. 2, p. 319.

10. Here "Child" and "Parent" are used in their technical, transactional analytical sense. For details see Doctor Eric Berne, What Do You Say After You Say Hello ? s The Psychology of Human Destiny (New York, 1975) , pp. 11-21.

11. Cynthia G. Wolff, op.cit., p. 645. 12. Robert Keith Miller, op.cjt., p. 65. 13. Henry Nash Smith, op.cit., p. 92. 14. Ibid., p. 93. 15. Cynthia G. Wolff, op.cit., p. 652. 16. Ibid., pp. 647-48. CPIAPTER III

The Adventures o£ Huckleberry Finn/ like The Adven­ tures o£ Tom Sawyer also deals with the problem. of a child, uncorrupted by ejqjerience and trying to come to terms with an environment which is completely at odds with his instincts. Whereas in The Adventures o£ Tom Savryer we see a child realising subconsciously through experience that the only way to avoid complete subjugation by society is to adopt himself to his environment in order to control it, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn we find a child v/ho cannot workout a compromise and the only course left open to him is to run away from the society that castigates him. The expe-: riences of the journey v/hich he accumulates through his encounters with the different sections of society make him increasingly more aware of the impossibility of belonging v/ithout, in one v/ay or the other, suppressing:.; his instincts and making his behaviour acceptable to society. But he can­ not iiccept this bargain as it would moan a loss of his inrli- viduality. So, after each such encounter he again finds lulmsell: on tVie road or, to bo inoro oxacb^on the civor. At the same time ho also longs for a place in society. And this conflict, between the desire to belong on the one hand and tVie desire to live by his instincts on the other, pro- 89 vides one 06 the-; main interest ^ of the novel and 'i very important device through which the grov/Lh of child' s consci­ ousness is depicted. Tliroughout the book the child prota­ gonist is shov/n to be oscillating between the two extremes of wanting to belong to society and an intense revulsion for its ways that oi^pose^ even brutalize, the natural instincts of: "a sound heart", beCore Cinally giving up tVie irorriier because tlie price demanded for jt Ls too heavy to pay. Each of the encounters that the child has with the river-side society of nineteenth century America reveals some facet of it. Each of the facets appears to be more desii^able to him than the last one. But when he looks at it rrore closely, the illusion is broken and he comes to the conclusion that the basis for each is the same, and the attitudes underlying each are similar. So the novel progresses, from one illu­ sion to anotlier, and, as each illusion is broken, from one rejection to another rejection, untill Einally the protago­ nist decides "to light out for the territory ahead of the rest," rejecting society completely. The difEerence in the responses of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn springs from the difference in the immediate circumstances of their up-bring­ ing which, in turn, shape their personalities in two difjfe- rent ways. To appreciate the difference in their personali­ ties we should analyse the difference in the circumstances 90 of their up-bringing.

Huck Finn also grows up in the same town as Tom Sawyer, the same colourless, insipid and entirely uninspiring town, with its oppressive social institutions, its prejudices and ways that can hardly be called conducive for the proper growth of a child. But Huck has one advantage over Tom : he has no home and no guardian. In Tlie Myentures of Tom. Sawyer, he is introduced as a vagabond, an ' outcast with whom the other boys are forbidden to have anything to do for the fear that he may have a corrupting influence over them. His very first description sets Huck immediately and unmis­ takably apart from the rest of the "respectable" boys :

Huckleberry came and went at his own free v/lll. He slept on the doorsteps in fine weather and in empty hogsheads in wel; he did not have to call any being his master or obey anybody, he could go fishing or swimming when and where he chose, and stay as long as it suited him; nobody forbade him to fight; he could sit up as later as he pleased; he was always the first boy that went barefoot in the spring and the last to resume leather in the fall; he never had to wash, nor put on clean clo­ thes, he could swear wonderfully. In a word, everything that goes to make life precioug, that boy had.Cyj-)

What is underlined here is the apartness of Huck. He may be envied by the rest of the boys, but they cannot dare to act like him. Another thing that is clearly projected is the 91

fact of Huck's complete freedom. The combined effect of all this is to cast an aura of romance over the figure of Huck so much so that even Tom, the undisputed leader of the village boys, cannot help admiring and envying him. The point Is clear— whlla Tom, dofaplto all his rabolllon, belongs to the St. Petersburg society, Huck stands at its periphery.

Huck's life-style and behaviour is totally contradic­ tory to the town's conception of life-style and behaviour of a respectable and well-mannered boy — he lives a life of complete freedom, without any restrictions; sleeps when and where he pleases;' plays to his heart's content; wears rags, goes bare-foot and does not have to go to school or attend church. So, to a very large extent, he escapes the influen­ ces v/hich Tom recieves in his early childhood. Tom himself is an orphan but he has been adopted by his aunt, Polly, who tries to impose a rigid discipline on him and through emo­ tional blaclcmail/ succeeds in implanting a sense of guilt in his young heart. But Huck has no mother-like guardian to condition his emotions. He does have a father, but Pap Finn is a drunkard who often disappears from the town for rather long spells. In fact, we never encounter him in The_ Adven­ ture s of, Tom Sawyer. When he does appear in The_ Adye^ntur_e^ in H^upXl.eb'r.i'^.^.V .??-_nil' it is after an absence of more than a 92

year. Even otherwise. Pap Finn is hardly in a position to exercise as much influenco over Huck as Aunt Polly does over Tom despite the fact that unlike Aunt Polly he is ever ready to give Huck a "cowhide" on the slightest pretext and that he is as particular about a boy's duties towards his parents as Aunt Polly is. By the time Huck finds the money and is adopted by the widow^ Douglas, it is already quite late as far as the formulation of his responses is con­ cerned because by this time he has already acquired his basic attitudes and it is an uphill task for the widow to "sivilize" him. Huck cannot bear the new environment and after just three weeks he runs away from the widow to the life which he is accustomed to. What he resents most in the new environ­ ment is the strict discipline and the boring regularity of it all. When Tom hunts him out, predictably, in a hogshead, Huck refuses to go back :

"Don't talk about it Tom. I've tried it and it don't work, Tom. It ain't for me; I ain't used to it.... "<^;i5/)

He bitterly complains that - the widow makes him get up at the same time every day; he is made to wash; to comb; he is not allowed to sleep in the woodshed; he has to wear clothes which "just smothers" him; he has to go to church, "and sweat and sweat — I hate them ornery sermons !" The widow 93 is so regular in all hor ways that she "eats by a bell, she goes to bed by a bell; she gits up by a bell — everything's so awful reg'lar a body can't stand it." What is more, he has to take permission for everything. He has to talk so nicely that "it warn't no comfort — I'd got to go up in the attic and rip out awhile, everyday, to git a taste in my mouth, or I'd a died, Tom." He is not allowed to smoke, to yell, to gape, to stretch, to scratch, "before folks." And Huck is so put out by all this that even being rich seems a small compensation for all his troubles, "being rich ain't what it' s cracked up to be. It' s just worry and worry, and sweat and sweat, and a-wishing you was dead all the time." So, he is ready to give up his share of the wealth if it will allow him to be left in peace. It is only Tom's promise of letting him join the robber's gang that induces Huck to go back to the widow and. "tackle it" for a month^;i5'r-6~3).

But a vagabond' s life, an outcast condition, does not mean freedom only, it also means a life of hardships and pri­ vation. Although The Adventure of Tom _Sawyer, revolves around Tom, and we don't see much of Huck eja::ept in the com­ pany of the former, even so there are enough hints to suggest that the life which the little outcast leads is quite rough. He considers it a favour, a kindness that some people let him sleep in their haylofts. He tots water for Uncle Jake, 94

a niggar, Eor small favours like giving him "a little some­ thing" to eat. Ha sits down right next to the slave to eat, a thing unimaginable for even the lowliest of the whites but, as he says, "A body's got to do things when he's awful hun­ gry he wouldn't want to do as a steady thing." On another occasion, when he knoks at the door of the Welshman and tells that he is Huckleberry Finn, the reply which he recie- ves is : "Huckleberry Finn, indeed I It ain't a name to open many doors, I judge I "aoi).Yes, it is not a name to open many doors — it is, in fact, a name to shut most of them, and in his face, too. The change in the attitude of the Welshman when Huck knocks at his door the second time comes as a stagge­ ring surprise for Huck. On hearing his name the old man says :

"If s a name that can open this door night or day, lad '. — and welcome 1 " These were strange words to the vagbond boy's ears, and the pleasantest he had ever heard. He could not recollect that the clo­ sing word had ever been applied in his case before, (^lo)

So, it is a life of being thankful for small mercies, of hunger and of being hounded away from every "respectable" house in the town. This life has developed in Huck a strong instinct for self-preservation, and at every danger his first thought is about his own safety. In the circumstances in 95 v/hich Huck grov/s up, this attitude can hardly be surprising. It goes to his credit, and is a proof of his "sound heart", that ho has retained the capacity for feeling concern for the safety and well-being of others, and can come to their aid even at a considerable personal risk j he raises the alarm when he comes to/kiX)W that Injun Joe is planning revenge upon the Widow even while he is certain that the slightest leak about the identity o£ the informer would mean his death.

It is this Huck whom we encounter in the first six chapters of his own "autobiography." The first chapter is a continuation of the final one of The Adventure of Tom Sawyer. Here we again find Huck complaining of the "rough living" at the widow' s because the widow is "dismal regular and decent", and of a feeling of "all cramped up" when he is put "in them new clothes" again. He is made to wait for his dinner as the widow "tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals." The widow's sister. Miss Watson, forces him to study. He cannot smoke because accor­ ding to the widow, it is "a mean practice and wasn' t clean, and I must try to not do it any more." Huck goes on the make a very bitter comment $

This is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don't know nothing about it. Here she was a-bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no 95

use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in it. And she took snuff too; of course that was all right, because sVie done it herself, (50) ;(

This shows the growing perceptiveness of Huck. He has already started observing the contradictions of the Puritan society of the South. As his consciousness grows, he will make more and more use of this ability to make general observations about the ways oi: society and the nature o(: man. At this point in his development, however, it is more a way of giving vent to his anger and frustration at being denied the permi­ ssion to indulge in something which he likes doing.

Another reflection of Huck's alienation from his envi­ ronment, like that of Tom in the earlier novel, is a feeling of utter boredom : "Then she told me all about the bad place, and I said I wished I was there. She got mad, then, but I didnt mean no harm. All I wanted was to go somewheres, all I wanted was a change, I wasn't particular." (50) . Jonathan 2 Raban dismisses this interchange as "some innocent comedy." It underlines the hollowness of the moral-religious vocabu­ lary of the Puritan society, as also the communication gap between Huck and his teachers. It also has another signifi­ cance as far as the development of Huck's consciousness is concerned. Here, unwittingly, Huck is ready to go to the 97

"bad place", to escape boredom just as he will be consciously ready to go to hell for saving a friend. So, Huck's journey down the river is also a journey from a personalised, sub­ jective approach to life, to a broader outlook, one which is more objective, less self-centred as Huck acquires the capa­ bility to take into account the feelings and needs of others through his experiences of the journey an^ in particular, his association with Jim.

At this point in his development, however, Huck* s appF©ach is completely subjective and the opening chapters o£ his "autobiography" revolve around his alienation from his surroundings. On more than one occasion he wishes he were dead, and his feelings have a morbid streak as his thoughts keep turning to death and ghosts. When he finds himself alone in his room at the end of the first chapter, he cannot "think of something cheerful", he feels "so lonesome I most wished I was dead." Then he hears an owl" away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die"; he hears "away out in the woods... that kind of a sound that a gho.it makes when it wants to tall about nomothing that' u on its mind and can't make itself understood, and so can't rest easy in its grave and has to go about that way every night grieving" (51) . These are all images of death and sorrow. 98 and highlight Huck's alienation. Thds aljenation is a result of: the fact that Huck does not };)elong to the environ­ ment; in wliich ho finds himself.

Since Huck is an outsider, he has t?)e capacity to analyze and examine the beliefs of the St. Petersburg society and reject them if they do not conform to his own exporionce. He ha.'3 not grown up with those belief:s, hence he has not lost his capacity to consider them objectively and dispassionately. V/hen Miss Watson asks him to pray and tells hJm that through praying he can (jet anything he wants, he tries it and cinds out that it is not correct : "I tried dt. Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks. It wasn't any good to me without hooks. I tried for the hooks three or four times, but some- hov/ I couldn't mal-ce it work. By-and-by, one day, I tasked 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" (60) . Huck cannot make it out because there is a communication gap between him and his teachers; his sensibilities are not in tune with theirs. Then Huck gives it a long think and, finally, comes to the conclusion that what Miss Watson has told him must be wrong because if one can get vjhatever one v/ants, then hov; is it that the Deacon has not got back the money he lost on pork, that the widov/ has not found her snuff-box which was stolen and that Miss VJatson herself has 99

not become a bit Eat. Miss Watson's reply, when ha point.T this out to her, that "the things a body could get by praying for it was 'spiritual gifts'", and har explanation that ho should help others and do everything for them without even thinking about himself, cannot satisfy him : "I went out in the woods and turned it over in my mind a long time, but I couldn' t see no advantage about it — except for the other people — so at last I recknoned I wouldn' t worry it any more, but just let it go" (61) . This is Huck's standard response whenever he is confronted with ideas that do not agree with his own percoptiono — he thinks them over and judges them on the basis of his experiences, and if they do not look right, he rejects them. This is a sceptic' s attitude. So, when Tom tells him about magicians and genies, Huck goes into the woods and rubs a ring and a tin lamp to see whether it will really make the genie come, and when the effort proves futile, he concludes : "So then I judged that all that stuff was only just one of Tom Sawyer's lies. I reckoned he believed in the A-rabs and the elephants, but as for me I think different. It had all the marks of.a Sunday school" (64) . It does not suggest that Huck has finally severed his ties with the worM of Tom, but it pointy out the basic difference between the perso­ nalities of the two boys — one a representative of the St. Petersburg society and the other an outsider.. While Tom 100 unquestioningly accepts the ideas that are handed down to him by the figures of authority (they may be romances which he has read) , Huck does not accept any idea that does not conform to his own experience.

