HuckleberryFinn and Critical Readings
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This study will examine five essays which focus on or refer to the ending of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain). The work will briefly consider essays by Lionel Trilling and T.S, Eliot (who make passing reference to the book's ending) and Roy Harvey Pearce (who deals historically with only the last few lines of the book), and will then focus on essays by Leo Marx and James M. Cox. The study will argue that Marx's essay is irrelevant to an enjoyment or understanding of the novel, that Cox's essay is more intriguing but stumbles on the important issue of the role of conscience in the book, and that Pearce's essay is less about the novel itself than about Pearce's extraneous knowledge about the Indian Territory to which Huck plans to "light out" at the end. Forced to agree with Marx or with Cox and Pearce, this reader must side with Cox and Pearce, not because their ideas are more scintillating, but because Cox recognizes the centrality of Huck's humanity. Trilling argues that the ending is "too long" and is "a rather mechanical development of an idea," but adds that "some device is needed to permit Huck to return to his anonymity, to give up the role of hero, to fall into the background which he prefers" (Trilling 326). This plausible explanation is reflected in Eliot's essay as well. Both Trilling and Eliot feel that Tom serves the purpose of a distraction to let Huck slip off stage. Eliot concludes that Huck's "disappearance can only be accompli
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slavery, not theoretically, not abstractly, not even morally, but in the most basic and simple human terms.
The ending emphasizes the love between Huck and Jim because it sets against that genuine human love the romantic adventurism of Tom. This reader does not feel "the frustration of the ending" (Cox 352) of which Cox writes. Cox, like Marx, is so obsessed with the meaning of the "journey" that he misses the experience of simple human love which is the real journey. However, Cox does make one clear statement of value about the ending's importance to the Huck-Tome juxtaposition in relation to Jim: "Having felt Huck's slow discovery of Jim's humanity, the reader perforce deplores Tom's casual ignorance and unawareness" (Cox 352).
True, Huck goes along with Tom's scheme, but this is because he has come full circle to return to his subordinate position to Tom, in order to contrast Tom and Huck, but also to show how Huck has outgrown Tom's foolishness. Huck might have simply dismissed Tom's scheme, but he could not because he had not yet discovered his own independence. After having endured the scheme and the suffering it caused, Huck finally sees that he must go out on his own into the world, even if he has no more sense of so
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Approximate Word count = 1837
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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