Literary articles - Mark Twain 2024

The Silences in Huckleberry Finn

Forrest G. Robinson

Huckleberry Finn is not a very happy book. This is so because Huck Finn is not a very happy person. The reasons for Huck’s unhappiness are numerous and for the most part clear. There is Pap; there is hypocrisy and fraud and violence and cruelty all along the river; and there is slavery, the monstrous inhumanity which prompts Jim’s flight and which divides Huck’s heart against his head. It is the civilized world as he finds it which gives Huck grief. This is why Huck is happiest —free, easy, comfortable, satisfied — when he is alone, or alone with Jim, on the wide river. And this is why Huck closes his story with the decision “to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest.”1 Rooted as it is in freedom and innocence, Huck’s happiness is incompatible with the constraints and compromises of civilization. Thus he is perforce an outcast, a wanderer, a solitary.

Yet the case for Huck’s contentment in “the Territory ahead” is hardly closed. There is some evidence, albeit extratextual, that “the rest,” with notions of their own about freedom, were already on the move. Nor is it clear that solitude answers Huck’s discontent with unmingled peace of mind. The Mississippi may be free and easy and comfortable,b ut it is also, Huck iterates, "just solid lonesomeness" (XIII, 162). Indeed, we are not far into the novel before this association of solitude and melancholy assertsi tself.I n the firs chapter Huck introducesh imself,d escribes the civilizedr igorso f life with the Widow Douglas, and, finally weary with Miss Watson's "'pecking" at him about "the good place," withdrawst o his room:

Then I set downi n a chairb y thew indowa nd triedt o thinko f somethin cheerfulb, ut it warn'tn o use. I felts o lonesomeI mostw ishedI was dead. The starsw eres hining,a nd thel eavesr ustledi n thew oodse vers o mourn ful; and I heard an owl, awayo ff,w ho-whooinagb out somebodyt hatw as dead, and a whippowilal nd a dog cryinga bout somebodyt hatw as going to die; and thew indw as tryingto whispers omethingto me, and I couldn' make out whati t was, and so it made the cold shiversr uno verm e. Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghostm akes wheni t wantst o tell about somethingt hat'so n its mind and can't make itselfu nderstooda, nd so can't reste asy in its grave,a nd has to go about thatw aye veryn ightg rievingI. got so down-hearteadn d scaredI did wish I had somec ompany.P rettyso on a spiderw entc rawlingu p mys houlder and I flippedi t offa nd it liti n thec andle; and beforeI could budgei t was all shriveledu p. I didn'tn eed anybodyt o tell me thatt hatw as an awfu bad signa nd wouldf etchm e someb ad luck,s o I was scareda nd mosts hook the clotheso ffo f me. I got up and turneda roundi n myt rackst hreet ime and crossedb yb reaste veryt ime;a nd thenI tiedu p a littlel ocko fm yh air witha threadt o keep witchesa way. But I hadn't no confidence.( XIII, 17-18)

The retreat from the pressureso f civilization, at least on this occasion, resultsi n somethingf ar worse. Alone in his room, Huck is prey to demons which spring from his imagination and crowd the solitude with terror. Remote but familiar sounds are suddenly the voices of ghosts speaking of death. Mere accidents become signs potent with doom and impervious to charms. At no point are we inclined to view Huck's narrativea s a humorous riot of naive superstition; the acceleration of his terrori s too immediate and authentic for release into comedy. Rather, we come away impressed with the vague but nearly palpable dread which emerges from Huck's solitude. Left to himself,h e is at once fearfult hat his life will continue, and that it will end. Little wonder that he craves some company.

The most detailed commentaryo n Huck's solitaryt errori s offered by Henry Nash Smith. He venturest hat the ghostlyv isitation may be the punishment Huck "inflictso n himself for defyingt he mores of St. Petersburg,” or that it may record the “intuitive recognition that Huck’s and Jim’s quest for freedom must end in failure.” Whatever we may choose to make of them, however, Smith argues that “these sinister images . . . develop the characterization of Huck beyond the needs of the plot.”2

Smith goes on to note “the drastic shift in tone” that occurs in the last third of Huckleberry Finn, and observes that this transition commences with Huck’s approach to the Phelps plantation:

When I got there it was all still and Sunday-like, and hot and sunshiny; the hands was gone to the fields; and there was them kind of faint dronings of bugs and flies in the air that makes it seem so lonesome and like everybody’s dead and gone; and if a breeze fans along and quivers the leaves it makes you feel mournful, 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, too, and done with it all. . . .1 went around and dumb over the back stile by the ash-hopper, and started for the kitchen. When I got a little ways I heard the dim hum of a spinning-wheel wailing along up and sinking along down again; and then I knowed for certain I wished I was dead —for that is the lonesomest sound in the whole world. (XIII, 284-285)

Smith points to the evident similarity between this passage and Huck’s earlier meditation in his bedroom, adding that once again the somber mood is “not fully accounted for by the context of the story.” Despite apparent obstacles, Huck is still quite confident that his efforts to free Jim will meet was success. Thus his depression cannot be explained as a conscious anticipation of failure. For lack of an adequate internal motive, therefore, Smith concludes that “the emotion is the author’s rather than Huck’s, and it is derived from sources outside the story.”3 This line of thought leads to The Autobiography — specifically, to Mark Twain’s memory of a spinning wheel in the home of his uncle, John A. Quarles —“a wheel whose rising and falling wail, heard from a distance, was the mournfulest of all sounds to me and made me homesick and low spirited and filled my atmosphere with the wandering spirits of the dead.”4 Quite clearly, as Smith points out, both the place and the emotions attached to it formt he biographical background to Huck's reflectionsa t the Phelps plantation. Identical elements surface in Mark Twain's use of the Quarles farm as the model for the Mason residence in "The Private Historyo f a Campaign That Failed":

Aftera ll thesey earst hem emoryo f thed ullness,a nd stillnessa,n d lifeles nesso f thats lumberousf armhousest illo ppressesm ys pirita s witha sens of thep resenceo f death and mourningT. here was nothingt o do, nothin to thinka bout; therew as no interestin life There was no sound but the plaintivew ailingo f a spinning-wheefl,o reverm oaningo ut froms ome distantr oom-the mostl onesomes ound in nature,a sound steepeda nd soddenw ithh omesicknesasn d the emptinesso f life. (XXI, 249)