Another thing which establishes Buck's outsider cre­ dentials is his superstitiousness. He shares this feature of his personality with the Negroes only — no white charac­ ter other than Huck holds superstitjous beliefs. Even Torn, who so readily believes in everything that he reads in romances, is not shown to hold any superstitions. How does one explain it particularly in view of the fact that from a] 1 accounts whites did have ag many superstitions as blacks? Daniel G. Hoffman in "Black Magic — and White — in Huckle- berry Finn" argues that Mark Twain wrote this novel while "he lived among the Insurance magnates, the manufacturing millionaries, and the wealthy literati of the Nook Farm colony in Hartford, Connecticut. It had been many years since he had lived in a superstitious frontier community,and in his own not-too-reliable memory this folklore became asso- 3 ciated with the slaves he had known ini his boyhood'." " Wh^it, in effect, Hoffman tells us is that Twain had forgotten that whites also held superstitions. Apart from the fact that this is a rather strange assertion about a writer who remem­ bered in vivid detail many episodes from his childhood. 101

Hoffman's explanation tries to find the answer outside the novel, divesting it of all artistic subtleties. A very important point to remember in this regard is that supersti­ tion is not a superficial part of consciousness as far as Huck and Jim are concerned; it is an integral part of their sensibilities and is as much a way of life for them as reli­ gion and social tradition are for the whites. It gives pat­ tern to their experience and lends their environment compre­ hensible to them. They live in a world of signs and oirens which explain the immediate happenings and prepare them for the future. Their approach is basically the approach of the primitive man who had nothing to understand nature and life by except the shadows and vague images which nature and life presented to him and which his fertile imagination invested with profound meanings. So Huck and Jim, the white boy and the black adult, have a common approach to life and a common sensibility which is unsophisticated and may appear non-rational in matters pertaining to superstition, but they can be as rational, even more so, as any white adult in other matters.^ This commonness of outlook and sensibility enables Huck and Jim to transcend the barriers of race and age and establish an Intimate relationship. Hence it is hardly surprising that the relationship between Huck and Jim is a boy-to-boy relationship rather than a boy-to-adult one. 102

Further, they both stand in opposition to the "modern" sophisticated society of nineteenth century America. This society can be fascinating to the primitive man or the child in many ways but he .can .never hope to'become a pa.rt 6£ it'with­ out surrendering the freedom of his spirit and shakling his imagination to the stereotype that the society imposes upon itself.

But Huck^ despite all his alienation and discomfort, is not immune to his environment. Slowly, but surely, he begins getting accustomed to it. It may be recalled here that originally, when Tom had lured him into coming back to the widow' s v;ith the prospect of joining the Robber' s Gang, he had consented to give it a try and "takle it" for one month. Significantly, at the end of the one month period he, along with other boys, resigns from the gang, and yet there is no talk of running away from the widov/'s. He even starts going to school, a prospect which had earlier filled him with dread :

At first I hated the school, but by-and- by I got so I could stand it. Whenever I got uncommon tired I played hooky, and the hiding I got the next day done me good and cfjeared me up. So the longer I went to school the easier it got to be, I was getting sort of used to the widow' s ways, too, and they warn' t so raspy on me. Living in a house, and slee­ ping in a bed, pulled on me pretty tight, mostly, but before the cold weather I used to 103

slide out and sleep in the woods, 'sometimes, and so that was a rest to me. I. liked the old ways best, but I was getting so I liked the new ones, too, a little bit. The widow said I was coming along slow but sure, and doing very satisfactory. She said she warn't ashamed o£ me. ( 65) in

It shows he is coming around. He has adopted the tactics o£ t?iu other "respectable" boys, like playing hooky, that render the stifling environment bearable, and hence he can stand it. The same kind of influences that forced Tom to surrender seme of the freedom of his spirit are also working on him. Although we never see Huck in school or in church and cannot say how these institutions work on him, their influence shows itself ' in Gh. when Huck faces the moral dilemma concerning Jim, As Henry Nash Smith has pointed out, the language that Huck's conscience uses is not the language of Huck but the artificial one of these institu- tions. 5 He even gives in now to the saine kind of emotional blackmail by Widow Douglas as Aunt Polly had used against Tom. Huck goes out in the night with Tom to the cave to take part in a meeting of the "robbers." His clothes get soiled. Narrating the subsequent events he says, "I got a good going-over in the morning, from old Miss Watson, on account of my clothes; but the widow she didn't scold, but only cloarod oEf the grease and clay and looked so aorcy that I thought I would .behave a while if I could" (60) . 104

Since Huck shows no intention of runnirxj away from the v/idow, it may safely be assumed that had it not been for the cirrival ol: Pap Finn, ho would have gone on living with the widow and would have turned out to be something quite different from the boy who declares at the end of the novel that he should "light out for the T^erritory ahead of the rest" to escape being adopted and "sivilized" by Aunt Polly. That Huck has, to some extent, become reconciled to an environment which negates his basic impulses speaks volumes about the potency and efficiency of the environment. At this juncture Huck is still pliable. To strengthen his confidence in his own instincts and to realize the true mea­ ning and implications of conformity, he needs the experiences of the voyage down the river; needs to see society in all its manifestations — cruel, inhuman, absured, gullible; needs above all the enn6bling experience of living alone with Jim on the raft.

Fortunately for Huck, Pap reappears at this point and the v/hole situation alters. Shortly after his arrival. Pap takes-Hutk away from the widow, kidnaps him in fact, to live in the woods. So Huck again returns to his old and familiar life-style. With the change in the environment Pluck's out­ look also undergoes a shift and now, from a distance, he finds himself in a better position to analyze his life at 105 the widow' s and to realize what it actually was. Compared to it, tVie life with Pap seems much better :

It was kind o£ lazy and jolly, laying o£f comEortable all day, smoking and fishing, and no books nor study. Two months or more run along, and my clothes got to be all rags and dirt, and I didn't see how I'd ever got to like it so well at the widow' s, where you had to wash, and eat on a plate, and corrib up, and go to bed and get up regular, and be for­ ever bothering over a book and have old Miss Watson pecking at you all the time. I didn't want "to go back no more, I had, stopped cur­ sing, because the widow didn't like it; but now I took to it again because pap hadn't no objections. It was pretty good times up in the woods there, take it all around. (75)^

The life in the woods with Pap is not morally and spiritually stifling, at least, so it appears to Huck at this stage. ThereEore, as compared to the life at the widow's, he likes it better, "all but the cowhide part." But Huck's expe­ rience a£ life with Pap makes him aware of another danger that society poses to him — the danger of physical maltreat­ ment. Pap beats him black and blue whenever he is drunl; or in a sour mood — which is almost always, and during a drunJcen delirium he almost kills Huck. And soon enouch Huck realizes that the freedom which Pap offers is only an illu­ sion of freedom, that even this life can bo as confining aa the one at the widow's. He realizes this when Pap goes away for several days, leaving him behind locked up in the cabin. 106

Huck makes the same complaint which he has so often made about his life at the widow's ; "It was so lonesome."

The moral and spiritual freedom which Pap oEEor is a froGdom only in a very shallow sence. His attitudes and perceptions are as stereotyped as those of the widow or Miss Watson's. This becomes clear when Pap delivers his tirade against free Negroes and the government which allows them to remain free. The whole situation is incongruous and highly ironic : Pap, a morally and physically degraded person, him­ self a target of scorn and moral indignation for the respect­ able people of the town, feeling scorn and moral indignation because he has seen a free Wagro. But it is quite natural because, as Michael Wilding has pointed out. Pap actually belongs to the St, Petersburg society and his ways are not opposed to those of the town. Rather, they are very simi­ lar to them. Despite all his antagonism to the widow and Judge Thatcher, and despite all the abohorence that the respectable St, Petersburg feels for his way of life, he is actually a part of that society and shares most of its atti­ tudes. Ha is most happy in the town and not away from it : "Every time he got money he got drunk, and every time he got drunk he raised Gain around town; and every time he raised Cain he got jailed. He was just suited — this kind of thing was right in his line" (74) . And Pap's treatment of 107

the free Negro would have done credit to any "respectable" person from the town. That Huck percieves all this uncons­ ciously is evident from the fc^ct that while reporting Pap's rather long speech on the subject of free Negroes and govern­ ment and voting, he underlines, though without comimnt, all the incongruity and absurdity of the situation, and makes it hilariously comic. He also realizes that Pap cannot offer. him an alternative to the widow because his way of life and his sensibility is just an extension, a perverted one, of the widow' s, and a more violent and physically threatening one at that. ' So, finally he must reject it.

But despite all Its shortcomings, Huck's life with Pap makes him realize the insufIferabillty ol: the life at tho widow' s, so that when he hears from Pap that he may be forced to live with her again, the prospect fills him with dread : "And he said people•allowed there'd be another trial to get me av/ay from him and give me to the widow for my guardian, and they guessed it would win, this tiire. This shook me up considerable, because I didn't want to go back to the widow's any more and be so cramped up and sivilized, as they called it" (76) . Huck does not want to be "sivilized", but the type of escape from it that Pap has to offer is not accept­ able to him, either. So he dcldes to run away from both, and run away for good this time. He acts out an elaborate 108 plan to convince the widow and Pap that he is dead, so that they would not chase him and try to find him, and goes to the JacKsona' 3 Island.

On the island, for a few days, Huck is completely alone, at least that is what he thinks because he does not yet know that Jim is also there. It is a picture of the child alone amidst nature. Huck*s relationship with nature is complex and multi-dimensional. First, there is a feeling of satisfaction, of being one with the environirent, for nature here appears beautiful and benevolent. Secondly^,there is a sense of isolation, c£ loneliness, not very different from the one which Huck felt at the widov;'s or when he was locked up in the cabin — here nature appears inadequate. Finally, there is also a feeling of fear and terror, and here nature appears either as vulnerable or menacing. The desc­ ription of Huck's first morning conveys the first image c£ nature :

The sun was up so high when I waked, that I judged it was after eight o'clock. I laid there in the gr^ss and the cool shade, thinking about things and feeling rested and ruther comfortable and satis­ fied. I could see the sun out at one or two holes, but mostly it was big trees all about, and gloomy in these amongst them. There was freckled places on the ground where the light sifted down through the leaves, and the freckled places swapped about a little showing there was a little 109

breeze up there. A couple c£ squirrels set on a liirib and jabbered at me very friendly. (89) ^

The passage conveys a sense of peace and tranquillity, and a feeling of harmony between Huck and his environnant. He is away from his prosecutors and amongst things which are pleasant and friendly rather than threatening. This picture of nature is reinforced very often in the novel. When Huck sets out in the canoe to the island, he lies dov/n in the bottom of the boat and looks up at the s'ky. It is night. The stars are shining and the slcy looks vast and deep. It is as if he is the only human being on the mighty river. Some far away voices corce drifting over water from a ferry­ boat landing. These are disembodied voices; Huck cannot see the men and they cannot see him. Here also there is a sense of isolation, but now isolation is not tinged with loneliness — it is a blanketing, protective isolation and carries with it a sense of security. Here riature appears as beneficial. There is also that elaborate description of a morning scene on the river which underlines the beauty of nature; there is a sense of awed wonder at the sublimity and grandeur of the beauty of the scene.

The contrast between society and these aspects of nature, so well dealt by William C. Spengemann, makes nature 110

7 look like a perEect sanctuary. But these are only glimpses, fleeting and transitory. Soon those glimpses oE a beauti­ ful, harmonious nature are replaced by scenes whre nature appears to be singularly vulnerable to onslaughts from society. Immediately after the description of Huck's first morning on the island we have the incident of Huck discove­ ring the still-smouldering remains of a campf ire. This dis­ covery strikes'terror in his heart because he realizes that he is not alone on the island, there is sorreone else as v/oll, a representative of the society from which he 'is fling. As it turns out, this other person is not a member of the perse­ cuting society, but Jim, as much a victim oE it as Huck him­ self. But this incident does impress upon Huck the fact that he is not saEe on the island, that nature cannot protect him from society. He had set out for the island with the idea of remaining there permanently or, at least, for a very long period; he had not thought of it as a short stop-over in a long journey j "All right I can stop anywhere I want to. Jackson' s Island is good enough for me; I know that island pretty well, and nobody ever comes there. And than I can paddle over to town, nights, and slink around and pick up things I want. Jackson's Island's the place"(86). But, as the discovery of the campfiro makes Huck realize, Jackson's Island is not the place, it does not have the potential of Ill

being turned into a permanent abode; it must, of necessity, be only a temporary stop-over in his journey. Though at this stage Huck's fears are soon allayed and he is relieved on finding but the. identity of the other person, the inade­ quacy and vulnerability of Jackson's Island again becomes apparent when he comes to know through ^fc•s Loftas that some lx3oi:)le are planning to come over to hunt for Jim so that they could get the reward money. It is important that on returning to the island, Huck breathlessly declares to Jim ; "'Git up and hump yourself, Jim 1 There ain't a minute to lose. They're after us I'" (117) . Right now they may be only after Jim, but the threat is also personal to Huck because it shows that Jackson's Island is not immune to intrusion.

Nature in The Adventure of Huckleberry Finri, as a matter of fact,Is not the nature of the Romantics. It cannot provide a sanctuary from the dangers and corrupting influences of society. In the nineteenth century industrialized America, nature has been tamed, corrupted and used for commercial pur­ poses. And hence its vulnerability and inadequacy as an alternative to so::iety. This perception is again conveyed forcefully when the raft is run-over by a steam-boat. The description of the steam boat conveys a sense of fear and depicts it as something dangerous, a monster : "She was a big 112

one, and she was coming in a hurry, too, looking like a black cloud with rows o£ glov-z-worms around it; but all o£ a sudden she bulged out, big and scary, with a row of wide- open furnace doors shining like red-hot teeth, and her mons­ trous bovjs and guards hanging right over us," (152). The river, no doubt, provides Huck and Jim with an opportunity to flee their persecutors, it provides them with moments of unalloyed joy and tranquillity, of complete freedom, but it is also a river used for navigating a steam-boat that runs over their raft thereby impeding their journey and forcing Huck to go back to" society, where he witnesses one of the most senselessly brutal scenes in the whole of his journey.

