Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel that straddles the new and the old through many paradoxes. The American Experience is a free spirited and able to embrace the new and leave society and tradition behind. It is a paradox and embodies the “hip.” Americans' battle the “questions of identity, individualism, and citizenship” as one straddles deformed conscience and sound heart (Leland). Therefore, the American experience consists of running to the sound heart in nature in order to escape the deformed conscience of society, finding one’s self floating down the river that cuts between the two. Read an excerpt from "Comparing Catcher in the Rye to The Adeventures of Huckleberry Finn" below written by Carles Kaplan to introduce you to the novel.
"The Traveller must be born again," said Thoreau; and Huck's voyage fown the Mississippi is a series of constant rebirths, a search for identity. Beginning with the elaborately staged mock murder which sets him free from the clutches of Pap, Huck assumes a series of varied roles, playing each one like the brilliant improviser that he is. Twain counterpoints Huck's hoaxes against the villainous or merely mercenary pretenses of the Duke and the Dauphin; the boy's sometimes desperate shifts are necessary for his survival and to both his moral and physical progress. the series reaches a climax in a sequence at the Phelps farm, when Huck is forced to assume the identity of Tom Sawyer when, for the first time, he cannot choose his own role."
This illustrates Huck's identity struggle between society and nature, where Huck chooses either the sound heart of nature or deformed conscience of society. Identity conflict is a reaccuring theme within the American expierence and is demontrated in the image below.
As seen in the Emerson exhibit, one is always changing their identity due to the constant push and pull of society and the individual. In this picture, the girl is "creating" a new identity. Notice how her senses, nose, eyes, ears, and mouth are the only features "clear." This shows the girl's awareness of her negotiable identity. Huck is also aware of his changing character, caused by the raft.
Huck battles the “questions of identity, individualism, and citizenship” as he straddles his deformed conscience and sound heart (Leland). Therefore, he runs to the sound heart in nature in order to escape the deformed conscience of society, yet finds himself floating down the river that cuts between the two. Twain further emphasizes this paradox by introducing Jim, a runaway free slave, and the duke and king, con men, onto Huck’s raft. These characters symbolize the sound heart and deform conscience, and as Leland states, “who be afraid of the merge?” The river itself is hip as it is “the liberation of the self, the merging of high and low culture,” (Leland). It defines Huck’s Identity, and is changing like the river itself. This idea is explained further in the work of Emerson, as he claims “nature is one thing and the other thing at the same moment.”
Huck develops a sense of belonging on the raft because he is both part of society and an individual. He can please the duke and king as well as Jim because he is the straddle. As a result, Huck sees himself in the river for he is always changing, floating in-between tradition and the new. “Into the same river we step and do not step; we are and are not,” (Friedl). The river is always flowing, and therefore one cannot step into the same river twice, although it may look the same. Huck is constantly changing due to his experiences on the river, applying them to both nature and society. “Freedom” in the novel is also portrayed as stagnant yet changing.
Jim is by law free, yet runs to freedom, demonstrating yet another paradox in Twain’s novel. Huck aids Jim in an escape as a runaway slave, but Huck is claiming his freedom from tradition by falling back into the old: slavery. Jim also resembles the simplicity and freedom in nature. Once the king and the duke, "phony" society, enter the world of Jim and Huck, their conscience becomes defromed. it is Huck's sound heart that wins over the deformed conscience the king and the duke bring, and as a result, Huck decides to run away from society nd into nature where a predominant sound heart is found. Thoreau himself created a paradox by running away to nature like Huck, yet they both met the same fate. In nature, one cannot claim "freedom" because there is no society to claim it from. So where does freedom lye? The Museum answers the question below.
Museum's final thoughs:
Twain’s novel is the search for “real” freedom: the hip. “Hip is the quest for the real” and “the embrace of paradox and ambivalence,” (Leland). When the new and the old collide together, one finds comfort, yet not conformity. “This culture in neither Eastern nor Western, but like hip itself, exists in the straddle, where it can be more than one thing at once,” (Leland). One is always changing, for living with “real” freedom gives one the right to chose. Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman have “set down the intellectual framework for hip,” by advocating the right to live deliberately on either side of the river. Life on the raft is the “real”, as it is a constant current straddling both sides of the paradox. Huck is therefore "hip” when he returns to the river after every adventure, applying his lessons to nature and society. Twain’s commentary does nothing to change neither society nor nature, but rather illustrates Huck’s urge to remain on the river. Huck’s identity, the merge, matches that of American literature and even that of other countries.
Continue on to the final exhibit of this Gallery