Once again, the similaritiesb etween autobiography and fictiona re perfectlye vident. But the passages are linked in the additional sense that they all record attacks of conscience. In the Mason farm episode Mark Twain suffersf or his part in a wartime "murder." In chapter 31 of Huckleberry Finn, Smith continues, the traces of a "latent feelingo f guilt" signal Mark Twain's admission "that Huck's and Jim'sj ourney down the riverc ould not be imagined as leading to freedom for either of them." In order to skirtt he tragic implications of this recognition, Mark Twain removed Huck from the center of the action in the remainder of the novel and replaced him with Tom Sawyer. This displacement of the potentiallyt ragic by the comic is rather improbably maneuvered into the plot when Aunt Sally Phelps mistakenlyi dentifiesH uck as Tom. "We can hardly fail," Smith concludes, "to perceive the weight of the author's feeling in Huck's statement on this occasion: 'it was like being born again, I was so glad to find out who I was.' Mark Twain has found out who he must be in order to end his book: he must be Tom."5

There is much to be said forS mith'sa rgument. He draws attention to important similarities between fictional and biographical materials, and he uses these freshi nsightsi n opening up and defending a coherent interpretationo f the novel. Using Smith's discussion as a point of departure, I want to extend his analysisi n some areas and to offera lternativei nterpretationsin others. In the way of extension, I will look at a number of passages in the fiction and nonfictionw hich help to furtheri lluminate our understanding of Huck's moments of solitaryt error. At the outset, there can be no doubt that many of the details that appear in Huck's meditations are elsewhere to be found in association with Mark Twain's ubiquitous conscience. Curiously enough, in making this point Smith ignores a most telling autobiographical description of a night spent during childhood at the Quarles farm. There was a violent storm, Mark Twain recalls, and the "forgottens ins [which] came flocking out of the secret chambers of the memory"w ere accompanied by a dismal "hoo-hooing of the owl and the wailing of the wolf, sent mourning by on the night wind."6

Viewed in combination with the others, this passage makes it emphatically clear that recurrent descriptive details were closely associated with guilt in Mark Twain's imagination. The appearance of identical details on two occasions in HuckleberryF inn is strong prima facie evidence that guilt is also at work in the background of Huck's overt depression and fear. Yet, as Smith points out, contextual justificationf or an attack of conscience is not readily apparent. In chapter 1 Huck has just rejected Miss Watson's Christiana dmon-ishments,a nd chapter 32 followsi n the wake of his decision to "go to hell" in order to save Jim. In short, while the details of Huck's meditations dispose us to look for guilt, the fictional frame of rebellion against civilized convention leads to baseless-or at least puzzlinglye xtreme- expressions of fear. Nonetheless, by gathering insightsf roma dditional "sources outside the story,"I want to argue that Huck's fears and death wishes and superstitiousd read emerge naturally, if rather obliquely, from the text itself. In turn, using Huck's behavior as a window on the complex psychological dynamics of his maker, I will point to some hitherto unexplored avenues of interpenetrationb etween fictiona nd biography.

II
The briefp assages fromc hapters 1 and 32 of HuckleberryF inn share a number of key elements. In both instances Huck is alone; in both he is lonesome; he is temporarilyw earyo f life,e ven to the point of wishing to die; the tense stillnessi s brushed by soft, haunting sounds-of the breeze, of leaves, a spinningw heel, insects,a n owl, a dog; these oppressive sounds seem to be the voices of the dead, of ghosts tryingt o be heard, seeking compassion, murmuring about death; the vague voices intensifyH uck's loneliness, fear, and his wish to be done with life. Both episodes augur ill, and the firs includes concrete reinforcementf or Huck's dark presentiments.

Some, and at times nearly all, of these elements appear in dozens of other passages scattered through Mark Twain's writing. In some instances they serve in appropriate and predictable ways to enhance moods of loneliness, fear, and awe. Finding himselfi n a setting of "solitude and silence," for example, the narrator of "A Ghost Story"i s overcome with "a superstitiousd read." He reacts to a brush with a cobweb "as one who had encountered a phantom" (XIX, 283). Ghostlyp resences, emergingf rom" an uncanny silence and solemnity,"w orkt o like effecto n the visitorst o a haunted castle inJoan of Arc. "The longer we sat so, the more deadly still that stillnessg ot to be; and when the wind began to moan around the house presently,i t made me sick and miserable" (XVII, 274-75). A similarlyh aunted settingp rompts Huck to a similar response-"it was miserable quiet and still and night-breezya nd graveyardya nd scary"-in Tom Sawyer, Detective (XX, 166).

Solitude is itselfo ften sufficien t o open the imagination to an attack of ghostlyi ntimations. This is the case, for example, when Hank Morgan, the narrator of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, comes upon an isolated huddle of buildings in the Valley of Holiness. The scene, "so impressivelys till" as to appear "steeped in death," stirsd ismay-in the beholder. And the pervasive mournfulnessi s augmented by "the faint far sound of tolling bells which floated fitfullyt o us on the passing breeze" (XVI, 181). Solitude is equally oppressive for the narrator of "The Enchanted SeaWilderness," who finds himselfb ecalmed on a remote and desolate sea: "The stillnessw as horrible; and the absence of life. There was not a bird or a creature of any kind in sight . . . and therew as not a sound of any kind, even the faintest- the silence of death was everywhere." Meanwhile, broken in spirit, the captain "moped around . . .and prayed for death, I reckon. We all did."7 These rather gothic interludes bear obvious similarities to the passages from Huckleberry Finn. Yet deeper comparison yields little. For while Huck's moments of panic strikeu s as anomalous intervalso f dread with no immediately apparent cause, the experiences of Hank Morgan and the others arise from the manifeste xigencies of plot, setting, and genre. Most especially, when viewed in the aggregate, these conventionalm ood pieces fail to exhibit a consistentp atterno f psychological or structurali ntegrationa nd thus offern o clues to a fulleru nderstandingo f Huck's enigmatic behavior.