Even apart from the vulnerability of nature vis-a-vlz society, it is hardly capable of indefinitely sustaining one emotionally. Huck soon realizes it. After the first ruch of joy at finding himself away from his persecuting father and equally persecuting guardian, he starts feeling lonely, a feeling of which he had so often complained at the widow's, and also while locked up in the cabin by his father : "V/hen it was dark I set by my camp fire smoking, and feeling pretty satisfied; but by-and-by it got sort of lonesome, and so I went and set on the bank and listened to the currents v/ashing along, and counted the stars and drift-logs and ralrts that come dovvm, and then went to bed; there ain't no bettor way to 113

put in time when you are lonesome; you can't stay so, you soon gat over it." (92) . As the days pass, without any change, all monotcnously similar, "putting in tine" becomes more and more difficult. Now Huck no more presents the picture of a satisfied and happy child in the solitude of benevolent nature, completely at one with his environment. Rather, the picture is of a dissatisfied child, alienated from his environment. Not only this, even nature can be as thereatening and malicious as society. Huck realizes it when he is alone in the canoe, separated (:rom Jim by the fog. The fog makes him temporarily blind and muffles the sounds so that they become deceptive and unreliable. In the fog Huck faces something akin to an existential crisis — all alone, drifting helplessly^ unable to see where he is going, and facing mali­ cious and hostile forces of nature. The combined effect of all this is to make Huck realize not only the inadequacy of nature as an alternative to society, but also the dangers inherent in any effort to trust it as one. So he must reject this alternative even though ±0 the beginning it had held out a promise,

Huck's relationship with Jim offers another such pro­ mise , But there is one major difference : Though Huck corres to realize that even an authentic relationship cannot guaran­ tee complete liberation from the negative forces of society. 114

his relaticnship with Jim does help him in breaking free of the negative influences of society on his personality; it is the one positive factor in the growth of Huck's consciousness which otherwise exclusively depends upon negative factors. Huck's relationship with Jim effects his consciousness in two different ways — one is a process of initiation and the other, a process of deconditicning.

Immediately after their meeting on the island, Jim starts instructing Huck in the language of nature, and tells him how to translate the language of nature, a language of signs, so that it conveys useful informaticn. As they are lying around after their breakfast, they see some young birds skipping about en the trees. Jim says that it is a sign of rain. He insists that they move their provisions and all their belongings to a cave on a small hillock. They do so. And that very night they get a fierce thunderstorm. As Huck sits in the mouth of the cave, admiring the beauty of the storm, Jim reminds him that it looks beautiful cnly from the safety of the cave, and had it not been for him, Huck could not be in the cave : '"Well, you wouldn't a ben here, '£ it hacSn't a ben for Jim. You'd a ben down dah in da woods without any dinner, en gittin' mos dro;>med, too, dat you would, honey. Chickens knows when it's gwyne to rain, en so do birds, chile'" (102). This sort of ]

command over the language of nature is necessary if Huck is to survive outside society. This is the first step towards bililding trUst in Jim in the .mind of Huck.

Besides the language of nature, Jim also instructs Huck in the language of superstition. He tells him about the omens and signs of luck and about actions that bring bad luck : catching a young bird brings death; c bun ting "the things you are going to cook for dinner", or shaking the table-cloth after sun-set, brings bad luck; so does touching a snake-skin. Huck never questions any of Jim' s observa­ tion's because his sensibility is attuned to that of Jim. And on the only occasicn when he does, events shape themselves in such a way that he is proved wrong. After coming back from the wreckage of the floating house, Huck wants to talk about the 1 dead, man saw'in'the hous^, but Jim says' talking about dead persons brings bad luck. Then they find eight dollars sewed up in a coat they have brought from the house, and Huck says to Jim :

"Now you say it is bad luck, what did you say when I fetched in the snake-skin that I found on the top of the ridge day before yesterday ? You said it was the worst bad luck in the world to touch a snake-skin with my hands. Well here's your bad luck I We've raked in all this truck and eight dollars besides. I wish we could have sbme bad luck like thds every day, Jim". (106)^ 116

Jim's reply is : "'Never you mind, honey never you mind. Don't you git too peart. It's a-comin'. Mind I tell you, it's a-comin'.'" And after just two days Huck kills a rattle snake and curls it in Jim's bed. Its mate comes and coils itself around the carcass and bites Jim V7hen he gets in his bed. Huck's reaction, like that of Jim, is that this is the result of touching the snake-skin. This initiation into the language of'superstition plays an important role in the growth of Huck's carisciousness. He has run away from the village, leaving behind its religion and its customs, which he distrusted anyway. Jim's supersition gives him a firm ground to stand on, provides him with a persj^ective which takes the place of religion and social customs, making their rejection easier.

Jim also helps Huck in breaking free of the negative influences of society on his personality. One such negative influence is Tom. Huck shows his Tom Sawyerishness when he » insists on getting abroad "Walter Scott" despite Jim's pro- tests. Significantly, Huck's argument for doing do is, "Do you reckon Tom Sawyer would ever go by this thing ? Not for pie, he wouldn't. He'd call it an adventure — that's what he'd call it, and he'd land en that wreck if it was his last act." And It Js pure luck that Inndjng on that wrock doai? not prove their last act. On the steam-boat they nearly 117 fall into the hands of a murderous gang of robbers. They, however, manage to escape to the safety of their raft. There Huck tells Jim what had happened and says that these things are adventures. Jim reacts by saying that "he didn't want any more adventures. He said that when I went in the texas and he crawled back to get on the raft and found her gone he nearly died, because he judged it was all up with him any­ way it could be fixed, for if he didn't get saved he would get drowned, and if he did get saved, whoever saved him would send him back home so as to get the reward, and then Miss Watson would sell him South, sure." (153). Huck cannot but accept this simple logic. It is the voice of experience and stands in direct contrast to Tom's immature romanticism. Huck accepts it readily at the cost oC the I'^tter because he himself is more inclined towards experience rather than ideas and notions acquired from the "authorities". Thug, to a very large extent, Jim succeeds in making Huck break free oE the make-believe world of Tom Sawyer and base his actions en c ommcn sen se.

Huck reacts more positively to the instruction of Jim than he does to those of Miss Watson or the widow not only because, unlike Miss Watson and the widow, Jim speaks a familiar language, but also because sub-consciously Huck rci- lizes that in instructing him Jim is not assuming a higher 118 moral state, that his Instructions are spcantaneous expres­ sions of knowledge aimed at ensuring his own and Huck'fe well- being. Even when Jim expresses anger or hurt, it is not aimed at humiliating Huck or imstalling a sense of guilt in his heart. Here it may be appropriate to compare two instances when Huck is rebuked for his erratic behaviour, in the one case by the widow and in the other by Jim. The first cne has already been referred to in this section. Huck has been out till late in the night, playing robbers with Tom and has soiled his clothes. The widow discovers it the next morning but "... the widow she didn't scold, but only cleaned off the grease and clay and looked so sorry that I thought I would behave a while if I could". Loooking sorry is the widow' s way of rebuking Huck and making him repent. The second instance occurs just after the fog. When Huck comes back to the raft after he and Jim have been separated by the fog, he finds Jim asleep. On Jim's waking, he misleads Jim by making him believe that the whole episode of the fog and their sepa­ ration was just a dream. Jim gets excited and proceeds to "interpret" the dream. Than, suddenly, Huck points to the leaves and branches that are scattered on the raft and asks Jim what they stand for i

"What do thay stan' for 7 I's gwyne to tell you. When I got all wore out wid work, en wid de callin' for you, en went to sleep. 119

my heart wua mos' broke bekase you wuz los', en- I didn'l.k'yer no mo' what become er ma en de ra£ • , 13n when I wake up en fine you back agin, all safe en soun' de tears come, en I could 'a' got down on my knees en kiss ye' foot, I* s so thankful. En all you wuz thinkin' 'bout wuz how you could make a fool uv ole Jim wid a lie. Dat truck dah is trash, en trash is what people is dat puts dirt en de head ,ar dey fren's en makes 'en ashamed." Then he got up slow and walked to the wigwam, and went in there without saying anything but that. But that was enough. It made ne feel so mean I could almost kissed his foot to get him to talcs it back. It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and hurpble myself to a nagger — but I dona it and I warn' t ever sorry for it afterward, neither. (142-43)^

The difEerence in the reactions of Huck to the two rebukes is actually the difference in the attitudes of the two agents. In the case of the widow, looking, sorry is a hypocritical gesture. It is not an expression of genuine pain caused by the erratic behaviour of Huck. Rather, it is a calculated move, aimed at evoking a consciousness of guilt in the boy to make him desist from such behaviour in the future. Huck rea­ lizes this, and his reaction to it is equally hypocritical : "I thought I would behave a while if I could." Jim's reac­ tions to Huck's erratic behaviour, on the other hand, is not hypocritical, it is not calculated to produce some particular eEL-act. Instead, it is a genuine expiression of anger and 120

pain, and of hurt at the callous behaviour of one whom Jim had regarded as a friend, whom ha had loved. Again, sub­ consciously, Huck realizes this and his response is as genu­ ine and unhypoaritical as the anger and pain oE Jim. He humbles himself in'.front of the run-away slave and is not sorry for doing so. Prom now an he desists from playing any more tricks on Jim — his break with the world of Tom Sawyer is complete.

Huck's act of humbling himself before Jim marks the beginning of a process of -expansion of Huck's consciousness. His concerns become less self-centred, and ha starts learning to take into ccnsideraticn the feelings of others instead of acting solely for his own .well-being. This process starts with Jim and continues till Huck can feel no bitterness and hatred even for the king and the duke taut only compassion and pity when he sees them tarred and feathered, although they have caused enormous damage. When Huck conres to the reali­ zation that he must not act out of consideration for his own feolings and desires only but take into caisideration those of Jim also, he takes the first step towards acknowledging Jim's humanity. It must bo ramamberad hare that tha v^hite, slave-owning society of nineteenth century America took great pains to deny this fact. Along the journey Huck comes to sea Jim not as a "nigger'^ the member of a sub-human species, 121

as the white society paints him, but as another human being who can feel pain and hurt just like any white perscri, and with whom he can establish a one-to-cne relationship. Huck, for example, discovers that Jim cares for his family as much as any white parson may, and even a long gap cannot dull the paJn oC aoiinvaticx^, H* diaaovora thim Eact whimi Via aouis Jim mourning for his family. His reaction is : "I do be­ lieve he cared just as much for his people as white folks does for there'n,' It dcn't seem natural but Ireckon it's so" (218) , It does not seem natural because he has been told that blacks do not have the human qualities ot feeling love and bondage to their families. It was a popular white belief at that time and was deliberately propagated. The uneasy conscience of the whites who sold the black children away from their mothers and then saw the mothers grieving for them was put at rest with the argunent that the black women were like bitches who might howl for a while when separated o from their pups but soon forgot them. ' The novel is full of instances where Huck's own observation of Jim is just the opposite of what the society would have him believe of the blacks. Time and again, he is impressed by the practical wisdom of Jim and comes to the conclusion that contrary to the society's stereotype of blacks, Jim is not a chuckle- head. So, the journey down the river in the company of Jim 122

makes Huck observe the falsity of the stereotype that the society imposes upon its less privileged members. But it should not be taken to mean that Huck has entirely rejected the white stereotype of blacks. Here, at Jeast, he shows a singular lack of ability to generalize : whenever he observes a quality in Jim, a trait which runs counter to the popular white conception of blacks, he does not conclude that the conceptions are wrong; his conclusion is that Jim is an exceptional black. When Huck is impressed by the simple logic of Jim' s observations, he immediately says that Jim "had an uncomnon level hee^d for a nigger". Similarly, when he sees Jim mourning for his family and concludes that Jim cares for them as much as a white man, he immediately adds, "He was a mighty good nigger, Jim was". So, it is not that the white prejudices are wrong but only that Jim is an unco­ mmon, an exceptional "nigger". And, by extension, despite his long association with Jim he never cones to doubt the dietat of the white, slave-owning society that it is abho- rant and sinful to help a slave escape from his "rightful" owner.

Though Huck does not extend the results of his obser­ vation of Jim to other blacks, he does come to regard Jim as a human being, a human being who is superior to others he has known so far. This conclusion helps him establish a close relatiooiship with Jim. It is this relationship of 123 intimacy which plays the most important role in the growth of Huck' s consciousness. The boy has grown up in a society which is deeply suspicious of any show of emotions of love and affection. Owing to the circumstances of his upbring­ ing, Huck does not recieve even the meagre amount of love and affection that Tom and the other boys get. Even after he is adopted by the widow, what he gets in her house is sermons and lectures on good manners and bad behaviour ins­ tead of love and affection. His relationship with his father is an even more callous one. He does get companion­ ship from some of the village lads, particularly Tom, but it is not a genuine and emotionally fulfilling one. Huck and Tom can never establish a truly intimate relationship because there is an unbridgeable gap in their sensibilities. On meeting Jim, Huck immediately strikes an easy rap]:)ort with the run-away slave because, for one, Jim does not, in fact cannot, assume social superiority and, secondly, they both share a common emotional and intellectual plane. Huck* 3 very first reaction on seeing Jim on the island is of happiness and the meeting dispels his sense of loneliness. Prom then on the happiest moments of the journey for Huck are those when he is alone on the raft with Jim. Their relationship throughout the journey remains that of companionship and com- radrie. Jim, although far superior to Huck as far as the 124

knowledge of the ways of nature is concerned, never uses it to claim any undue advantage in their relationship. This attitude is in marked contrast to that of Tom who never tires of claiming the right to be boss because he has more "knowledge" acquired from his readings of the romances. Whenever there is a difference of opinion between Jim and Huck, Jim lets Huck have his way, but gently points out his mistake when later circumstances prove him right and Huck wrong. He upbraids Huck when the latter is callous and unconsiderate in his behaviour, but it is a guileless expre­ ssion of hurt on a wrong done by a trusted friend, devoid o£ canny calculations. Further, Jim is extrenely considerate and tender towards him. He tries to sheild him from possi­ ble shock and pain, as when he does not let him see the face of the corpse in the washed away house; he even avoids grie­ ving for his family in front of Huck and does so only when he thinks that the latter is asleep. He takes every possible care of his comfort and lets him sleep even when it is Huck's turn to go on watch. Huck, on his part, acknowledges all this and is than}cful for it — he does not consider it his due as a white boy from a run-away slave whom he is helping gain his freedom. The relationship between the two, based on mutual respect and affection, grows and deepens and has a liberating effect on Huck's consciousness. It is no mean 125 achievGiTrant £or a white boy to be able to see a black as an individual rather than a itiember o£ a sub-human species, and to acknowledqe and respect his sentiments even if he consi­ ders him an exceptional black.

