From the opening page:
"Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."
How do you not fall in love with a book right there. It reads like an extremely clever sig line from DKos doesn't it? Mark Twain tells us right from the jump that nothing is what it seems. He might as well have attached a snark tag on the book cover.
I think that this book is still being taught regularly enough that I don't have to spend a lot of time explaining plotlines, hidden meanings, and social commentary. On its face, the book is the classic picaresque novel of a young boy who decides to leave home and live the vagabond life. Every boy's fantasy.
From the first chapter:
. . when I couldn’t stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied.
On a deeper level, the book is a scathing criticism of Twain's age. The book was published in 1884, well after the end of the Civil War but close enough that most people still held their antebellum views on race relations. But Twain is not content to simply assail racial divides, he attacks the stratification of the class system as well. Twain expertly combines the two in the character of Huck's father, absurdly poor but he still had a group that he could look down upon.
From Chapter 6 (Pap's rant)
He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat; and there ain't a man in that town that's got as fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed cane – the awful- est old gray-headed nabob in the State. And what do you think? They said he was a p'fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain't the wust. They said he could VOTE when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It was 'lection day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn't too drunk to get there
This book has been called dangerous and many attempts have been made to ban it or change it. Most of those efforts are based on the nature of the language in the book. You will notice that I have carefully snipped quotes that do not contain the offensive word. But Twain was crafting a criticism of his age and one of the chief ills of his age was the racial divide. Even if he were exaggerating, the use of language in the book is, I believe, completely defensible.
To me, the most important part of the book comes in Chapter 31, with Huck contemplating the competing world of white society and its religion versus the world that he and Jim have created for themselves. Huck the outsider is trying to decide which world he will belong to. He can rejoin society, although likely at the level his father occupied, or he can become his own man. And that's what the passage is about, Huck deciding what type of man he is going to be.
Huck begins thinking about all the religion that he has been taught and the concept of sin. His dilemma is that society tells him that he should turn Jim in as a runaway because that is the "right" thing to do. After all, Jim was someone else's property. Huck wants to pray but finds that he can't. He feels that he needs to cleanse his soul by writing a letter to Miss Watson telling her where Jim is.
Forgive the length of the quote but I feel that it is important to set up the final line
I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking - thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing.
But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, 'stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and suchlike times; and would always call me honey, and pet me, and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he's got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.
It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:
"All right, then, I'll go to hell" - and tore it up.
To me, this is the money quote from the entire book. "Alright then, I'll go to hell" became like a personal mantra for a while. The words resonated deep within me. It was the first time in my life that the written word had jumped up off the page and grabbed me by the throat. Not even Twain's liberal use of racial epithets common to the time had that kind of effect on me. Or maybe that liberal usage was intended to prime me for this moment.
I went to a high school with an honor code. For most, the honor code was window dressing. Many students cheated, lied, and committed petty thefts. For me, it was something deeper, a moral compass that made life pretty simple. The previous year I found myself in a situation where I could lie and probably be fine or tell the truth and live up to the honor code. I chose to follow my conscience and the honor code. Surprise of surprises, I quickly found myself looking for another school.
The point of my digression is that I felt like I understood that struggle. I had been presented a choice as well. I opted for the one that made the most sense to me as opposed to going along to get along. In my own small way, I had chosen to go to hell. Okay, maybe purgatory but give me a break. I was sixteen. Everything has a heightened sense of drama at that age.
I think that this moment was what put me on the path to progressivism. It was so clear to me that slavery was wrong and that society of the time accepted it as part of the natural order of things. I decided that I wanted to be like Huck, a person who was led by his own moral compass based on an innate sense of what was right and what was wrong.
I will not say that I have always been successful at being my own man. Like all of us, life has thrown me a few curveballs. I like to believe, however, that each of us is somewhere between the person that we want to be and the person that we turn out to be in a crisis. I have, at times, failed to live up to my ideal self but I figure that the striving to be that person that I want to be has made me a better person overall.