Such patternsa re more evident in a group of passages in which silence and lonely apprehension functiona s the prelude to episodes of major, and always painful, consequence. As he approaches what he imagines to be his execution, Hank Morgan enters a "stillnes . . . so profoundt hat if I had been blindfoldI should have supposed I was in a solitude instead of walled in by four thousand people" (XVI, 50).8 Virtuallyi dentical momentss erve as prologues to major crises inJoan of Arc. Justb efore the Battle of Orleans, "the stillnes was something awful. . . . Many people were visible- all were listening, not one was moving. . . . Everywherew ere these impressiv petrifiedf orms;a nd everywherew as suspended movement and that awfuls tillness"(X VII, 340-41). Later, asJoan is broughtt o trial, the narrator'sh eart pounds in his breast: "But there was silence nowsilence absolute. . . . Not a sound; the stillnessg rew oppressive; it was like a weightu pon one" (XVIII, 142). Finally,j ust beforeJ oan's condemnation, "there was no noise, no stir; it was as if the world was dead. The impressivenesso f thiss ilence and solemnityw as deepened by a leaden twilight" (XVIII, 270). The recurrent atmospheric elementsi n these passages, and in othersl ike them,9 are clear linkst o HuckleberryF inn, as is their characteristicm ood of stunned silence in anticipation of death. In view of the ubiquity of death in the novel, these cognate materialsl end credence to Daniel G. Hoffman's view that Huck's depressions" are an acknowledgemento f the fact of death" and "an admission of evil as a positive force in the natural world."'0 Moreover, they provide support for Ray W. Frantz's contentiont hat the spider in chapter 1 is "the worstp ossible sign -a death sign,""IIa nd for Richard P. Adams's linking of Huck's death wish with the "fake murder" he engineers in his escape from Pap's cabin. 12 These passages may also cast some lighto n Jim'st horoughl enigmatic predictiono f Huck's death in chapter 4. Yet in a world of frequent and often premature mortality,H uck's shrewdness and good luck add up to survival.A s part of the price exacted forh is life, however, Huck must endure a regular succession of simulated or symbolicd eaths. Thus forJamesM . Cox the "fake murder" at Pap's cabin is a "vital and crucial incident" because it means that Huck is thereaftera "dead" man who must be "reborn at almost everyr iver bend, not because he desires a new role, but because he must recreate himselft o elude the forcesw hich close in on him frome very side. "13 The grim corollaryt o this deathly alienation fromc ivilized "forces" is vulnerabilityt o the attacks of loneliness and dark apprehension which figures o prominentlyi n chapters 1 and 32.

Valuable as it is in helping to account forH uck's solitaryf ears, Cox's analysis does not address his wish to die. Moreover, though the feeling that life has lost its value is a regular feature in the parallel passages I have cited, these materials do littlet o supplement our understanding of the causes for Huck's death wish. Indeed, it could be argued that loneliness and fear are causes enough. George C. Carrington, Jr. insists, for example, that Huck's intervals of solitude expose him to "head-on confrontationsw ith nature in its most frighteningf orm- an endless, meaningless flux." In this original and quite plausible interpretation,H uck's melancholy is an "existential" matter rooted in the perception that "life . . . is not occasionally empty; it is basically empty."'14 Nonetheless, there is additional evidence, some of it already noted, that the elements which make up Huck's depressions are at other places linked to the pressureso f conscience. It remains, therefore,t o explore the ways in which guilt, certainly unacknowledged and perhaps unconscious, worksi n the background of Huck's foreboding.

III
Henry Nash Smith admits, it will be recalled, that guilt is often associated with the elements that appear in Huck’s solitary meditations, but he finds such feelings psychologically unfounded in the novel and therefore assigns them to Mark Twain. In effect, the guilt is “laid on.” Smith supports his argument by linking a passage from “The Private History of a Campaign That Failed” (quoted above) with the guilt that Mark Twain experienced as the result of his part in the “murder” of an innocent man. In fact, however, the elements which Smith properly identifies as the symptoms of guilt appear before, and not after, the commission of the “crime.” The eerie description of the Mason farm is followed by the descent of an ominous mood upon the soldiers. They are “silent and nervous. And soon uneasy —worried—-apprehensive. ... It was late, and there was a deep woodsy stillness everywhere” (XXI, 253). The silence is then broken by the sound of hoof-beats, and the unhappy killing takes place. It is a case, in other words, of guilt emerging in advance of the event which properly gives it rise.

Such reversals of the ordinary relationship between event and emotional response are not unusual in Mark Twain’s life and work. The prophecy of his brother Henry’s death came to him in an anguished dream that forecast not only the details of the funeral but the circumstances that would assail his conscience after the episode occurred.15 Anticipatory, or proleptic, guilt of this kind is sometimes found in conjunction with the elements that appear in chapters 1 and 32 of Huckleberry Finn. The episode in “The Private History,” for example, has a much more circumstantial parallel in The Mysterious Stranger. Upon learning from Young Satan that his friend Nikolaus is fated to die in twelve days, Theodor Fischer’s consciousness is flooded by memories of his mistreatment of his doomed companion:

No, I could not sleep. These little shabby wrongs upbraided me and tortured me; and with a pain much sharper than one feels when the wrongs have been done to the living. Nikolaus was living, but no matter: he was to me as one already dead. The wind was still moaning about the eaves, the rain still pattering upon the panes.16

The fretfula nxiety,t he preoccupation with death, the solitude and the drone of ghostlys ounds-the settinga nd the state of mind are familiar enough. More notably, Theodor's foreknowledgeo f Nikolaus's misfortunep rompts feelingso f guilt which would ordinarily arise only aftert he fatal episode has occurred. We may add that the intensityo f Theodor's sufferingis dramaticallyi ncreased by his prescience, for his disproportionateg uilt gathers much of its energy fromt he fact that he is powerlesst o avert the disaster. It remains to observe that Theodor's advance informationd erives from fancifu manipulations of plot which, if removed, would betray his foreknowledge for what it is-a wish. In thinkingo f Nikolaus as "one already dead," he is at once a mourner and the possessor of an unconscious impulse toward homicide. Mark Twain was well acquainted with such divided feelings. His dream of his brother' death, I have argued elsewhere, was itself the expression of an ambivalence which had an unconscious fratricidalw ish as one of its poles.'7

In Theodor's case, the extremityo f the proleptic guilt is one clue to the murderous impulse which lies submerged in his apparently helpless foreknowledge.T he resolution of the episode is another. As the day of the disaster approaches, Theodor eases his own anxiety by maneuvering Nikolaus's mother into the role of villain. Thus, when Nikolaus finally dies, the poor woman "could not forgiveh erselfa nd could not be comforted,a nd kept on saying . . . she was the cause of his death." Still, though Theodor's shrewd manipulating temporarilyd eflects and allays his guilt, it does not really save him. As the immediate sequel to the episode he observes that people are "foolish" when "they blame themselvesf or anything they have done." This utterlyu ncharacteristicc ynicismh as Nikolaus's mother as its ostensible object; in fact, of course, Theodor's unwonted sentimentsf unctionp rimarilya s a sop to his own subliminal remorse: "It is as Satan said, we do not know good fortunef rom bad, and are always mistakingt he one for the other. Many a time, since then, I have heard people pray to God to spare the life of sick persons, but I have never done it."'l8 Unable to confrontt he nether side of his ambivalence, Theodor decides instead that life is not  worth the possessing. Viewed from this angle, of course, his unconscious impulses toward his friend appear as benefactions in disguise.

Quite evidently, the similarities between the situations of Huck and Theodor go well beyond the details of setting which prompted the initial comparison. Both boys are alone and depressed and anxious. Both hear ghostly sounds. They are preoccupied with death, and they share dark forebodings about future developments which they feel powerless to control. In the course of their reflections, both decide that life is a burden and that death is a welcome respite from intolerable suffering. For Theodor, as we have seen, these latter sentiments are the conscious reflex of repressed guilt. In Huck’s case, the death wish is perfectly manifest, and there are strong suggestions that guilt somehow figures in his dark mood. Moreover, the phenomenon of proleptic guilt may well apply to Huck, for his dark moodiness has no apparent cause.