Huek'3journey down the river, alone on the raft with Jim, presents a picture of unalloyed joy and freedom. The raft, when Huck and Jim are the only occupants of it, is radi­ cally, different from all the other settings in which Huck finds himself. The widow's house is morally and emotionally stif­ ling; Pap's company is physically threatening and confining and Pap can be as morally hypocritical as the widow or Miss Douglas; nature, which at first provides a hope of possible free do ni, soon belies it and Hack discovers that alone amidst nature can be as lonely as alone in a room in the widow's house or locked up in a cabin in the woods; the Grangerford household represents Tom Sawyer-brand of romanticism determi­ ning adult actions and is marked by physical violence and the Wllks episode showithe gullibility of goodness and the envi­ ronment there can be ag morally nauseating as anywhere else. But while he is on the raft with Jim, Huck never complains of loneliness or discomfort. His descriptions are descriptions of a feeling of freedom, descriptions of moments of pure joy shared with someone with whom he has established a relation­ ship of intimacy — a relationship that requires long 126

association and emotional and intelJectual compatibility, a sharing of objectives and common sensibility, a relationship which does not require speech for communication and in which silences are not eiribarassing. The first few paragraphs of Ch. XIX are a celebration of the freedom of the raft and Huck's relationship with Jim. Here it seems that Buck has at last found the ideal state of being, that he and Jim alone on the raft form an ideal society. As Huck himself says after he and Jim resuna their journey after the Grangerford episode : "We said there warn't no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a rafti' (176) .

The importance of this relationship with Jim and the experience of living alone with him on the raft as far as their effect on the sensibility and personality of Huck is concerned becomes apparent in the moral conflict that Huck faces regarding the role he has played in helping Jim get away from slavery. The odds are indeed very high i the social condibioning, the religious preaching and the secular teachings all combine against the instincts of Huck. Jim has been sold away by the king and the duke and Huck is thinking of what to do. First he thinks of informing the widow, arguing that as long as Jim has to be a slave it will 127

be better for him to be one at his horrB and amongst his family, but he decides against it because he figures that Miss Watson will be so angry that she will sell him South, an d, noreover,

It would get all around that Huck Finn heljoed a niggor to get his freedom, and if I was to ever see anybody from that town again I'd be ready to get dovm and licX his boots for shame,... And at last, when it hit me all of a sudden that there was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and letting me >iiow my wicKedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven, whilst I was stealing a poor old woman's nigger that hadn't ever done me no harm, and now was showing me there's One that's always on the lookout and ain't a-going to allow no such miserable goings to go only just so fur and no further, I most dropped in my tracks I was so scared, (281-82) ^

Both these, the social and the religious, are powerful argu­ ments against which Huck has no defences — he has not been able to develop any alternative arguments to counter them. So, appropriately enough, ha tries to find solace in religion it self: : he tries to pray but, just as appropriately, he can­ not — his heart is not in it. As he himself puts it, "You cannot pray a lie." So, he writes a letter to Miss Watson, telling her where she can find Jim, immediately feels relie­ ved and sots down to think. And the menx^ries of the voyage come rushing down to him — nemories of shared experiences. 128

of freedom and joy, of love and true companionship, and it is these memories which constitute an argument powerful enough to counter the social and the religious ones. He starts tay thinking "how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell'J

And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time : in the day and in the night-time, some- tirres moonlight, (sometirre storms, and we a- floating along, talking and singing and lau­ ghing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I' d see him standing my watch on top of his'n, 'stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping, and see how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey and pet me and do everything ha could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small pox abroad, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world and the only one he's got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper. It was a close place. I took it up, and held It in my hand. I was a-trerribling, because I'd got to decide, for­ ever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself :

"All right, then, I'll go to hell," and tore it up. (282-83)^

But Huck's relationship with Jim cannot guarantee libe­ ration, i'^d the raft cannot provide an alternative to society. Both Jim and the raft are as much an illusion as anybody or 129

anything else in the novel. The setting, though ideal, is vulnerable to hostile forces. As Huck soon discovers, this ideal state cannot last iridef Iriltely because even the com­ bined forces of Huck* s instinct for survival and Jim's prac­ tical wisdom are no match for the evil social forces. Huck beeoires aware of the fragility of the raft when it is over­ run by the steam-boat. The raft, the representative of a primitive culture, is no match for the steam-boat which represents the modern, industrialized society. In the collu­ sion, appropriately enough, the former is destroyed, and Huck is forced to go to the shore. Though he again returns to the raft after the Grangerford episode, it has been demonstrated that the freedom which the raft offers is a fragile one. It can be lost easily enough if, as Michae.1 Wilding puts it, "strong enough anti-freedom forces appear." Right after the opening paragraphs of Ch. XIX which celebrate freedom and harmony between the unrestrained man and nature, the raft is virtually, captured by the king and the duke, and Huck and Jim are held almost as prisoners. Thayare forced to participate in the conflict of different forces of society from which they are running away. Huck is quick to admit his helplessness against the social forces that the two scalawags represent :

It didn't take me long to make up my mind that these liars wasn't no kings nor 130

dukeg at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds. But I never said nothing, never let on; kept it to myself; it's the best way; then you don't have no quarrels and dorj't get into no trouble.... If I never learnt nothing out of pap, I learnt that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them have their own way, (185-86)-|«

So, Huck puts up no resistance and goes along with whatever the king and the duke say and do. They both force him into participating in things which he abhors, which his "sound heart" finds revolting but he can do nothing except go along with them because his own survival, and that of Jim, depends upon it: he is threatened by both the contending forces of society — the king and the duke on the one hand, and the people whom they can,on the other. At the Wilks', he tries to help the orphan sisters purely out of humanitarian ins­ tincts and at a considerable personal risk from the two scoundrels, but when it comes to the final show-down between the two and the tovms people, he finds that he is as much a suspect in the eyes of the latter, and as much threatened by them, as the real villains. He is in a fix — to counter the king and the duke, to defeat their evil designs and to escape the threat which they pose to him and Jim, he must seek the help of the other forces of society but it he does, these forces themselves will come to pose an even bigger threat. There are individuals within this society who are 131

willing to help without posing any threat, but they are as powerless as he and Jim and, despite good intentions, cannot act effectively. The plan that he and Mary Jane formulate to get the king and the duke caught without jeopardizing the safety of himself and Jim does not come through, and at the end of it he again finds himself at the nBrcy of his perse­ cutors. He runs away from the graveyard thinking that he has succeeded in dodging the townspeople as well as the king and the duke, and gets on the raft all happy and exulted about it but, then, "I noticed a sound that I knowed mighty well and held my breath and listened and waited, and sure enough, when the next flash busted out over the water, here they come I — and just a-laying to teir oars and making their skiff hum 1 It v;as the king and the du]

So, Buck soon realizes that the community he and Jim form, though ideal, is highly unstable and the alternative which it offers is as much an illusory one as any other v;hich 132

he has encountered so far. The freedom which he enjoys on the raft with Jim is a "negative freedom." 10 Negative in the sense that this sort of freedom can be sustained only by running away, through continuing the journey. But such a journey must, of necessity, be a limited one because the river itself is limited. Even apart from this, the raft is vulnerable to hostile forces that stifle the instincts of Huck and curb the freedom of his spirit, because there is no active guiding force behind it. Such a passive drifting, completely at the mercy of the river cannot lead to a true, stcible freedom, to a feasible alternative to the hostile environment; such an alternative requires positive, purpose­ ful action. The river in itself is a characterless force; it can be as easily exploited by the king and the duke for their evil purposes, and for frustrating the plans of Huck and Jim as by Huck and Jim themselves for escape. "Since the freedom of the raft is undirected, it is susceptible to being directed by in ways hostile to freedom if strong enough anti-freedom forces appear." 11 So, Huck is forced to rea­ lize that the state of freedom from the subjugating forces of society which he and Jim have.been able to attain on the raft is temporary and unstable, it must be rejected, and some other alternative found to it.

The very incidents that prove the fragility of the 133

freedom of the raft pi^ovide Huck opportunities to explore some such alternatives. After the raft is destroyed by the steam-boat, Huck is forced to go to the shore. This gives him a chance to explore another alternative which the Grangerfords represent. The atmosphere at the Grangerford's is characterized by melodramatic sentirnentalism, sham chi­ valry and absurd courageousness. This way of life has its, own charms, and Huck feels attracted towards it. It has a gracefulness and charm, personified in Col. Grangerf ord, the master of the household, which Huck finds appealing. And the Grangerfords can be friendly and considerate even towards complete strangers, provided that the stranger is not one of the "enemy." So, Huck is taken in by them and made comfor­ table once they are convinced that he has nothing to do v/ith the Shepherdsons, And Buck shows no diffidence and takes to him immediately.

All this, however, is only the surface gloss, like that of the imitation fruits and vegetables which he sees in the house, and just like the fruits and vegetables, the Gran- gerford way of life also has places where the gloss has chipped off and the chalk beneath is visible. The diffe­ rence betvjeen this way of life an.d that of the widow or pap is superficial; Col. Grangerf ord is a gentleman, but a gen­ tleman whom the widow and Pap would have appreciated : "He 134

was well born, as the saying is, and that's worth as much in a man as it is in a horse, so the widow Douglas said, and nobody ever denied that she was of the first aristocracy in out town; and Pap he always said it, too, thought he warn't no more quality than a mudcat himself" (l64) . This bracke­ ting together of the colonel, the widow and Pap is important; it underlines the similarity in their attitudes. Pap and the colonel, in particular, are poles apart in their social posi­ tions, yet their social attitudes have much in common.

Interestingly enough, in this world religion plays as important a role and is a< hypocritically followed as in the world of the widow and Miss Watson :

Next Sunday we all went to church, about three mile, everybody a-horseback. The men took their guns along, so did Buck, and kept them between their knees or stood them handy again at the wall. The Shepherdsons done the sane. It was pretty ornery preaching — all about brotherly love, and such like tiresome­ ness; but everybody said it was a good sermon and they all talked it over going home, and had such a powerful lot to say about faith and good works and free grace and preforeordestination, and I don't know what all, that it did seem to me to be one of the roughest Sundays .1 had run across yet. (169)^

The Grangerford-Shepherdson feud represents Tom Sawyerish romanticism translated into action and brought into 135

the adult society. This romanticisrti is as absurd and unrea­ sonable as the childish one of Tom Savyyer. After Buck tries to kill Harney, Huck starts asking questions about the fnotive and Buck explains what a feud is; then he tells Huck about the present one :

"..,,. It started thirty years ago or som'ers along there. There was trouble 'bout something and then a lawsuit to settle it, and the suit went agin one of the men and so he up and shot the man that won the suit — which he would naturally do, of course. Anybody would. " "What was the trouble about. Buck ? — land ?" "I reckon maybe — I don't know." "Well, who done the shooting ? Waa it a Grangarford or a Shopherdson ?" "Laws, how do 1 know ? It v\ras so long ago." "Don't anybody know?" "Oh, yes, pa knows, I reckon, and some of the other old people* but they don't know now what the row was about in the first place." "Has there been many killed. Buck ?" "Yes; right smart chance of funerals...." (167-68) This dJ.alogue underlines the absurdity, the senselessness of the feud; not just the feud but the whole way of life of which the feud is a part. At the.same time dt also under­ lines the irreconcilable differences between Huck's sensibi­ lity and that of Buck. Huck cannot understand most of the things which Buck considers natural and takes for granted. 136

Just as in the case of his relationship with Tom and the widow and Miss Douglas, there is a conmiunication gap across which no bridges can be built.

The society, of which the Grangerfords are a part is characterised by religious hypocrisy coupled with adoles- cently absurd, and infinity more violent and hence dange­ rous, romanticism. This romanticism is more dangerous than that o£ Tom because it is subscribed to by adults resourceUul enough to translate it into signifc'icant action. It-has been brought out of the arena of boyish games and mada the basis of adult actions. At one level, the Grangerford episode makes Huck realize the dangers inherent in the seemingly harmless illusions of Tom, and at another, it makes him reject the way of life made possible by the socio-economics of slave-holding feudalism. Since it stands on the same socio­ economic basis as the St. Petersburg society, so this way of life can never be a true alternative to it. This way of life can be as inhibiting and oppressive, as far as natural instincts are concerned, as that of the widow or Pap. Miss Sophia and young Harney cannot but run away if they are to realize their love for each other. And as soon as they do, all hell breaks loose, with the members of their respective families going for each other like wild beasts. In the world inhabited by the Grangerfords and the Shepherdson S/ despite its sentimental ism 137

and chivalry, love can lead to violence and death. Huck can­ not reconcile himself to such an envix-onment. Hence just as he has rejected the widow. Pap and Tom, so also he must re- ject the Grangerfords. He does so, once again in the favour of the raft :

