1. Huckleberry Finn: Setting and Character 1-7
Sunday, 02 December 2018
Jonathan Peel JLS 2018

2. Preamble
Set in 1830s, looking back – Twain: ‘nostalgia… simply mental and moral masturbation’
Writing from post war, dominant North, mechanisation and industrialisation. South retaining idealised notion of Ante Bellum grandeur
A chance to revisit his ‘boy-life’ on the Mississippi, and his time as a river pilot (1851) from which his name derives.
He felt like: ‘some banished Adam revisiting his half forgotten Paradise and wondering how this arid world could ever have seemed green and fair to him’
A voice from the highly ‘sivilised’ Gilded Age, looks back on the Pioneer period so central to American experience.
A Romantic novel, a picaresque novel and a version of the Pastoral.
Jonathan Peel JLS 2018

3. Pioneer America Early 19th Century.
Manifest Destiny called settlers to travel to the West. Based on the idea of God calling settlers from the East to bring their ideals and morals to the rest of the continent – to ‘sivilise’ it.
Not universally agreed.
Reinforces ideas of Devout Christian beliefs and helps to establish the idea of the Frontier and the frontiersman – unpolished and hard men, always hospitable whilst showing great self-reliance.
1830s: Mississippi is a true Frontier
Mississippi and other rivers are the superhighways of the day – still offering a sense of natural influence on any journey. Not tamed.
Jonathan Peel JLS 2018

4. Context of creation
A sense of a lost freedom post war. A compromised integrity imposed by a dominant and triumphant North
Twain rejected a world no longer rooted in the reality of the Pioneer experience but which could ‘dream’ – and be taken in by dreams pedalled by conmen.
The South is stuck in a dream world supported by romantic medievalism in writers such as Walter Scott. ‘decayed and swinish forms of religion… systems of government’. ‘Sham chivalries of a brainless and worthless long-vanished society’.
No longer able to see man and nature in harmony, but a taming and destruction of nature by man.
Novel puts the ‘innocence’ of Huck and of ‘natural and healthy instincts’ in opposition with the ‘experience’ of a social system devoted to commerce and the utilisation of nature. The longing for a return to innocent times is part of a pastoral vision of ‘times past’ and links the novel to the great Picaresque philosophy: Candide (Voltaire).
Jonathan Peel JLS 2018

5. Tom Sawyer Preceding book (1876)
Establishes idea of Jackson Island as a kind of Eden, removed from the civilisation of Hannibal.
Establishes Huck as unlikely member of sivilised society due to the reward money – he is wealthy. He will seek to lose this wealth in order to be true to his innocent self.
Established both characters: Huck is ‘idle and lawless and vulgar and bad… went at his own free will… in short everything which make[s]life precious, that boy had.’
Sawyer is a dreamer and fantasist – Huck will reject his games in favour of an unvarnished realism and awe towards the world.
Sawyer’s return at the end of the novel is for many critics the weakest aspect of the writing.
Huck equates Sawyers fantasies as both ‘lies’ and fit for ‘Sunday School’ – the philosophies of nature and society cannot exist together.
Jonathan Peel JLS 2018

6. Settings: Locus 1-8 Widow’s House Pap’s Hut
2 aspects of Frontier life – the civilised and natural. Isolated from other folk
Widow’s house: function as location of ‘sivilised’ behaviour.
Bedrooms. Behaviour patterns enforced by Miss Watson.
Focus is on the humorously ironic ‘rough’ life and a ‘dismal’, regular and decent’ home.
Formal clothes. Social timetables. Religious observance. ‘Fine dining’.
‘I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead’
Keeps slaves. Hypocrisy?
Nature speaks to Finn, but only of death, increased by his superstition.
Pap’s Hut
Isolated from all ‘timber so thick you couldn’t find it if you didn’t know where it was’
Gun for hunting – live off the land.
Live by barter – dead animals for food and alcohol.
‘kind of lazy and jolly… smoking and fishing… no books, no study.’
Beaten by drunk father.
Left alone, becomes ‘awful lonely’
‘I didn’t want to go back to the widow’s anymore and be so cramped up and sivilised as they called it’
Setting for political comment alongside beatings and harshness.
Needs another way… the river.
Jonathan Peel JLS 2018

