A Public Apology to Mark Twain

I’m man enough to admit when I’m wrong. 

And I have to say, I was wrong about hating this book so much.

Now, don’t get crazy.  It is by no means in my top twenty.  But I will confess that Huck Finn is much better than I remember it being in sophomore year of high school.  (Now that I think about it, I really shouldn’t rely on any opinions that were formed in sophomore year of high school.)  I remember the language irritating me a lot more the first time I read it.  Perhaps with age I have developed a greater appreciation of unique writing styles.  Maybe I have just grown more patient.  Or maybe I was just a big complainer in high school.  Let’s be honest.  It was probably just that.

If there is one thing I think we can all agree on, it’s that it is much better than Tom Sawyer.  If for nothing else than the fact that Huck is so much more of a sympathetic character.  Tom is kind of an idiot.  I kind of just want to shake him.  Sure, his creativity, cleverness, and thirst for adventure are commendable, and you can’t help but admire him for his cunning ability to rope some poor sap into whitewashing a fence for him.  But he insists on doing everything the hard way.  The scene in which Tom and Huck are trying to free Jim from the Phelps’ captivity is physically painful to read.  Huck wants to use common sense and do things the easy way, while Tom believes that there isn’t any “fun” in the easy way.  The easy way is not meant to be fun.  It is meant to be easy.

But I digress.

I don’t think I truly appreciated the themes in this book the first time around.  It is fascinating to see Huck’s “sound heart” start to come in conflict with his “deformed conscience” and the cognitive dissonance that ensues.  It is almost scary to think about how much society and the people around us influence our thoughts and behaviors, without us ever even realizing it.  Anyone familiar with the Milgram experiment knows that it is just in our nature to trust those in authority.  Even as a self-identified skeptic, I’ll be the first to admit that humans are an inherently trusting species.  Just like Fox Mulder, we want to believe that the people around us are good people.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t always happen that way.  And sometimes you just get a feeling deep down that what you have been taught all your life may not actually be correct. 

I realize that it may not be exactly the same thing as Huck realizing that racism is actually bad, but I remember when I started to actually question the things that I had always been raised to believe.  It was actually kind of exciting.  It was like (queue Disney music) a whole new world.  But it was also a bit disconcerting.  You start to watch your words a bit more carefully, and you wonder what your family and friends would think if they knew you were having these divergent thoughts.  Obviously, now, I could not care less what other people think of my opinions, but especially for someone Huck’s age, the approval of his family and peers are deeply important.  It shows a lot of courage and strength of character for him to break free from his socially-constructed conscience and start embracing his gut instincts about basic human decency.  It may not seem very revolutionary to us now, but at the time, Huck’s actions would have been truly scandalous.

            Would I call Huck Finn the “Rosa Parks of his time”?  I think that would be a bit of a stretch.  But would I say that he was a brave young boy with a big heart that we could all stand to learn a lesson or two from?  Now that, I can get on board with.