Given these abundant parallels, it remains to press Theodor’s example a step further and to ask what it is that Huck’s moods look forward to. What ambivalence gives rise to his spectral premonitions of disaster and death? What buried wish feeds his sense of the inevitable and explains both his premature remorse and his expiatory desire to end his own life? In other words, who plays for Huck the role that Nikolaus plays for Theodor and that Henry Clemens played for Mark Twain? Of course, it must be Jim.

IV
In reviewing his offenses against Nikolaus, Theodor recalls that he once failed to apologize to his friend because “I was ashamed to say I was ashamed.”19 Huck experiences similar difficulties in making his amends for a practical joke that he has played on Jim. “It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger; but I done it, and I warn’t ever sorry for it afterwards, neither” (XIII, 123). To some extent, such reluctance is the result of backwardness and pride. But the boys’ hesitation is also rooted in an awareness, however vague, that their apologies for specific offenses will be rather perfunctory so long as the wellsprings of their hostility remain unacknowledged. The extremity of Theodor’s guilt, and the fact that his being “ashamed” does nothing to moderate his cruelty to Nikolaus, is evidence that the dark pole of his ambivalence will not be curbed by mere apologies. For his part, Huck is confident that his amends redeem past transgressionsa nd ensure futureh armony. "I didn't do him no more mean tricks,a nd I wouldn't done that one if I'd a knowed it would make him feel that way" (XIII, 123). In fact, Huck is deceived in his retrospectiv account of the situation. His apology, though appropriate and commendable, is woefullyi nadequate as a gesture of redemption, and will prove a rather slender stay against futurel apses in good faith.

The practical joke for which Huck finallya pologizes -his misleading Jim into the belief that their separation during a storm on the river has been a dream - is only the last in a series of pranks designed to expose the gullibilitya nd superstitionw hich manifes what is assumed to be Jim'sr acial inferiorityT. he firsto f thesej okes occurs in chapter 2 and formst he immediate sequel to Huck's initial experience with ghostsa nd lonely depression. Ironicallye nough, the trick turns on Jim's belief in evil spirits( "Niggers is always talking about witches" [XIII, 22]) and misleads him into the proud assurance that he has been visited by the devil.

The next practical joke occurs on Jackson'sI sland and followsa disagreemento ver the interpretationo f signs.J im insistst hat touching a snakeskin brings bad luck, but Huck disagrees. To make his case and to reassert his superiorityH uck decides to expose Jim's superstitiousg ullibilityb y placing a dead rattlesnakeo n his friend' blanket, "thinkingt here'd be some fun when Jim found him there" (XIII, 81). But the joke backfires. When Jim takes to his bed, the dead snake's mate bites him on the heel and nearly kills him. Once again the irony is at Huck's expense. At one level this close brush with death is a painful vindication of Jim's position on the proper interpretationo f signs. But the episode involvesm ore than bad luck, for it is intolerance and the malice arising from assumed racial superiorityth at promptsH uck to play the tricki n the firstp lace. The more threatenings erpent here, -as Carrington has verya stutelyo b-served, is the much older one associated with primordial human be-trayal.20H uck is fullya ware of the gravityo f his offense;i ndeed, like

Theodor, he is too ashamed to acknowledge his shame. Instead, he "slid out quiet and throwed the snakes clear away amongst the bushes; for I warn't going to let Jim find out it was all my fault, not if I could help it" (XIII, 81). Later on, Huck acquiesces without registeringa shudder in Jim's inadvertentlyr ueful reminder "that handling a snake-skin was such awful bad luck that maybe we hadn't got to the end of it yet" (XIII, 82).

As if to confirmJ im's prediction, Huck's secret shame derives added power for harm from the fact of its secrecy. Huck has re-pressedt he serpenti n his nature, and thisa ct of willfuls elf-deceptio sustains, and possiblya ugments, the energyo f his malice toward his friend. Meanwhile, convinced that he is being pursued by spectral "bad luck," Jim fails to identifyt he most immediate source of his difficultya nd is thus powerless to protect himself against even greater calamaties. This complex fabric of deception and bad faith reappears in chapter 14 when Jim displays a noble heart and great common sense in disputes over apparent trivia. Huck reacts by withdrawing into sullen, spitefuls ilence: "I see it warn't no use wasting words-you can't learn a nigger to argue. So I quit" (XIII, 115). The immediate sequel, the separation in the fog near Cairo, provides Huck with an occasion for an indirect demonstrationo f Jim's imagined inferiorityin matters of logic and argumentation. As we have seen, his victoryi s a briefo ne, forJima ssertsh imselfw ith force and great dignity. Huck's apology is sincere; but this halting assertion of the positive pole of his ambivalence gives way with startlin suddenness to fear and resentmentw henJ im expressesh is joy at the prospecto f reachingf reedom.R esponding to what he half-mistakenl calls his "conscience," Huck leaves the raftw ith the clear purpose of turning his friend over to the authorities. Just as suddenly, the rending pathos of Jim's naive farewell-'Jim won't ever forgity ou, Huck; you's de bes' fren'J im's ever had; en you's de only fren' ole Jim's got now" (XIII, 127)-inspires a complete reversal of heart and the brilliant evasion of a pair of slave hunters.

Jim's relief and gratitude are abundant, but before long he surrenderst o the suspicion that theyh ave floated south past Cairo. Once again, he blames fortunef or his predicament, but in doing so he unknowinglyl ocates a more immediate and human cause forh is woe. "Po' niggersc an't have no luck," he laments. "I awluz 'spected dat rattlesnake-skinw arn't done wid its work." The trenchancyo the dramatic ironyi s hardly lost on the reader. Nor, I believe, is it lost on Huck, whose response resonates with the kind of bafflemen and anguish that myths are made of. "I wish I'd never seen that snake-skin,J im- I do wish I'd never laid eyes on it." Jim offersc on-solation, but all unawares he locates and flayst he wound. "It ain't yo' fault, Huck; you didn' know. Don't you blame yo'self' bout it" (XIII, 131). Huck's guiltys ecret does not surface directly,b ut the terrificp ressure of his emotion finds oblique expression in the sudden advent of a steamboat which bears down on the raft. Like an avenging Old Testament Leviathan, "with a long row of wide-open furnace doors shiningl ike red-hott eeth" (XIII, 133), the monstrou boat sweeps with retributivev iolence over the forsakenr aft.

