because they take themselves so seriously. The Aunt Sallys and and Miss Watsons of the respectable world represent a kind of trap. They are an index of gentility and social stability as well as of acquiescence in and cooperation with the immorality of slaveholding. Their pious ministrations, however, make them available for lampooning, and neither the author nor the reader seems meant to have much real sympathy for them. Just as Huck escapes from Widow Douglas in the opening phase of the novel (only to be imprisoned by Pap), he is planning his escape from Aunt Sally at the end, ever the civil/social anarchist: "I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before" (Clemens 226).
Humor comes through in the narrative design of Huckleberry Finn. This novel is widely regarded as one of serious purpose and theme. Nevertheless--or for that very reason--the element of comedy, especially of comic irony, runs through the story. For example, with regard to the serious symbolism of the text, Stallman says that the river "supplies, by my reading, the central purpose of representing conscience, spiritual integrity, the baptismal source for rebirth and self-recognition of true identity--Who am I?" (385-386). Stallman's implied point, that as a symbol of conscience and integrity the river becomes an emblem of Huck's rite of passage into adult or social experience, is really a corollary to his major thesis, that the structure of Huckleberry Finn is characterized by the double pattern of episode
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