I was powerful glad to get away from the feuds, and so was Jim to get away from the swamp. We said there warn't no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, a raft don't. (176) The kong and the duke also enable Huck to explore a few alternatives by forcing him to leave the raft and go to the rivar-slde towns with them. At one of his excursions into the river-side society with the king and the duka Huck witne- ssess another gory killing as in the Grangerford episode — that of Boggs by Col. Sherburn, The latter represents ano­ ther illusory alternative. He, as far as socio-economic back­ ground is concerned, is as different from Col. Grangerford as he possibly can be. They belong to two radically difCerent socio-economic ethos; Col. Grangerford belongs to the landed gentry class while Sherburn belongs to the trading class. But, as colonel before the name of. each suggests, they have much in comiTon. They both are acutely conscious of their personal power and do not hesitate in using it in the most violent ways; they both have bloated egos and hence are 138

intolerant of insults, whether real or imagined. The shoo­ ting episode reveals two different aspects of Sherburn's perso­ nality. In the shooting incident itselE Sherburn appears as au insensitive brute, who cold-bloodedly kills Boggs, a harmless rouge and a drunkard, simply because the latter dares call him names in a drunken state. His warning to Boggs not to be seen near his shop after one o'clock, and then the shooting at precisely one o'clock without any concession though Boggs has sobered up and is hurrying home, reveals a morbidly proud man, immensely resourceful, and capable of taking the most drastic action to assert his authority. Here, the emphasis is on Sherburn's in sensitiveness and lack of compassion. A3 Henry Nash Smith has suggested, "the introduction of Bogg's daughter is an invitation to the reader to consider Sherburn an inhuman monster." 12 In the next chapter, during the abortive lynching attempt by the to^^mspeople, Sherburn appe­ ars to be a courageous man who can face a violently hostile mob single handedly. "The image of Sherburn standing on the roof of the porch in front of his house with the shotgun that is the only weapon in sight has an emblamatic quality. He is a solitary figure, not identified with the townspeople, and because they are violently hostile to him, an outcast. He stands above the mob, looking down on it.... The scornful courage with which he defies the mob redeems him from the 139

taint of cowardice implied in his shooting of an unarmed man who was trying to escape. Many meni^ers of the raob he faces are presumably armed; the shotgun he holds is not the source of his power but merely a syrrtool of the personal force v/ith which he dominates the community." 13 Henry Nash Smith con­ siders this depicting of Sherburn in a favourable light a blemish on the novel. He^asserts that Sherburn's "part in the novel, and that of Tom Sawyer, are flaws in a v/ork that otherwise approaches perfection as an embodiment of American experience in a radically new and appropriate literary mode." 14 Hir; contention is that by depicting Sherburn in a favourable light and by making him denounce the mob and its coward mentality, Twain is identifying himself with his cha- racteri Kore importantly, the character of Sherburn is artistically inappropriate "because a writer who shares his attitude towards human beings is in danger of abandoning imaginative insight for moralistic invective." 15 .But' Sherburn' s character is neither artistically inappropriate nor is his tirade against human race accepted unquestioningly. He is artistically appropriate because he gives Huck the chance of observing the iroral hypocrisy of the town six;© pie — a consistent theme in the novel/ and Twain is not identifying with him, at least not fully, because he let a Huck reject his moral position, something which does not happen in the 140 case of Satan in The Mysterious Stranqer.

Huck observes and reports in detail the insensitivity and lack of all human warmth and compassion of townspeople both before and after the shooting. It is a dehumanized society, boredom driving it to the extent of callousness :

And pretty soon you'd hear a loafer sing out, "Hi, so boy I sick him, Tige 1" and away the sow would go, squealing most horrible with a dog or two swinging to each ear and three or four dozen more a-conljng, and then you would see all the loafers get up and watch the thing out of sight and laugh at the fun and look grateful for the noise. Then they'd settle down back again till there was dog fight. There couldn't anything wake them up all over and make them happy all over, like a dog-fight — unless it might be putting turpentine on a stray dog and setting fire to him, or tying a tin pan to his tail and see him run to death*(202-203) ^

The insensitivity of the townspeople is not limited to the hapless animals; they can take pleasure in something as hei­ nous as the cold-blooded murder of a helpless rouge by an arrogant man bent upon taking revenge for wounded pride. After the shooting, all they are concerned about is getting a peek at the wounded man, nobody Is interested in hr^lplng him, nor do they feel any compassion for the man. There is a crowd gathered about the wounded Boggs and, "the people that had the places wouldn't give them up and folks behind them was saying all the time, 'Say, now, you've looked 141

enough you follows; 'tain't fair for you to stay there all the tine, and never give nobody a chance; other folks has their rights as well as you'" (206) , They derive pleasure and satisfaction out of the enacting of the whole incident by the man with the "big white fur stovepipe hat", without feeling any stirrings o£ sympathy for the victim. The whole episode, and the way Huck sequences his observation of it, throws up an inescapable question : what moral right do these people have to lynch Sherburn ? In fact, the nrob' s attempt at lynching the culprit is not so much an expression of moral outrage or a way of dispensing justice, but another pleasant passtime, like setting fire to stray dogs or enacting the shooting scene.

Huck observes all this, but his description of Sherburn in the lynching episode is not a vindication of the latter' s action; nowhere is it suggested that because the townspeople are morally degenerate, Sherburn's action is justifiable. What is suggested is that Sherburn is as degenerate as the tov/nspeople. Huck does feel attracted towards him because like himself Sherburn is an outcast. He also has certain attributes which Huck finds admirable, like his individuality and his acute consciousness of it as also his ability to defy and control the hostile forces of society, but Huck is also allvo to the fact that Sherburrj cannot offer the 142

alternative ho is searching because the sort of; r'^rr.cjnal power he xxDssesses is inextricably linked witli in sensiti­ vity and a lack of moral insight and of hunan warmth. Huck's rejection of Sherburn and all that he represents is implicit in his last comment of the episode. After the mob has run away, he quitely observes : "I could a' stayed if I wanted to but I didn't want to" (210) . With this one comment he distances himself from both the mob and 3horburn. Unlike the mob, he is not panic-striken, he has the capability to control himself and stay back, but he does not want to do so because he is aware of the implications of Sherburn-like cou­ rage. There is much In Sherburn which is admirable for Muck but the fciCQ in tormn of a loss of: tlio [:.iner humani­ tarian instincts is too much to pay and so he decides not to stay. The idea of remaining a part of society and yet apart from it is tempting but the achievenent of this ideal state is impossible — he must, as Sherburn denonstrate, lose some part of his instinctive self to carve out a niche for himself in • society.

The Wilks episode presents Huck with yet another alternative in the Wilks sisters, particularly the eldest, Mary Jane. Now, the emphasis is on the genuineness of fee­ lings, lack of pretentions and the authenticity of the uncor- rupted self. The atmosphere in this episode characterised by 143

the falsity of the emotions of the corrupted social beings, and the theatricality of their expression. Against this background Mary Jane stands out in bold relief as the only character, along with her sisters, who is completely innocent and uncorrupted and hence is unable to assume a false r>ersona. Huck is attracted towards her because she presents the possi­ bility of remaining uncorrupted in a corrupt environment. But, as in the case of the earlier alternatives, her type of goodness and innocence also turns out to be unworkable and impracticable.

The episode begins v/ith the king and the duke putting up a nauseating show of grief. But the fact which does not escap3 Huck's keen observation is that they are not the only ones to put up such a show; the whole tovm joins them in it and the grief expressed by the townspeople is as theatrically false as that expressed by the tvi^o conrnen :

And when they got there they bent and looked in the coffin and took one sight, and then they bust out a-crying so you could a' heard them to Orleans, most; and then they put their arms around each other's necks and hung their chins over each other's shoulder; and then for three minutes, or may be four, I never see two men leak the way they done. And, mind you, everybody was doing the same, and tVie place was that damp I never see anything liice it.... and every woman, nearly, went up to the qirls without saying a word and kissed on their head and looked up towards the sky, with the 144

tears running down, and then busted out and went off sobbing, and give the next woman a show. I never see anything so disgusting, (227-28) fi

This last comment is not directed towards the king and the duke only; rather, it expresses Huck's reaction to the whole scene with the townspeople included. The king and the duke are putting up the show of grief to decieve the townspeople; but the grief which the to^^7nsl5eople themselves express is not any more genuine — they also have put up a show, and Huck is quick to point it out i "And, mind you, everybody was doing the same", he says and while describing the behaviour of the woman he uses the word "show" — "and then busted out and went off sobbing, and give the next woiran a sViow." lluck observes sinalar hypocrisy, falsity and theatricality during the funeral also. The description of the crowd's reaction to the racket raised by the dog arid the attitude of the under­ taker underlines it.

/igainst this background of general falsity of emotion, the real and genuine grief of the three sisters, particularly that of Mary Jane, stands out in bold relief. Huck observes it on two occar.ion,'5. He observes It the first t:iriie wlion ho is hiding behind the door of the room in which the corpse is put and Mary Jane comes in and starts v^7eeping. Her whole behaviour is in marked contrast to that of her "uncles" and 145

the townspeople; she does not put her grief on display for everyone to see — she mourns for her dead father in the middle of the night when everyone is asleep and she thinks that it will go unobserved. Even then she weeps quitely, so that even Huck who is present in the same room cannot hear her, remarkably unlike the two frauds who could have been heard "to Orleans, most." The second time Huck observes tlie genuine grief of the three sisters is when their slaves have been sold by the king, the family separated :

I thought them poor girls and them niggers would break their hearts for grief; they cried around each other and took on so it most made me down sick to see it. The girls said they hadn't ever dreamed of seeing the family separated or sold away from town. I can't ever get it'out of my moniory, the sight of them poor miserable girls and nig­ gers hanging around each other's necks and crying, and I reckon I couldn't 'a' stood it all, but would 'a' had to bust out and tell on our gang if I hadn't >cnowed the sale warn' t no account and the iiigy(.^rn would be back home in a week or two. (248) js;

Unlike in the scene quoted earlier, the emotions expressed in this scene are genuine, and the expression of grief is not a show put up for the benefit of others. Huck' s own roacbions to the two scenes are markedly different — while in the first scene all he can feel is disgust and repulsion, in the second case he is extremely sympathetic.

Huck'5 observation of the three sisters convinces him 146

that even the thought of decieving anyone is alien to them. This perception prompts him to remark to Mary Jane : "I don't want nothing nK)re out of you than just your word — I druther have it than another man's kiss-the-Dible" (253). In lack, the r>lstors are so genuine that Lhey cannot oven camouflage their true feelings Eroiri others. As Iluck tells Mary Jane : "I don't want no better book than what your face is. A body can set down and read it like coarse print" (256) , Such honesty of emotion is possible only in those who are essentially good, who have never known what vice is, who have remained unaffected by their corrupt environment and have been able to keep their true selves unsullied. Huck has first­ hand experience of the essential qoodnes.'i of: the thne si.s- ters. When he works himself in a tight corner by telling a lot of: foolish lies about England to the "haro-11}-)" — the youngest of the Wilks sisters, the other two come to his aid and rebuke the "hare-lip" in such a way that she is reduced to tears. Then thoy make her ask his forgiveness. Tlie youngest, on her part, does so without any bitterness. Huck is so impressed by the goodness of the sisters that he deci­ des to help them and protect them from tVioir "uncles! Huck acl^nowlodges the beauty and attractiveness of tliis Kind oL' goodness when he profusely praises Mary Jane as the girl who "had the most sand" (212) . His praise for Mary Jane, unlike 147

others wliom he has praised earlier, remains unqualified. This, actually, is what he himself desires — to remain uncorrupted even while remaining a part of society. And this explains the element of sentimentality in his response to Mary Jane. 1 fi

It is the goodness of the Wilks sisters coupled v/ith a complete lack of all pretentions, as also the attraction which these qualities hold for him, which prompts Huck to drop his own disguise. He reveals his true sell: to Mary Jane. Importantly, she and Jim are the only two characters to whom Huck reveals himselG and his feelings completely. It shows that as Ear as the possibility of establishing authen­ tic relationship is concerned, Mary Jane stands at the same plane as Jim. Huck shares his perceptions with her just as with Jim, and both are emotionally compatible. Hence, Mary Jane remains the only character besides Jim whom Huck lets have a peek at his true self. All through the journey he has been replacing one false identity with the other to suit the demands of the setting and of the occasion, he Vias been telling lies to hide his true identity. These lies and the adoption o'c falso identities have served him as weajons, the only ones, to fight a hostile environment with. As soon as he realises that Mary Jane does not pose any danger, he lets the mask drop and tells the truth. It is for the first time 148

that he has faced such a situation, and he is bewildered :

I says to myself, I rec>con a body that ups and tells the truth when he is in a tight place is taking considerable many resks, though I ain't had no experience and can't say for certain; but it looks so to me, any­ way; and yat here's a carjo where I'm blest if it don't look to me like the truth is better and actualy safer than a lie. I must lay it by in my mind and think it over some time or other, it's so kind of strange and unregular. I never see nothing like, it. (2'-i2-53) ^

But he decides to "chance it", because unlike the king and the duke, telling lies and adopting false identies is not a means of swindling others for him; it is a counter measure against a society that threatens his well-being because it has been corrupted by these vices. And hence, w?ien the necessity of putting up masks is missing, he decides to let them drop.

But the VJilks episode makes Huck realize that good­ ness and purity of the self in a corrupted society are very vulnerable and dangerous qualities. It is because of their essential goodness that the VJilks sisters repose complete faith in the two swindlers agaim,st the advice'of Do::tor Robinson The latter is able to see through the tv/o rouges because he is as much a part of the corrupt society as the king and the duke themselves. Mary Jane and her sisters can't do so 149

because they do not represent the corrupt social order. Them­ selves good, they don't expect anything from others except goodness and honesty. Hue k must reject the alternative w?iich Mary Jane presents because he percieves the vulnerability of the goodness and purity of the uncorrupted self which she personifies. It lacks the ability to protect itself against the corrupt forces of society and hence cannot provide a deiiendable ally against those forces. Mary Jane, who her­ self has to depend upon Huck to guard her interests from the desiqm of the king and the duke, cannot h^lp him and Jim in getting free of the two scalawags. Even it his o^/vn safety is guaranteed with the help of Mary Jane, it is certain that she cannot protect Jim; he tells her, "if you was to blow on them this town would get me out of their claws, an I'd be all rJMhL; but thero'd bf' ntiothor ^J^'J^'^OU LiMt yciu ilon't know about who'd be in big trouble" (254). The fragility of the forces of goodness as an ally is proved v;hen their plan Cor getting the king and the duke comes to nought and Huck him­ self is saved from a grav

But the circumstance that saves him and gives him a chance to run away also saves the king and the dukc; they also succeed in getting away and come to the raft, and Huck' s ordeal continues till they themselves let him go, and that also only after they have sold Jim as a run-away slave. This final act of troachory forces Huck to qo back to the river­ side society, this time to the Phelps's farm where another frail promise is belied. But between the vVilks episode and the Phelps ejusode something haj^j^ns which rnakos the CinaL action of the novel slightly different from the earlier ones. It is the moral dilemma concerning helping a run-away slave escape to freedom which Huck is forced to address himself to after learning that Jim has been sold away by the king and the duke. It helps Huck focus on and grapple v/ith those pul]r. of locial and moral conditioning which hiavo romained buried in his unconscious, clouding his perce^-tions, so that he can take a final decision on them. The decision which he takes severes his ties with society irrevocably jo that he can reject it finally.