Ironically,t hough its impact is primarilyd estructive,t he steamboat is also an agency of relief,f ori t brings a temporaryo blivion to the novel. For Mark Twain, it is well known, the accident marked the end of the firsts tage of composition and a long creative withdrawal from the adult complications that had crept into his ostensibly juvenile fiction. For Huck, the steamboat enforces a respite from the moral vertigo of his relationship with Jim. The chapters leading up to the accident are the chronicle of an accelerating swing between the poles of an excruciating ambivalence. Placed as it is, the riverboatc ollision may be viewed as the outward manifestation of a psychic collapse, a breakdown. While it is true that the Grangerford/Shepherdsonin terlude brings terrorso f its own, these are manageable terrors,f or they do not seriouslyc hallenge Huck's values and self-esteem.A nd, fora ll of its violence, the feud section is a reprievet o the extentt hat it permitsa n intervalo f separation from Jim. Not surprisinglyH, uck is totallyu nmindfulo f the slave during this period. In fact, though he is a loving and admired friend,J im has become trouble for Huck-trouble because accompanying an escaped slave both limitsa nd threatensh is freedoma nd because this threateninga ssociation is a constant spur to his restivea mbivalence. From this point of view, the advent of the steamboat is a mani-festationo f Huck's anguished confusion and his desperate need for release fromh is repressedm oral dilemma.

The gathering weight of Huck's emotional conflicti s brought home to us more than once as he rationalizes his decision to betray Jim to the authorities. "I got to feeling so mean and so miserable I most wished I was dead." A bit furthero n he declares: "I reckoned I would die of miserableness"( XIII, 126). These sentimentsa re clear echoes of Huck's depressed feelingsi n chapter 1, but his sense of the attraction and proximityo f death can now be tied directlyt o his hopelesslyd ivided feelingsa bout Jim. On one side, he perceives and fears the imminent threats to his friend'sf reedom and well-being. On the other, he sees that he must number himselfa mong those life-threateningf orces. Craving release from this unbearable ambivalence, Huck's consciousness driftst oward the imagined solace of oblivion. The other elementso f his earlier meditation also come into clearer focus when applied to the presentc ontext. Huck must intuitively glimpse the deep and apparently unbridgeable chasm that separates him fromJ im. A self-exileda lien from civilization, he is nonetheless the bearer of civilized residues which divide his consciousness, compromise the only human relationship available to him, and threaten to leave him utterlyb ereft. Thus the haunted atmosphere of his room, replete with sad, doomed voices, and the reflex destruction of that companionable spider, may be seen as omens of Huck's predicament on the raft. Looking back, we begin to understand why he felt helpless, guilty,l onely, and half in love with death.

V

To suggest, as I have, that Huck's initial depression specifically anticipates his dilemma with Jim may appear to strain common critical sense. After all, Huck has no way of knowing that circumstance will land him on a raftn ear Cairo with Miss Watson's escaped slave. On this score, one must concede Henry Nash Smith's point and allow that these early anticipationso f subsequent developments were projectionso f Mark Twain's richlyc reativeu nconscious. Without being aware of it, he recognized well in advance that his emergent juvenile romance was fraughtw ith tragic potential. This does not mean, however,t hat Huck's dark mood is withoutm otive or out of character. To the contrary,H uck's mood betrayst he subliminal awareness that he will suffert he consequences of livingo n the margin. Imperfectlye xiled, as imperfectlyc ivilized, Huck will always be as uncomfortablew ith aliens as he is with the civilized. Huck is comfortable and satisfiedo n the river,b ut he is also lonely and afraid. He is relieved when he findsJ im, but he seems even more relieved to be rid of him. His anguished ambivalence on the rafti s thus merely the extremec ase of his more general moral and psychologicalc ondi-tion. Huck is foreverb etwixt and between, and at some level he knows this from the start. Thus it is perfectlya ppropriate that he should be alone at the beginning of the novel and that he should face the futurew ith grim foreboding.

Huck's mood at the opening of chapter 32 is in clear alignment with what we have learned of his character and situation. He has just made the heroic decision to stealJim out of slavery,b ut he does in the assurance that he will suffere ternal damnation as a consequence. In short, he is utterlyd ivided against himself. Circumstances have conspired to enforce choice, and that necessityi n turn stirsh is ambivalence and precipitates his second lapse into solitary melancholy and life-weariness.T his time, however, the source of Huck's depression is more immediate and well focused than in chapter 1, and so his reaction is more intense. Huck is now persuaded that the spirit-voices are talking about him, and he is straightforwardin his wish to be "dead, too, and done with it all."

Appropriately enough, the source of relief is now also more extreme. In chapter 1 Huck abandons his lonely room for adven-turesw ith Tom Sawyer. Yet he is finallyi ncapable of losing himself in his friend'sw orld; he sees that Tom deals in transparentf iction and observest hat his games have "all the marks of a Sunday-school" (XIII, 32). Ironically,t oo, Tom's pranks takeJima s theirf irst arget and thus lead Huck through an oblique rehearsal of subsequent moral and psychologicalc rises. Still, childish fantasiesp rovide some distractionf rom his darker ruminations, and so, for a time, Huck submits. In chapter 32 the requisite diversionsa nd loss of self are much more substantial. Tom Sawyer reappears, ready as usual with grandiose plans. Once again, Jim figures centrally, and unknow-ingly,i n the adventure. But this time, as the remainder of the novel shows,c hildishp ranksh ave seriousc onsequences. Huck is not fooled; from the beginning he sees that the game is fantastic and unne-cessarilyc ruel. But he goes along anyway.I ndeed, to the surprisea nd dismay of generations of admirers, he takes advantage of Aunt Sally's mistake and readily permitsh imselft o be identifieda s Tom Sawyer. "It was like being born again," he exults, "I was so glad to find out who I was."

It is the measure of Huck's terriblem ental anguish that he sur-renderss o eagerly and completelyt o this unlikelyi dentitya nd to the subsequent cruelties that the fiction entails. We may find Huck inconsistenth ere; we may feel that this ready adoption of an alien personalityi s totallyo ut of keeping withh is true character. The real Huck Finn, we may argue, has died. But this is preciselyt he point. The Huck Finn that we come to know in the firstt wo-thirdso f the novel is the victim of a wrenchinga mbivalence which finds its epicenter at the intersectiono f totally irreconcilable attitudes toward Jim. Despite his bold and heroic resolve in chapter 31, Huck's psychological equilibrium is more precarious than ever. His peril is compounded by the conscious and overt espousal ofJ im'sc ause, for that decision flies in the face of social prohibitionsw hich Huck has internalized. Thus divided against himself,t he real Huck Finn -the marginal, ambivalent, guilt-hauntedf ugitive- falls prey to demons that pursue him to the verge of insanity and suicide. In this perspective, it is neither inconsistentn or surprisingt hat Huck should take refuge in the utterlyu nambivalent and supremely socialized identityo f Tom Sawyer. As I have tried to demonstrate,t his potential for death and paradoxical rebirthi s perfectlyi n character and has been with Huck since the veryb eginning of the novel.