7. Setting: The river is introduced.
Thus far used for transport and communication.
In ch7 becomes a symbol of chance and good luck
‘June rise’ –natural possibility.
Finds the canoe which enables escape.
First raft seen; Pap will sell the logs.
‘the river looked miles and miles across’ awe and wonder. River bank gives sanctuary when Pap is looking for him
Senses the immensity of nature – ‘the sky looks ever so deep…’ (cf Wordsworth Prelude book 1 boat stealing)
Freedom to smoke. Eventually finds the island and settles for a ‘nap’ – relaxed and free.
Jonathan Peel JLS 2018

8. Establishing Character: Widow Douglas and Miss Watson
Female role models. Emblems of societal restriction and ‘improvement’
Kind – is there a sense the money is the draw?
Behaviour not unlike Christian missionaries – clothes, ‘poor lost lamb…’
Religion at the heart of actions
Strict
Keep slaves. Huck’s innocent comment about food – ‘things get mixed up… and things go better’ can be seen as a comment on this.
Jonathan Peel JLS 2018

9. Establishing Character: Tom Sawyer and the gang
At first is seen as a source of freedom and can be followed
Establishes credentials as a figure as wild as Huck
Change comes once gang is created. Tom’s gang is derived from ‘books’ and is increasingly fantastical.
Huck – an orphan is allowed to join, but this breach to original rules establishes the ‘societal values’ of the gang.
Huck resigns at the play acting and the attack on the school outing
The Sawyer gang is a sivilised version of the reality of such groups.
Tom needs to be in control of the gang and to impose his own version of all they do.
The ‘all the marks of a Sunday School’ suggests Huck sees himself as ready to move beyond children’s games – he is growing up. Sawyer is aggressive and rude in his teasing of Huck.
Jonathan Peel JLS 2018

10. Establishing character: Jim
Introduced as ‘Miss Watson’s big nigger’ and the butt of a practical joke – it will be a while before Huck stops seeing him as someone to tease – belittling his intelligence?
Highly superstitious – continues trad. Image of ill-educated blacks in Literature – Tom’s joke with the hat is utterly believed as proof of the supernatural. Superstition is an ongoing theme and can be linked to Innocence
Jim’s fame following this is deemed to have ‘ruined (him) for a servant because he got so stuck up…’ develops a sense of Jim not knowing his station as a slave. Like Huck, he no longer fits into this world
He fails at his guard duty and falls asleep. The trop of the ‘lazy slave’ is suggested.
Own vernacular is clear and strong – ‘who dah?’ establishes him as an independent character.
Jonathan Peel JLS 2018

11. Establishing Character: Pap
The Angry White Man
Feels completely powerless in the face of the shift in society, especially in the areas of politics and race
Negative connotations of ‘whiteness’: ‘tree-toad white, fish-belly white’ contrasted with the stark blackness of his hair. No mixing of colour here.
Establishes change in Huck - ‘starchy clothes’ taunt. Also aware Huck can read and write, suggesting a lack of education in the frontiersmen of the earlier generation.
Drinker and brutalist. Seeks money from Huck, not parental responsibility.
His views on race seen in his attack on the black professor establish the views of the uneducated of the day and set the tone for the racism seen from society. Also establish the idea that some civilising influence might be a good thing, and also the inability of some to assimilate in any way.
Undercut by the bathetic drunken fall as he finishes the rant.
Motive for looking for ‘dead Huck’?
Jonathan Peel JLS 2018

12. Establishing Character: Huck and Money
Much of the book is ‘about’ money – Huck’s wealth, Pap’s return, the Feud, the Prince and the King…
Huck has extreme wealth left from the Sawyer narrative.
Wealth is a sivilising influence and there is also a need for Twain to rid Huck of this wealth, gained in a plot redolent of romantic literature.
Father’s wish for the gold is a clear symbol of the corrupting power of money
Huck’s innocence when approaching the judge is outstanding: he signs his money away as a response to the fear of his father’s return. It is of no intrinsic value to him and represents his withdrawal from the trappings of society.
Jonathan Peel JLS 2018