The efTocts of social conditioning on Huck rnaijif.o;;t themselves most strikingly in his relationship with Jim. On the one hand Hack's instincts, his "good heart" prompts him to resjxDct and love Jim as another human being, superior to most of the others whom Huck has known so far, but on the 151

other hand the social conditioning, his "deformed consci­ ence", forces him to see Jim as a black, a"nigger", a slave helping whom to got away from his "rightful" owner is a "low-down" act. It is in Ch. XVI that Huck faces the conf­ lict for the first time. They arc nearing Cairo; Jim is extremely excited over the prospect of getting his freedom; at every sign of light he Jumps up and says, "Dah she is I " and suddenly it hits Huck that it is because of him that Jim is so near his freedom^ and his conf]ict begins :

Jim said it made him all over trembly and feverish to be so close to froodom. Well, I can tell you it made tre all over trembly and feverish, too, to hear him, because I begun to get it through my head that he was most free — and vJho was to blarre for it ? '^Y> JTQ* I couldn't get that out of my conscience, no how nor no way. It got to troubling me so I couldn't rest; I couldn't stay still in one place. It hadn't ever come honK2 to ma before what this thing was that I was doing. Out now it di

All the white man's prejudices come rushing over to him in this nxDHcnt ol: conflict. WVien Jim talks oC gotLlng away his children from their master in one way or the other, Huck remarks : "It was according to the old saying. 'Give a nigger on inch and he'll take on ell!" (146) . Huck's percep­ tions have been clouded over by these prejudices and he shows a singular lack of regard for Jim' s feelings, v;hjch he 152

had conn to rosiect after the fog lucldGnL and h.i;; .subse­ quent fooling of Jim, and also for Jim's rights as a human being. Regarding Jim's intention of stealing his children away, he says, "Here was this nigger, which I had as good as helped to run away, coming right out flat-footed and say­ ing he would steal his children — children that belonged to a man I didn' t even toow; a man that hadn' t even done me no harm" (146). Huck's callousness at this moment is revolting, It is celar that social conditioning has got a complete sway over him and Jim, to him, has again become a "nigger", a faceless black who has no personality, has no human rights — is not a human being even. So, he sets out from the raft, all eager to tell on Jim. It is Jim's parting remark that saves the day. As Huck paddles away in the canoe, Jim says:

"Pooty soon I'll be a-shout'n' for joy, en I'll say, it's all on accounts o' Huck; I's a free man, en I couldn't over ben free ef .it hadn' ben for Huck; Huck done it. Jim won't over f org it you, Huck; you's do cjnly fren' de Jim's got now'l (146)

These words contain an apjjeal to the feelings of friendship and, wliJle expressing gratitude, they touch a resprjnsive chord in Huck. A3 Huck gets further away from the raft, Jim adds, '"Uah you goes, de ole true Huck; de on'y white genlman dat ever kep' his promise to ole Jim"' ( 141) . These words, stirrint:! the foollnc^s of faithfulness Jn Hnck, clinch 153

LIK"* lq'iu<5. WhiM! h(J gobs to Lho iiion hi Lhf^ txj'ib, ho Lolls a lie and saves Jim. But it is not a conscious decision on the part of Huck; it is simply that in the moral conflict his instincts have got the upper hand over social conditio­ ning. The conflict has not been resolved, it ha.i simply been sKirted for the time being to surface again at the first opportunity.

This opportunity is provided when Huck comes to knov\? that Jim han }x>on sold away by the kjrig and the duJ:o, Just before the Phelps's episode begins. i^ain, all the prejudi­ ces thah have been forced upon him, tlio social condition J nq, the religious teachings come rushing back with even greater force rendering the conflict even more intense. The diffe­ rence with the first conflict shows itself clearly in the way Huck reports the tv;o. While in the first case, the voice of conscience is given within quotation marks, in the second case, "Huck provides a much more circumstantial account of v/hat passes through his mind", thereby showing that although he is "obviously remembering the bits of theological jargon from sorrrons justifying slavery they have become a part of his vocabulary." 17 Huck's initial response in the face of such a powerful argument against helping Jim gain his freedom, as wc have seen, is of compliance. He writes a letter to Miss Watson, informing her where she can find her -d.ave. I'SI

But, again, Jim comes to his rescue : it is the memory of the happy days spent in the company of Jim that prompt him to pick up the letter and tear it, saying "All right, then, I'll go to hell." It is important to note here that Huck's decision of going to hell in order to help Jim geb free does not amount to a rejection oE society's argument against (ioing so. True, Huck's decision to help JJrn is all the more courageous Eor it, but the Eacfc remains that even as he decides to help Jim there is no doubt in his mind that he v/jll got to ]K3l L ffoi: Jt. Henry Na.'-.h SinJtli in right when ho says that "The quality of the emotion [Huck' s capacity Eor love ] is defined in action by his decision to sacriEace him- 1 R selE Eor Jim...." But the Eact remains that Hue];, as far as his ov/n perception is concerned, i^s deciding to sacrifice himselE v/hen he decides to help Jim. He does not reject the social and religious prejudices as based on false premises. He simply becomes aware of his own incapability to conEorm to the code o£ behaviour prescribed by society and its instltu- tJons. He Ijlames this Incapability on his "upbringing" and decides to "taJcc up wickodnoss again, which v/as in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn't" (2B3). Thjs point is important because it shows that Huck has Einally come to accept his ov/n individuality and has decided to make it a basis of all his future actions as against the v/ay 155

society expects him to act, no matter what the price is. His decision to go to hell for rescuing Jim does not merely show the depth of his feelings towards J.lm, his capac l.ty f.or lovo; it also shows his capability of accepting the consequences of living by his instincts and defying the dictals of soci­ ety, lb also shows that Twain, who will deplore "noral sense" in the most vitriolic language in The Hysterious Stranger, is wary of replacing one moral code with another. Further, this fxjint also QXplainr, Hur:k's sense oE betrayal when Tom tells him that he will help him set Jim free — something v;hlch many critics have found baEEling and dis- apix)inting, and which they have explained as a failure on Tv/ain* 3 part to remain true to Huck's character and the theme of the novel, a shrinking back from the Einal, logical rejec­ tion oE the attitudes of the v;hite, slave-owning society. But Huck does not contradict his own character when he says, "I'm bound to say Tom Saviryer fell considerable in my estimation. . . Tom Sav/]i'cr a nigger-sjtealer 1" (296) . It is perfectly in keeping with his character that he should react in this way

to Tom' s oEEor since he never COITKBS to doubt that lb is a "low-down" act to help a slave gain his freedom.

It is at thin stage of his developnv^nt bhab Huck arrives at the Phelps -Farmland with his arrival the novel come-, Eull circle. The atmDsphere at the farm is quite 156

similar to the one at the widow's in the beginning of the novel. The very first impression that Huck recieves on his arrival underlines this fact j

VJhen I got there it was all still and 3unday~like, and hot and sunshihy;, the hands was gone to the fields; and there was them kind of faint dronings of bugs and Elies in the air that makes it soeni so lonesonio and like everybody's lead and gone; and if a breeze fans along and quivers the leaves it makes you feel nournful, because you feel like it's spirits whispering — spirits that's been dead ever so many years — and you always think they're talking about you. As a general thing it makes a body wish he was dead, and done with it all, (288) *

Compare this passage with another from the first chapter of the novel :

I went up to my room with a piece of candle and put it on the table. Then I set in a chair by the window and tried to thinJc of something cheerful, but it v-arn' t no use. I felt so lonesome 1 most v/ished I was dead. The stars was shining and the leave;^; rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and 1 heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die; and the wind was trying to whisper something to me and couldn't make out what it was, and so it make the cold shivers run c)ver mo. Then av/ay out in the v;oods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that's on its mind and can't make itself understood, and so can't rest easy in its grave and has to go about that way every night grieving. It got so dov/nhearted and scared I did v;ish I had some company. (51) 157

In both the passages the at no sphere and Hue k's reaction to it is similar, tho key sentiments being loneliness, aliefiation and death-wish; sentiments which Huck did not express all through the journey. But as ho enters an onvironiiifjn L simi­ lar to the one at the widow" s, the long-Eor got hen sentinents reappear. It is because the life at the Earm is characte- ri-^ed by the same set patterns of daily routine, and hence utter boredom, as that of St. Petersburg since both the soci­ eties are land-holding, slave-owning ones. The very look of the farm is similar to others w?iich he has so often seen and is familiar with. The language which Huck employs to describe it, flat and colour-less, and the structure of tho passage which runs on v/ithout any full stops^ convey the famjliarity :

Phelps's was one of those little one- horse cotton plantations and they all look alike. A rail fence sound a two-acre yeard; a stile made out of logs sawed of I: and upen­ ded in steps, like barrels of a different length, to climb over the fence with and for the v/omen to stand on when thoy are going to jump onto a horse; some sickly grass patches in the big yard, but mostly it was biro

The comjiloto la^Jc of intere.st in the tliJncj vvTi.ich ho L<; (Vfy- ribing and the flat, lack-lustre language used Eor tho purpose convey-, not only tho fandliarity with it, but alno it^ insipl- 158

dity and lack of: variety in the pattern oT jtr. shruriturot This lack of variety and routineness of its life is again underlined when Huck comments u^-xDn the behaviour of tir"' Phelps family at the arrival of Tom : "Everybody made a rush for the front door, because, of course, a stranger don't coine every year, and so he lays over the yaller-fever, for inte­ rest, when he does come" (297) . It is the same liEe v/ith a routine, a set pattern, a tedious regularity which Huck had earlier found unbearable at the wi(Jow' s in St. Petersburg.

So, is Jonathan Raban right when he asserts that the novel has "a cyclical patbern ?" That "Huck could end as he began, still open to experience, still largely devoid of moral wisdom and articulacy ?" 19 As far as the formal struc­ ture of: the novel is concerned, there can be little doubt that it has a cyc.l;Lcal pattern, that it ends with a social atinos- phere very slndlar to the one with which it began. The Ark­ ansas society and the Phelps household have nothing to tell them apart from the St. Petersburg society and the v;idow Douglas household. And in so far as Raban's asaortlon about the Horal state of Huck is concerned, an apparently odd difEerence in the resixinses of Huck seems tc) give crerlibilifcy to it.

The difference in the resjxsnses of Huck to the two 159

social setbings is that at the Fholps' Farm he seldom comp­ lains of restrictions and the feeling of moral suffocation, soiT'athing which ha could not do enough of at the widov/' s. Ear­ lier, he made it a point to mention every contradiction in the words and the deeds of Miss V/atson and the widow and kept complaining of the restrictions imposed U].XDIJ his activities while his teachers kept doing things which they forbade him from doing. He responded to all this by feeling cramped and .1 mprJ ;ionerl. Hut at l:ho I'liolps Farm ho n(Jver c;oinj)l lins of tlio fe3lings. Not only this, he actually seems to enjoy the life at tVin Phelps' -,. Tliere are scnrios in this la.'^t section, scenes of expressions of "the power of domestication and its sticky enchantnrants", as Raban calls them, 20 where Huck betrays a gcmuine enjoyment and lets irony taJce a back seat. Raban, after quoting such a scene assets, "'I'he trouble is that Glemais roily seems to enjoy this kind of scene : v;o know for certain that the i'helps's farm episode provided much of his material for public readings from HucJ^leterry _Finn. " 21 Wlie- ther Twain enjoyed these scenes or not, however, is beside the joint here. But it is certain that Iluck enjoys and celcbrator. tho s.imiJlo domosticlty of the farm. When ho praises Mr. I'helps as "the innocentest, best old soul 1 ever soii", the praise has a ring of genuineness about it, unlike his praise of Col. Grangerford where Huck is delibe- 160

rately ironical. One ixisiiible readlnfj oC tliin chaiKj'i in lluck'

White Oouble-Gonsciousness in The _Adygnture of Iluc klebgrry Finn" he maintains that

Tv/ain has clearly made a decLsion Eor racism. Vfliile the middle part of the book celebrates and actoowledges the growing friendship between* white boy and black man, 161

in the last part Twain thinks it important that Jim be shoved back in his place. Tv/ain accomplishes this end in two ways as he first makes Huck' 3 character in suc:h a way that tlio youngntor Is uiAda to forgo I: the worm com­ panionship between boy and slave, and second has Huck support the certainty of the good white folk of Arkansas that slavery is right, proper, and just. Put in a slightly diffe­ rent way. Twain opts to make Huck side with the powerful against the i>Dwerles3. 22

This is a very serious charge agaiijst Mark Tv/ain, but here we are concerned with it only upto the extent thoit it Incorpo­ rates the implication that the experience of the journey has been completely lost upon Huck and in the last section of the novel he chow.'! no signs of having learnt >-inyl:liing I; rem it. Jonathan Raban also makes a similar charge, though he consi­ der;-, Hue J: j-iowerless to do anything diI:feront :

Jim and Huck are victims both; they have been bought by a society whose corrux'/tion they cannot fully perceive. The explicit moral which Glenens temporarily 'superimpc:)-- ses on this part of the novel is sJivage; his deterministic fatalism removes all meaning from Huck* s revolt. 23

But Hack does protest against not only Tom's attitude, but that of the Arkansas society at large also. He has neither forgotten the warm companionship between boy and slave nor does he fail to fully p-erceive the corruption of the society. He does enjoy the simple domesticity of the Phelps's farm, but it is not because he has finally accepted it and its 162

attitudes, or given up his quest f:or a vialxle alternative. It is, simply, the natural attitude of a boy who has seen, not only seen but personally exj^rienced, tVie worst aspects of "sivilisation" — the cruelty, the greed, the stark hypo­ crisy on the one hand and extreme gullibility on the other. After having been actually held a prisoner under threat of death in the VJilks episode, the restrictions at the I-helps' s cannot be as annoying as they v/ere at the widow' s earlier; after having seen the treatment of tVie slaves at the hands of the king and the duke, the v/ay the members of a family are sold av;ay from one another for a few dollars, the treat­ ment of Jim by the Fhelps's cannot but appear comparatively more humane; after having seen the shrewdness of the tvyo frauds, JMr Phelps cannot but appear the "innocentest, best soul; " after having seen the blood-tliirty duels in the Grangerford episode, the life at the Phelps* s cannot but appear a far better, and peaceful, prospect — one should not be surirised tliat he oven finds Tom' s atupi?:! romanticir.m iioro tolerable by comparison. Huck has had a wide-ranging expe­ rience though his journey, and it is this experience which has enabled him to see and to appropriate the briglitcr side oE simple domesticity, an ability which he lacked at the widow' s because then ho had not been exposed to the worst that society is capable of. 163

But, at the same time, Huck never loses sight of the fact that at bottom, the life at the Phelps's farm and in any other town is the same — it is the same in attitudes, in prejudices, in the forces that are at work; that the dif­ ference between Tom's romanticism and that of the Grangerforda and Shepherdsons is only of degrees; that the boundry between Mr. Phelps' s innocence and the gullibility of the inhabitants of any other town along the river is flimsy. He realizes that as far as social and moral attitudes are concerned, there is virtually no difference between the best and the worst of the society. And so, he must finally reject the seemingly simple domesticity of Phelps Farm just as he has rejected the other alternatives all through his journey.