The widespread critical resistance to the Huck Finn who surfaces in chapter 32 is at once as enigmatic and as predictable as the hero's sudden transformationT. he question that Huck confrontsi n chapter 31 -whether to befriend or betray his black companion -echoes the paramount dilemma in our historya nd culture. Quite naturally, we warm to Huck's boldly independent and apparently successful rejection of manifestlyi nhumane institutions.Q uite as naturally, we may fail to recognize the terribler ent in Huck's consciousness or to allow that his resolve, no matter how heroic, may collapse under the weighto f unresolved conflicts.I f this is the case, then we will reject Huck's rebirtha s implausible, fault the novel for lack of unity, and declare its closing chapters unrealistic. In fact, Huck's transformationw, hich is prepared for and anticipated from the start,i s the climactic stage in a process of character development which unifiest he entire novel. His rebirtha nd its sequel are almost unbearably realistic. The true failure of realism occurs when Huck decides that he is physicallya nd-much more importantly-psycho-logicallye quipped to setJ imf ree. In joining him in thisf ond wish we betray the extent to which we share Huck's painful dilemma. Given the fact of his historya nd culture, it is the nearly absolute condition of Huck's survival that he die into Tom Sawyer. Paradoxically, in refusingt o recognize the necessityo f this transformationw e inad-vertentlya cknowledge the full depth of our identificationw ith this anguished American innocent.2'

VI
At the veryb eginning of Tom Sawyer,D etective, Huck is overcome with an attack of what he calls "springf ever." In surrenderin to the affliction,h e retreats to a "lonesome place" on a hill overlooking the Mississippi.F rom this solitaryv antage, the rivera ppears to stretcha way, "far offa nd still,a nd everything'so solemn it seems like everybodyy ou've loved is dead and gone, and you 'most wish you was dead and gone too, and done with it all." Of course, Huck has been in this settinga nd frame of mind before. On this occasion, however, he decides that the only cure for his woes is "to go wandering far away to strange countriesw here everythingis mysteriou and wonderfula nd romantic" (XX, 138). An almost identical setting and train of associations appear toward the beginning of Tom Sawyer. Weighed down by his troubles, Tom retirest o a dense wood near CardiffH ill.

There was not even a zephyrs tirringt; he dead noondayh eat had even stilledt he songso f the birds;n aturel ay in a trancet hatw as brokenb yn o sound but the occasional far-offh ammeringo f a woodpecker,a nd this seemed to rendert he pervadings ilencea nd sense of lonelinesst he more profound.T he boy'ss oul was steepedi n melancholyh; is feelingsw erei n happy accord withh is surroundings It seemedt o him that lifew as but a trouble,a t best, and he more than half enviedJ immyH odges, so latelyr eleased; it mustb e veryp eaceful,h e thought,t o lie and slumbe and dream forevera nd ever,w itht he windw hisperingth rought he tree and caressingt he grass and the flowerso ver the grave, and nothingt o bothera nd grievea bout, ever any more Ah, if he could only die temporarily(!X II, 81-82)

Like Huck, Tom rejects the seductions of death and decides instead to run away. "What if he turned his back, now, and disappeared mysteriously? What if he went away—ever so far away, into unknown countries beyond the seas —and never came back any more!” (XII, 82)

Most of the elements in these passages are by now familiar, though the close association of death with running away and dreamy forgetfulness is something new. A similar clustering occurs in chapter 1 of A Connecticut Yankee when Hank Morgan begins his dream of Camelot. He finds himself in “a soft, reposeful summer landscape, as lovely as a dream, and as lonesome as Sunday. . . . There were no people, no wagons, there was no stir of life, nothing going on” (XVI, 19). Hank’s sense of isolated well-being in this fantasy of Eden is directly commensurate with the distance in time and space that separates him from the bustle and human conflict of contemporary Bridgeport. For a while at least Camelot is all that Hank’s real world is not. Huck and Tom, on the other hand, are surrounded and oppressed by familiar human problems and thus long to remove themselves to a dreamworld like Hank’s. In either case, however, the desired state of physical separation has its psychological parallel in the condition of dreamy oblivion. Under such circumstances —whether achieved through flight, sleep, or death — solitude is blissful rather than threatening, for the solitary consciousness is dead, and therefore invulnerable, to the world. For Mark Twain, the vast Mississippi was a landscape ideally suited to the inducement of this gradual dying away. In Life on the Mississippi, for example, he records the river’s impact on his initially mingled mood:

The loneliness of this solemn, stupendous flood is impressive — and depressing. League after league, and still league after league, it pours its chocolate tide along, between its solid forest walls, its almost untenanted shores, with seldom a sail or moving object of any kind to disturb the surface and break the monotony of the blank, watery solitude; and so the day goes, and night comes, and again the day—and still the same, night after night and day after day,—majestic, unchanging sameness of serenity, repose, tranquillity, lethargy, vacancy,—symbol of eternity, realization of the heaven pictured by the priest and prophet, and longed for by the good and thoughtless! (IX, 213)

The river displaces depression with serenity by emptying the mind of all content. Thoughts are not purified; they are simply washed away, leaving motionlessness, a vacuum, and an easeful sense of remote imperturbability. Mark Twain drifted into an identical mood during a solitary raft voyage on the Rhone in 1891. His serenityw as enhanced, he wrote to a friend,b y a feelingo f "extinction from the world and newspapers, and a conscience in a state of coma, and lazy comfort, and solid happiness." Gliding passively down the river,h e was overcome by a "strange absence of sense of sin, and the strangera bsence of the desire to commit it."22

Justa fterh is escape fromt he feud and just before the arrivalo f the Duke and the Dauphin, Huck findsh imselff eelinge qually "free and easy and comfortable on a raft." The world is safely at arm's length, and for a time his relationship with Jim is free of complication. More than once he observest he "lonesomeness" of the river; but the solitude is easeful, and his consciousness is as "quiet and smooth and lovely" as the setting. Clothes come off, cares drif away, and Huck loses himself to the seamless tranquillity. "Not a sound, anywheres-perfectly still-just like the whole world was asleep, only sometimest he bull-frogsa -cluttering,m aybe." Remote fromr eminderso f his own inner division,H uck is emptied of all care and content with "lazying around, listeningt o the stillness." Voices froma passing raftb reak the silence, and for a moment theys ound "like spiritsc arryingo n that way in the air." But the river'sm agic has purged Huck's mind of fear and suspicion. "No," he assuresJim "spiritsw ouldn't say, 'Dern the dern fog"' (XIII, 160-163).