Huck' s ironical treatment of the outlook that Tom symbolizes is evident from the very beginning of the last section of the novel. When the two boys meet again for the first time and Huck tells Tom that he was not murdered but simply played a hoax to decieve the townspeople, Tom is eager to know all about it. Huck comments on Tom's curiosity in the following words : "And he wanted to know all about it right off, because it was a grand adventure, and mysterious, and so it is him where he lived" (295) . Tom, of course, lives in a world of stupid and decadent romanticism, a world of make-believe, far renoved from the world of reality. With 164 this one coinment, Huck asserts his distance from this world on the one hand and, on the other, points out the ineffectu- ality of a Tom Sawyerish approach to life. For him, the voyage was not a grand adventure, but something extremely serious; now he knows what "grand adventures" actually mean — he has seen their implications on "Walter Scot." He also knows that Tom Saw^'er's romanticism is not just child's play; it can, if followed a little bit further, lead to vio­ lence and blood-shed — he has seen it do so in the Granger- ford episode. And Tom' s highly exaggerated romantic app­ roach in getting Jim free does lead to violence, though fortunately on a smaller scale, when Tom himself recieves a bullet injury in the process of executing his plans. This does not come as a shock to Huck because he was aware of the implications of Tom's plans Crom the very beginning. VJhen, in the. beginning of the last section, Tom tells him his plan, after having rejected Huck' s own as too simple, Huck says, "Ho told me waht it [Tom's plan for rescuing Jim] was and I see in a minute it was worth fifteen of mine for style, and would make Jim just as free a man as mine would, and nay be get us all killed besides" (304) .

As far as Huck's attitude towards Tom's treatment of Jim is concernod, the last chapters oti the novel are full of pro­ test against it by him. When, for example, Tom talks of 165 sawing ofE Oirn's leg to get the chains ofE, Huck ±3 shocked; "Good land .'" 1 says, "why, there ain't no necessity for it...." (312) . True, Huck never puts his foot down firmly and roEuse to bo a party to Tom's plans, he never says, as Jones puts it, '"I have travelled down the river wibh this man for miles, we have had many adventures, I have apolo­ gized to him, he has let me sleep when I should have been awake, and while he thought I was asleep, he has lamented his loss of wife and children.... This is my friend, I will not allow you to toy with him and his determination to be 24 free."" Huck does not say this because he ]

Sherburn, is again evident here in the tarring and feathe­ ring of the king and the duke. The behaviour of the nob here js quite similar to the one in the lynching episode or the one towards the end of the Wilks episode :

... and as we struck into the town and up through the middle of it — it was as much as half after eight then — here comes a raging rush of people with torche;^, and an awful whooping and yelling and banging tin pans and blowing laorns; and we jumped to one side to let them go by, and as they went by I see they harl bho king and the duke a- straddle of a rail — that is I toowed it was the king and the duke, though they was all over tar and feathers and didn't look like nothing in the world that was human — just looked like a couple oE monstrous big soldier plumes. (301)

Huck' s reaction is in keeping with his character developed through the ex];xDrience of the journey, "Well, it made me sick to seo it, and I was sorry for them jxDor pitiCul ras­ cals, it seemed like I couldn't ever feel any hardi:iess against them any nore in the world. It v/as a dreadful thing to see. Human beings can be awful cruel to one another" (30 1-302). Buck's sympabhatic response to the plight of the two Grauds may seem strange after all they have done to him and Jim, especially if one recalls how often Huck had felt disgusted by their greed and the way they duped others. But it is not strange, for Huck realizes that they are, after all, a product of society; that it is in the very nature of a land- 167

owning, slave-holding socieby to produce scums like Pap or the king and the duke, who live off it because the way such a society is organized, they cannot do any better. 3o, those who are treating the two "ix>or pitiful rascals" in such a cruel manner arc, to a large extent, responsible for what they are. Further, nost of the Jeo.rlng crov;d is no better than its victims. The comment, "Human beings can be awful cruel to one another" brackets the townspeople and the two victims together.

Heck again sees the i\rkansas society in action when Jim is brought back to the farm along with the wounded Tom. And he again feels disgusted by the attitude and the behavi­ our of the people. When Jim is brought back, his hands are tied and there is a crowd around him, everybody cursing him and delivering blows while Jim says nothing. Then some of the i^ople comf2 np with the suggestion that Jim should be hanged publicly to serve as an example and a deterrent to other slaves. Others counter this suggestion by saying that his owner will come and make them pay for him. Then Huck observes : "So that cooled them down a little, because the pooplo that' 3 always the 110sb anxious for to hang a nigger that hain't done just right is always the very ones that ain't the most anxious to pay for him when they've §ot their satisfaction out of him" (360) . Again, when the doctor 168

tries to deter the people Erom treating Jim too roughly by telling them how good Jim hao been all along and hovv/ ho has risked his o'/m freedom in trying to save Tom' s life, Huck observes about the doctor !

... I was mighty thanicful to that old doctor for doing Jim that good turn; and was glad it was according to my judgement of him, too, because I thought he had a good heart in him and was a good man the first time I soo him. (361-62)

It is clear that contrary to Jonsos' contention, Huck is fully on the side to Jim and opposed to society. Hero, he is rejecting the attitudes of this society, just as he has done all along the journey. Nor has Huck forgotten tho warm com­ panionship betwe'=!n boy and slave, and tho essential humanity of; Jim. V^lion Jim insists on helping Tom even at the cost of his freedom, Huck says, "I teowed he was white inside" (349) , The point, however, is that Huck sees through the /-Arkansas society and comes to the conclusion that it is in no v/ay dif­ ferent from the society of any other town along the river, societies which he has alreac^y rejected as incapable of pro­ viding a viable alternative. He fully perceives tho corrup­ tion of this society and realizes that its social and moral atkitudon are antagonistic to tho instincts of tho uncorcupted heart. And hence an acceptanci-e of it would amount to the loss of the self. So, he must reject it. 169

But the greatest danger is posed by the simple domes- tjclty of tlio PhQlpa'a farm, Aa we havo acuj, this life has its own charms and holds an attraction for Huck who can­ not but appreciate it after all he ha3 seen and oxperioncod along the voyage. But he also realizes that this simple domesticity is only the surface gloss, like the grace of the Grangerforris; underneath this gloss lie the same social and iioral attitude'3 that the general population of any town along the river reflects. The widow, the Grangerfords, the Phelp- ses, they are all alike when it comes to religion. They make exaggerated claims of believing in its teachings but their practice of it remains hypocritical. The widov>? and Miss Watson call "the niggers" in fror prayers, but Miss Watson cannot resist the temptation o£ eight hundred dollars and is ready to sell Jim down South, away from his wife and children, although she toows that life there will be very difficult for him; the Grangerfords go to church with their guns — they discuss the merits of brotherly love and forbearance while engaged in a bloody feud with the Shephordsons; and Mr riiolps maintains his own church and goes to Jim to preach but fails to notice how dark his cabin is and that there is nothing except a watermelon to tell the food served to him apart from that given to a dog. Even the not-too-rough treatment of Jim and the lack of precautions against his running away from 170

captivity is not so much a sign of a more humane disiwsition as that of a quiet assurance, devaloxxad through i'ears of holding slaves, that an attempt by Jim at running away is out of question. And hence when Jim is captured again after attempting to run away, he is loaded with "monstrous heavy" chains and is to be kept on only bread and water. Further, there is not much to distinguish Mrs Phelps from Aunt Polly or Miss Watson or the widow; even the means which she employs to check the instincts of a child are patently similar to those employed by her counterparts in St. Petersburg, that is, emotional blackmail. She uses this weapon, the most effective in her ariiour, to make Huck comply with her wishes against his own instincts. Towards the end of the freeing of Jim episode, Huck accidentally bumps into Mr Phelps and is brought home. He is highly concerned about Tom and would have liked to slink away in the night and go to the island. Aunt Sally senses it and instead of admonishing him she looks down into his eyes, "so steady and gentle, and says" :

"The door ain't going to be locked, Tom, and there* 3 the window and the rod; but you'11 be good, won't you ? And you won't go 7 For my sake."

Paced with such emotional blackmail, Huck cannot but comply : "Laws knows I wanted to go bad enough to sec about Tom, and was all intending to go, but after that I wouldn't 'a' went. 171

not for kingdoms" (357) .

So Huck is aware that in the final analysis, Phelps's farm is a part of the society he han already rejec­ ted. It shares its social and moral attitudes and its preju­ dices. This life of simple domesticity, in fact, is made possible because society provides a supjjorting socio-economic structure to it. Huck is aware of the implications of accej-)- ting it, aware that it would mean a loss of the self, of the individuality he has finally come to accept even at the cost of going to hell. So he must reject Itielps' s farm the way he has rejected every other alluring prospect of belonging to society. The final comment Huck makes in the novel is an assertion of this position : "But I reckon 1 got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she' s going to adopt me and sivilise me, and I can't stand it. I been there before" (3 69). He has been there before, at the widow's, and he knows that the widow's or Aunt Sally's efforts at "sivillzing" him are essentially the same. What they actually mean is attempting to make him accept the code of conduct prescribed by society; they mean to try to subjugate his will, make him give up his individuality or^ at least,, alter it in such a way that it does not remain at odds with the social and moral environment of nineteenth century Arrerica, « And they can do it, too; they are immensely resourceful. It 172

was only the eventuality of Pap's reappearance in the town that saved Huck from being overwhelmed by society, its atti­ tudes and its code of conduct. And Huck cannot stand it; he cannot compromise the instincts of his uncorrupted heart. So, the only course loft open to him is to light out for the Territory. He is firm in his resolve, this time. I^ow evan Tbm cannot luiro him into giving it ui^ by tho promise of "howling adventures" amongst the Indians, for Huck has finally rejec­ ted Tom and all that he represents, also. That is why he plans to light out for the Territory "ahead of the rest." He has finally given up the search for a viable alternative, not by acGopfcing society as it is, but by docicUncj to reno­ unce it altogether. He is nov/ free to do so. His father is dead and gone and with him, his last link with society. Even the novel is finished and, as he himself says, he is "rotten glad of it" (369) . He is glad because the last weight has been lifted off his shoulders, he has paid his last debt. He has finally given back to society in the form of the novel what it gave him in the shape of the experience of the journey. There is nothing to bind him to society anymore. So he can leave it and go away to the Territory, a place where there is no society, no "sivilization" and nobody to try to subjugate his will; a place v;here he can live by his instinct alone. 173

Hotes and References

1. I am indebted to Millicent Bell for this point. In "Huc3<:leberrv Finn; Journey Without End", he says, "For all Pap' s appearance of being a pariah, the town drunk has a place in St. Petersburg' s iroral scheme. He is v\;hat tho tov^n is, too, oatanic, oolf-Indulgent, covetous; at the same time he can be as righteous as the best about the duty owing a father, and he can enact the town's notion of repentance no more hypocritically, perhaps, than virtue ac]

2. Jonathan Raban, Mark Tv/ain ; Huckloberry Finn (South­ ampton, 1978) , pp. 17-18.

3. Daniel G. Hoffman, "Black Magic - and White - in Huckle­ berry Finn" in Mark Twain ; A Collection of Critical Essays, Henry Nash Smith (ed.) / Englewood Cliff s, K.J., 1963)^ p. 109.

4. The novel presents many examples of Jim' s rationality and his capacity for logical argument. Refer to his arguments with Huck on the wiseness of: Solonan (133-34) and the questions of the peoples of different countries speaking different languages.

5. Henry Nash Smith, "A Sound Heart and a Deformal Consci­ ence',' in Mark Twain t _A Collection of! Critical Essays, Henry Nashlsmlth (edT/ Englewood~Glif £ s7""W. J. 1963) p. 91.

6. Michael Wilding, Political Fictions/ London, 1900) p. 28.

7. William G. Spangemann, Mark Twain and the Backwoods Angel ; The Matter of Innocence in the Works oB Samuel L. Clemens/- Kent, 1966) pp. 72-73. 174

8. Rhott 3. Jonoa, "Nigger and KnowlGdqo : VJhIto Doui)lo- Gonsciousnesa in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", Mark Twain Journal, 22:2, p. 30.

9. Michael Wilding, op.cit, p. 32. 10. Ibid., p. 3 2. 11. Ibid., p. 32. 12. Henry Nash Smith, pp.cit., p. 98, 13. Ibid., p. 99. 14. Ibid., p. 100. 15. Ibid., p. 100. 16. Jonathan Raban considers this sentimentality a flaw in the novel, and says, "Huck' s crush on Mary Jane has the same mawkish flavour as that of Tom manfully protecting Bec]<:y Thatcher in the cave tov;ards the end of Torn 3av>r/er. It seems almost as if Clemens had carelessly forgotten which novel ho was writing." Jonathan Raban, op.cit., p. 53.