Huck's sojourn in Eden is a rather brief one. Soon the human world along the banks awakens, and the serenityg ives way to an unbroken succession of conflictsa nd calamities. Worst of all, circumstances combine to rekindle his ambivalence toward Jim, and his sense of sin, along with the strange desire to commit it, returns with renewed intensity.T he weight of his divided identitya nd the pressure of consciousness finally become so great that Huck takes flightf romh imselfa nd settlest emporarilyf or the errorso f omission which fall to him as Tom Sawyer. By novel's end, he is chastened, guarded, and quietly desperate for another, more decisive retreat from the oppressive rigorso f civilization. When Jim brags that his earlier, optimistic reading of the signs has been vindicated, Huck offersn o response. He is equally unresponsive when Jim explains that Pap Finn was the dead man in the house that floated past them near Jackson's Island. Huck does not supplement Jim's limited insight into the significance of snakes; nor does he point out that Jim'so riginal refusalt o discuss the mysteriousd ead man precipitated theirq uarrel about snakeskinsa nd bad luck.23B ut the truthst hat he prefersn ot to mention are hard and clear ones: he and the world being what theya re, Huck's survivali n civilizationd emands that he betray his best self, his best friend, or both. In fact, Huck is hopelessly and tragicallym arginal. On one side, he derives scant relief from withdrawal into civilized identities. Experience and intuition give him windows on the enormityo f bondage; and so long as he glimpses the absurdity of freeing a free slave he will be uncomfortable in Tom Sawyer's skin. On the other side, he is to some extent a product of civilizationa nd thus a bearer of civilized attitudes. It follows that he can never be completely comfortable with Jim. Heir to much of his culture's prejudice and buried discontentb ut to few of its fond but saving consolations, Huck's irreconcilable selves will always be ashamed but forevera shamed to admit it.

For the othersi nvolved, the conclusion to Tom Sawyer'sa dven-ture passes for a happy ending, with warmth and good feeling all around. For Huck it is the occasion for heightened discomforta nd silent retreat. He testifiest o these feelings when he rejects Aunt Sally's offer" to adopt me and sivilize me." "I can't stand it," he concludes, "I been thereb efore." But we will be as deceived as Huck appears to be if we imagine that his decision "to light out for the Territorya head of the rest"( XIII, 375) will lead to the liberationa nd flourishingo f his "real" self. In fact, the totalityo f Huck's "real" self, so far as we know it, is the product of his interactionw ith the social and cultural context he is about to abandon. Huck may put distance between himselfa nd the civilized world, but he cannot get away from the civilization in himself. Thus in opting for flight Huck is choosing to narrow rather than expand, to inhibit rather than free, the multiple and conflictinge lements of his own personality. In leaving Tom and Aunt Sally, Huck will undoubtedlyr ealize littles ense of loss and a large measure of relief. LeavingJim, on the other hand, will have a more painfullym ingled result. To be sure, Jim has been the unwittings ource of great trouble to Huck-both the trouble that has pursued him as the companion of an escaped slave and the more terriblet rouble that has issued, with mounting intensity,f rom Huck's ambivalence. But the escape from trouble has a high price, for the separation costs Huck his only friend. In Jim's company, and in his alone, Huck has enjoyed immunityf rom "lonesomeness" and at the same time that easeful remotenessf rom civilizationt hat leaves him freea nd easy and satisfied.I n flightf rom the world and separated fromJ im, Huck will rediscover another, familiar brand of trouble. For Huck will be alone with himself;a nd he's been there before, too.

VII
Less than four months before his death Mark Twain found himself more solitary than ever in Stormfield, his Connecticut home. It was ChristmasE ve, and his daughterJ ean had succumbed just a few hours earlier to an epileptic seizure and heart failure. Almost as a matter of reflex, Mark Twain sat down to record his grief.I n the course of his writingh e essayed a most difficultq uestion.

Would I bringh erb ack to lifei fI could do it?I wouldn ot. If a wordw ould do it, I wouldb eg fors trengthto withholdt hew ord.A nd I wouldh ave the strengthI; am sureo f it. In herl ossI am almostb ankrupta, nd myl ifei s a bitternessb, ut I am content:f or she has been enrichedw ith the mos precious of all gifts-that gift which makes all other giftsm ean and poor- death2. 4

Jean was the last of a long procession of familym embers and close friends who died during the final years of Mark Twain's life. In almost every case his reaction to such passages was a grief which mingled bereavement with a large measure of guilt. The ambivalence revealed in his characteristicp atterns of mourning was especially deep in his relationship to Jean. She was the youngesto f his daughters, and her energy and quick-wittednessw ere endearing mirrorso f his own qualities. But she was also an epileptic whose impulses toward violence were more than Mark Twain could bear to behold. Finally, toward the end of her life Jean was exiled, very much against her will, to a serieso f sanitariumsw here she was safely out of her father'ss ight and mind. Hamlin Hill captures the pathos of the relationship when he ventures that Jean "might almost be labeled the daughter Mark Twain wanted to forget."25In this light, his ready acquiescence in Jean's death gives clear if rathert roubling expression to his polarized sentiments. "O, Clara, Clara dear," he wrote to his survivingc hild, "I am so glad she is out of it and safesafe! I am not melancholy; I shall never be melancholy again, I think".2 6 Freed at last from that poor thing, her life,J ean in death was also safelyr emoved fromt he paternal rejection which had contributed to her misery,a nd to Mark Twain's remorse.

Jean's death perfectlys atisfiedh er father'sn eed for emotional distance and thus liberated the loving side of his ambivalence from its dark opposite. At the same time, his griefa nd barely contained guilt confirmedh im in his low valuation of life. "Suicide," he had writtene arlier in 1909, "is the only reallys ane thingt he young or old ever do in this life." 27 Given this view, it is understandable that he should have been blind to the painful ironyw hich played through his levitating,a nd finallyi llusory,f reedom from melancholy when Jean died.

The complex dynamics of Mark Twain's mood find clear parallels in the fictional experiences of Theodor Fischer and Huckle-berryF inn. All three sufferf rom a wrenchinga mbivalence toward those closest to them. For all three the strain of the ambivalence resultsi n a wish fors eparation fromt he apparent source of conflict This is achieved by retreatingo r by pushing the other person away. In its more extreme manifestationt he need for distance expresses itselfi n a wish ford eath or in a serenelyp hilosophical acceptance of the removal or death of the object of ambivalence. Huck is unmoved byJim's apparent death and is happiest when there is "not a sound anywheres-perfectly still-just like the whole world was asleep" (XIII, 161). "I have heard people pray to God to spare the life of sick persons," says Theodor, "but I have never done it."28 And Mark Twain assures himself: "I have never wanted any released friendo f mine restored to life since I reached manhood." 29

The temporaryr elief earned by physical retreat, the flightt o indifferenceo r oblivion, and varieties of dying to the world or imagining the world dead, has guilt as its heavy price. Worse yet, the guilt finds its way back to its source, where it nourishes and intensifiest he engendering ambivalence. At times the entire cycle concentratesi tselfi n a briefi nterval, gathering into the consciousness of its bearer. The result is a haunted, solitaryt errori n which the vaguely accusing voices of familiarg hostsi nstilla feelingo f helplessness and the desire to be done with it all.