17. Henry Nash Smith, op.cit., p. 91. 18. Ibid., p. 93. 19. Jonathan Raban, op.cit., p. 55. 20. Ibid., p. 58. 21. Ibid., p. 57. 22. Rhett 3. Jones, op.cit., p. 34. 23. Jonathan Raban, op.cit,, p. 55. 24. Rhett 3. Jones, op.cit., p. 34. COavICLUSION

In both The Adventures of Torn Sawyer and The Adven­ tures of Huckleberry Finn Twain explores the possibilities of relationship between an individual and his social environ­ ment. How a person who finds that his perceptions and out­ look are not in agreement with the perceptions and outlook of his environment relates to the environment and what attitudes he develops towards it depends upon the personality and social background of the person : Whether the person grows up as a part of the social environment, or is an outsider to it, and, if he is a part of it, whether he has initiative and the courage of facing challenge squarely or not. '^f the jerson grows up as a part of the environment, he is bound to develop certain eiiiotlonal and psychological bonds with it and it would be diffi­ cult for him to be objective and dispassionate about his relationship with it, but if he is an outsider to it, he can analyze the attitudes of society objectively and dispassio­ nately and decide about his relationship with it accordingly. On the other hand, if a person who grows up as a part of society has enough initiative and the courage of standing his ground in the face of opposition, then he is in a better ' position to decide about his relationship with his environ­ ment than a person who lacks initiative and is docile and meek. 176

All these different possibilities are explored in the two novels through different types of child characters.

The protagonists of both the novels we have discussed in the preceeding chapters are compelled to take a decision about their relationship with their social environment. ''The protagonists have strong instincts for freedom. They want to live according to their instincts, make their own decisions and be completely free in their choices.. At the same time, they want to belong to society, and be a part of their social environment. But instincts and individual freedom are alien to the organization of the society they grow up in. Their society has an accepted code of life which is a result of tradition, religion and the demands of its socio-economic organization. Every individual has to live by this accepted code of life if; he wants society to accept him as its member. Hence 'the protagonists of the novels under consideration have to choose bGtwQon living in society as a part of it, or liv­ ing by their instincts. The conflict between the contra- .. dictory impulses results in the growth of the protagonists' consciousness and change in their perceptions.. The direction that the growth in the consciousness of the protagonists takes is determined by their personalities and their social background. So the theme of growth in child's consciousness in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of 177

Huckleberry Finn is basically an exploration of the possibili­ ties of relationship between the individual and his social environment,

Ir^ The Adventures of Tom Sawyer^ Twain presents two types of children — the leader and the. load. To, the' latter dategory belongs the children who do not have a will of their own. They either accept society's notions and codes without any dissent like Sid and Jeff Mufferson, or if they are not as docile as the ^bdel Boys, they array themselves behind the leader, since they also lack initiative and the will to con­ front society, and accept his decisions as un quest ion ingly as Sid and Jeff accept those of society. The lack of initiative and courage in these children decides their position. There is little growth in their consciousness and there is a little development in their perceptions since they do not face any conflict regarding "their relationship with their environment.

The leader has the capability of refusing to act in accordance with the dictats of the establishment. But, since he grows up as a part of society, he is also bound to it by strong emotional and psychological bonds. As his conocious- ness grows because of the conflict between the desire to belong and the desire to be free, ^he arrives at the conclusion that as it is not possible for him either to completely give 178

in to the will of the established order or to reject it unequivocally, the only course left open to him is to gain enough fXDwer to be able to control the environment. His efforts at gaining control also affect growth in his persona­ lity.. On the one hand he learns the importance of authentic personal relationships, on the other he comes to realize the significance of commitment to society and its well-being. The former is necessary for personal happiness and fulfillment and the latter for gaining power. But it is important to note that the protagonist's personality develops in this direction not because of sc)ciety but inspite of it. Nothing in his upbringing prepares him either for genuine person to person relationships or for risking his own safety for the sake of others. The society he grows up in is an emotionally starved one where a show of emotions of love and affection is consi­ dered a sign of weakness. It is also selfish and teaches its members to take care of Numl^er One above the rest. It is only because the protagonist starts out with a stronger persona­ lity and a "sound heart" that the growth in his conscious­ ness takes till::-, direction. Even so the final jxDsition Tom arrives at is selfish in so much as all that he learns is for his personal hapj:)iness only. The power he gains, or intends to gain, is for personal freedom only, it is not meant to change society because he has come to accept the perceptiom 179

of society.

So, The Adventures o£ .Tq,ip,.,SawYer does not end on an optimistic note. The protagonist of the novel is not shown to have retained his "sound heart" intact and his instincts unconditioned following his decision of not rejecting society. As we have seen, Tom's final conversation with Huck in the novel depicts him as having accepted the views and perception of his social environment. This is because he finally rea­ lizes that to gain power and to be able to control the envi­ ronment, he must first convince it of his compliance with the accepted code of life. The leader has to gain the acceptance of society, its confidence, to be able to lead it. To be able to gain the power of controlling the system, he has to depend ujxjn this very system because the real source oE power, the power to control the system, is the system itself.

In The Adventures ^of Hugkleberry F,inn ^ the protago­ nist, though having a strong desire to belong, is not bound to any one particular social group by any unreakable emotio­ nal or psychological bonds since he grows up on the periphery of society, not as a part of it. The social atmosphere he finds himself in at first is morally, emotionally and physi- • cally stiEling, and so he rejects it. The desire to belong leads him to search for a more conducive and supix>rting social environment, but he soon realizes that the search is 180

futile as no such environment exists. So he abandons the search and decides to renounce society altogether because the price demanded for belonging to it is too high for him to pay : he cannot abandon the freedom of his spirit. The alternatives he is offered are all unacceptable, even repul­ sive to him. There is the romanticism of Tom, with the romanticism of Grangerfords as its nore develoix^d form, which has its own charms and grandeur and can provide him an escape from the harsh reality into a world of make-believe; there is the individualism and arrogance of Col, Sherbum v/hich can give the power of becoming independent of society while still remaining in it; there is the greed and selfishness of the king and the duke which can enable him to use others for his owrj well-being; there is the sentimental gentility of Mr. Phelps which can shut out the external reality. But all of these alternatives lead to a callousing and, v/orse still, bru- talization of the instincts of the "sound-heart." *iuck can­ not accept the bargain as the callousing and brutalization of instinct is tantamount to a conditioning of perceptions and fettering of the spirit. There are, of course, a few accept­ able alternatives as wall, like the Wllks sisters and the life on the raft in the company of Jim. These alternatives are in resonance with Huck' s own personality. But they are impracticable and impossible to be sustained indefinitely 181

because of their vulnerability and their helplessness in the face of assaults from the corrupt and hostile forces of soci­ ety. In tho end Muck must reject not only the St. Petersburg society and the others like it but also the search for a more acceptable alternative, and decide to run away from society itself.

The Adventures ,of .Huckleberry ,Finn is negative in its vision — it negates the nineteenth century American society but does not offer an alternative. The quest for an alternative is finally rejected as impossible, Huck must run away from society if he is to retain his individuality, if he is to keep his "sound heart" uncorrupted. The negation of the negation, despite Michael Wilding' s assertion to the con­ trary, does not present itself within the framework of the . novel. Towards the end of "The False Freedoms of Huckle­ berry Finn", he asserts that Huck "hag freed himself from the mystifications; now he can go off and seek for a positive freedom.... And that freedom cannot be gained by dufting. It must be worked for actlyaly. As the raft escape was the negation of Southern society, so the projected future of Huck is the negation of that negation — a reassertion of his free- dom on a higher level, a positive search, not a drift." But there is nothing in the novel to suggest that Huck's projec­ ted future is a negation of the negation. At the end of the 182

novel Huck simply decides to run away, to reject and renounce society altogether and go to the Territory. This final act of running away must be analyzed in the context of what "the Territory" stands for, and Huck's attitude to "freedom" throughout the novel.

In the nineteenth century America, "the Territory",no doubt, had certain Romantic connotations. It was associated with the. ideas of freedom, courage, adventure and development. "Go West my boy, and grow with the country" had become a powerful slogan, exercising the minds of thousands oE young men. But "the Territory" was also an expansionist concept, materialistic, selEish, lacking all regard for the rights of the native Indians. It had all. the ambiguity of the concept of America itself, which was associated with the noble ideas of Liberty, fraternity, Equality on the one hand established a materialistic, Puritan society, on the other. And just as the concept of America gave rise to a society which was a negation of the very concepts with which it came into being, so alno "tho Territory" wag giving rise to a materialistic, Puritan society. It could never becone an alternative to 2 the Southern society from which Huck sought escape.

Secondly, the future of Huck, as it is projected in the novel, is a renunciation of every search. His final 183

decision to light out for the Territory signifies the giving up of the search as futile. He considers himself too weak and too powerless against the evil forces of society to embark on any positive search. For Huck the journey down the river has been a series of evasions of responsibility, of running away. He never makes any serious protest when faced with things he does not approve of, he never asserts himself when faced with opposition. When the going becomes too rough to bear, ho evades the conflict by running away. His decision to light out for the Territory at the end of the novel must be viewed in this perspective. He has seen society from every angle, in all its colours; he has experienced "sivili- zation" in all its manifestations, and he cannot bear it. At the same time he lacks the strength to assert himself and reject the things he does not agree to. So the only course left open to him is to.reject society itself and run away once more, this time never to return. It is in this that the pessimism of the novel lies, because just as positive freedom cannot be gained by drifting, so also it cannot be gained by running away, by renouncing society. As /\natoly Rakitov puts it : To be free means to know how to cognize objective necessity, and, relying on that knowledge, to work out correct aims, to take and select substantial decisions, and to carry out same in practice.... In that 184

sense man can only be free as a social being. It is impossible to be free out­ side society. 3

So both, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adven­ tures of Huckleberry Finn^ are pessimistic in their analysis of the human predicament. They both deny the possibility of the freedom of individual. The individual must lose his freedom either by accepting the corruption of society, by moulding his self to fit into the established ca^st acceptable to society and by becoming emotionally, intellectually and morally conditioned in the process, or he must lose it by rejecting society and running away from it. 185

Notes and References

1. Michael Wilding, P'o 1 It Ic al F Ic t Ion a, op.clt., pp. 46-47.

2, For this point of view I am Indebted to rrry supervisor, Mr. Raza Imam.

3. ^Viatoly Rakltov, The Principles of Philosophy, (JMOSCOW, 1989) , pp. 339-40. BIBLIOGRAPHY

General

Henderson, Archibald, Mark Twain, New York, 1911. John son, M., A Bibliography of the Works oE Mark Twain, New York, 1935.

Long, E. Hudson, Mark Twain Handbook, New York, 1957.

Primary Sources

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The Adventures of Tpm Sawyer, (1876), Reprinted, New Delhi, n.d.

Life on the Mississippi, (1883) , Reprinted, New York, 1950.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, (1884/85) , Reprinted, Middlesex, 1987.

The Portable Mark Twain, Bernard DeVote, ed., New York, 1961.

Secondary Sources

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Andrews, Kenneth R., Nook Farm { Mark Twain' s Hartford Circle, Cambridge, 1950.

Baldanza, Frank, Mark Twain : An Introduction and Interpre­ tation, New York, 1961. 187

DQ 1 ].amy, Gladis Carman, Mark Twain a.'^^Literary /Vrtigit, Norman, 1950,'

Blair, Walter, Mark Twain and Huck Finn, Berkeley, I960.

Branch, Edqer Marquess, The Literary Appronticeghip pi! Mark Twain, Urban a, 1950.'

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Brooks, Van V/yck, The Ordeal o£ Mark Twain, Rev. ed., New York, 1933.

Bud-Louis, J., Mark Twain ; Social Philosopher, Bloomington, 1962.

Govici, Pascal Jr., Mark Twain's Humor : The Image .pf ..a World, Dallas, 19'62.

Cox, James M., Mark Twain i The Fate o£ Hunpr, Princeton, 1966.

DeVote, Bernard, Mark Twain's America, Boston, 193 5.

Mark Twain at Work, Cambridge, 1942.

Emerson, Everett, The Authentic Mark Twain, Philadelphia, 1894.

Ferguson, Delancey, Mark Twain ; Man and Legend, Indiana­ polis, 1943.

Foner, Philips, Mark Twain ; Social Critic, New York, 1958.

Geismer, Maxwell, Mark Twain ; An American Prophet, Boston, 1970.

Gidding s, Rpbert, ed., Mark Twain : A Sumtuous Variety, London, 1985. 188

Howells, William Dean, My Mark Twain : Reminiscences and Criticism, New York, 1910.

Johnson, James L., Mark Twain and the Limit of Power, l^oxville, 1982.

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Smith, Henry Nash, Mark Twain's Fable of Proqreiss, New Brunswicik, 1964.

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Smith, Henry Nash, ed., Mark Twain ; A Collection of Critical Essays, Englewood Cliff s, N.J., 1963. 189

Spengertiann, William C, Mark Twain and the Backwoods Angel : The Matter of Innocence in the Works of Samuel L. Clemens, Kent^ 1966.

Wagenknecht, Edward, Mark Twain ; The Man and His Work, New Haven, 193 5,

Wecter, Dixon, Sam Clemens Q£ Hannibal, New York, 1935,

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Periodicals

Bell, M., "Huck Finn's Journey Without End," Virginia Quarterly Review, 1982, Spring.

Jones, Rhett 3., "Nigger and Knowledge : White Double Consciousness in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", Mark Twain Journal, vol. XXIi. No. 2.

Powers, Lyall, "The Sweet Success of Twain's Tom", Dalhousie Review, vol, LIU, No. 2.

Mackenthan, L.H., "Huckleberry Finn and the Slave Narratives: Lighting Out as Desigin", Southern Review, 1984, April.

Quirk, Tom, "The Legend of Noah and the Voyage of Huckleberry Finn", Mark Twain Journal, 1982, Summer.

Schleiner, L., "Romance Motifs in Three Novels of Mark Twain", Comparative Literature Studies, 1976, Decembor. 190

Wolff, Cynthia G., "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer : A Night­ mare Vision of American Boyhood", Maasachusett;^ Revie'w, 1980, Winter.

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