Final release fromt he accelerating and redoubling cycle might come in a varietyo f ways, all of them amounting to a satisfactiono f the wish for death. There is the simple seduction of the oblivion imagined in death. This was Jean's good fortune, and it was a blessing that Mark Twain genuinely wished to share with her. Or, on this side of mortality,t here is solipsism, a withdrawali nto self so complete that the ambivalence dies forl ack of an object. This is the solution imaginativelye xplored in the closing paragraphs of The MysteriousS tranger, where, as Bernard DeVoto firstp ointed out, Mark Twain tried to "uproot terror and guilt and responsibilit from his little world, by detonating the universe."30F inally, the human objects of the towering ambivalence could simply remove themselvesb y natural means, leaving the quondam sufferera ppar-entlyf reeo f wishfulc omplicityi n theird epartures and at last serene in his solitude. In fact, just such a mood descended on Mark Twain as he continued to meditate at Stormfieldo n his last ChristmasE ve. His houses, he reflected, became more comfortablyh abitable for him as their beloved residentsd ied away:

Whyd id I build thish ouse,t woy earsa go? To sheltert hisv aste mptiness How foolishI was! But I shall stayi n it. The spiritso f the dead hallow a housef orm e. It was nots o witho therm emberso f myf amilyS. usyd ied in the housew e builti n HartfordM. rs. Clemensw ould nevere nteri t again. But it made the house dearert o me. I have enteredi t once since,w heni t was tenantlessa nd silenta nd forlornb, ut to me it was a holyp lace and beautiful.I t seemedt o me that the spiritso f the dead werea ll about me and woulds peak to me and welcomem e if theyc ould: Livya nd Susya nd Georgea nd HenryR obinsona nd CharlesD udleyW arner.H ow good and kind theyw ere and how lovable theirl ives!I n fancyI could see thema ll again, I could call the chidrenb ack and hear them romp again with George-that peerless black ex-slave and children's idol who came one day-a flittings tranger-to wash windows and stayed eighteen years. Until he died. Clara andJean would never enter again the New York hotel which their mother had frequented in earlier days. They could not bear it. But I shall stay in this house. It is dearer to me tonight than ever it was before. Jean's spirit will make it beautiful for me always. Her lonely and tragic death-but I will not think of that now.31

The dark side of Mark Twain's ambivalence did not die with his friends and relatives; rather, it withered into obsolescence as its objects withdrew to the far side of the grave. With their departures he arrived at "the Territory ahead." Alone and free and easy and comfortable at last, the old man enjoyed a brief, final interlude of serenity in a house full of now companionable ghosts.

1The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in The Writings of Mark Twain, Author’s National Edition, 25 vols. (New York: Harper, 1907-18), XIII, 375. Hereafter references to this edition will be cited parenthetically in the text with appropriate volume and page numbers.

2Mark Twain: The Development of a Writer (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1962), p. 124.

3Smith, Mark Twain, pp. 129, 130.

4The Autobiography of Mark Twain, ed. Charles Neider (New York: Harper and Row, 1959), p. 7.

5Smith,M ark Twain, pp. 131, 132, 133.

6Autobiography, p. 14.

7Which Was the Dream?, ed. John S. Tuckey (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1967), pp. 82-83. See also Following the Equator (VI, 96); Joan of Arc (XVII, 51, 257; XVIII, 51, 56); and Tom Sawyer Abroad (XX, 39-40, 43).

8See also the "mournfulness and death" that confrontH ank when he returnst o England (XVI, 372).

9See especially the deathly stillness that precedes an execution in "No. 44, The MysteriousS tranger" (Mark Twain's MysteriousS trangerM anuscrzits, ed. William M. Gibson [Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1969], p. 324); and "the darkness opaque, the stillnesso ppressive," and "the softm oaning of the night wind" in "The United States of Lyncherdom" (Great Short Works of Mark Twain, ed. Justin Kaplan [New York: Harper and Row, 1967], pp. 199-200).

10Form and Fable in American Fiction (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1961), p. 331.

11The Role of Folklore in Huckleberry Finn," American Literature, 28 (1956), 315.

12"The Unity and Coherence of Huckleberry Finn," Tulane Studies in English, 6 (1956), 91.

13"Remarks on the Sad Initiation of Huckleberry Finn," Sewanee Review, 62 (1954), 395.

14The Dramatic Unity of Huckleberry Finn (Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press, 1976), pp. 8, 11.

15Autobiography, pp. 98-102.

16“The Chronicle of Young Satan,” in Mark Twain’s Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts, p. 122.

17See my article, "Why I Killed My Brother: An Essay on Mark Twain," Literature and Psychology, 30 (1980), 168-81.

18"The Chronicle of Young Satan," pp. 128, 129.

19“The Chronicle of Young Satan,” p. 121.

20Carrington,T he Dramatic Unity of Huckleberry Finn, p. 133. Carrington goes on to note: "Huck's gratuitouslye vil act . .. dooms both Jim and himselft o a pattern of betrayal and failure in theiro wn actions, theirr elations with other men, and their relations with nature. This is Huck's 'original sin,' and he never escapes it, as Jim predicts" (p. 133). Though we develop this point in rather differentw ays, certain features of Carrington's line of interpretationa nticipate the argument offered here.

21JamesM . Cox points out that "in turning over to Tom Sawyer the entire unpleasant business of freeingJim,H uck is surelyn ot acting out of but remarkablyi n character." He goes on to add that it is Huck's "successfule vasion which we as readers cannot finally face" (Mark Twain: The Fate of Humor [Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1966], pp. 173, 179). Our interpretationsd iverge on the role of conscience in Huck's behavior.

22Quoted by Justin Kaplan in Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966), p. 313.

23Spencer Brown, "Huckleberry Finn for our Time," Michigan Quarterly Review, 6 (1967), 45, argues that there is a selfishe lement inJim's decision not to iden-tifyt he corpse in "the house of death." "Huck is really free (free of his father, and thus no longer in danger, he can go back home, or wherever he pleases); but Jim needs Huck for his flightt o freedom."

24Autobzography,p . 375.

25Mark Twain: God's Fool (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), p. xxvii. 26Quoted in Hill, Mark Twain: God's Fool, p. 253.

27Quoted in Hill, Mark Twain: God's Fool, p. 224.

28"The Chronicle of Young Satan," p. 129.

29Autobiography,p . 375.

30Mark Twain at Work (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1942), p. 130.

31Autobiography,p p. 375-76.