I made a comment in class today about Twain cheating for the last 13 chapters by being didactic. It seems to me that artists fail at making art when they try too hard to make a point or teach a lesson. "Just let it come by working with images and storytelling," I might say to someone writing a book far too "preachy." On the other hand, art is supposed to say something.
As in everything, balance between expression and morality must be the key to success.
Twain lost the vividness present in the preceding chapters, I think. We left the river, got stuck on land, and Tom Sawyer shows up and his voice takes over the text. Images seem to drop out entirely: the poetry within the prose is shallow. Something from before is missing, bringing up feelings of annoyance in the reader (at least in the readers in my class).
I read this as an example of how the predominate white cultural takeover happens. Maybe Twain meant it that way. If he did, I'm kind of sad because he should not have sacrificed his poetry for something as obvious as that. The beauty of the piece is weakened by the point.
The ending is very abrupt. Jim is a free man and Huck has six thousand dollars, no problemo. It just doesn't seem to fit. What does Huck think about his father being dead? Jim is free. Based on my reading of the last 13 chapters, he will not be treated as a free man: there is a long messed up road before him. That's for another story I guess. Be that as it may, the ending was much more like the "happily ever after" endings that Sawyer might be a fan of. This voice was not present in the beginning nor the middle sections of the novel. Tom has definately abducted Huck's narrative.
Perhaps that is what bugs us: Twain's inbalance and inconsistancy. Whatever the case, picky people like me will always find faults. The novel deserves it's fame being so important in it's poetry, prose, and point. Twain would be proud, I think, to know that the book is so huge it can be celebrated and banned at the same time in one country.
The song that plays 'til I'm dead.
1 comment:
I completely agree with your comment you thought Twain cheated. I think that authors some time forget that the readers may be reading their work to be entertained. There should be a balance betweeen the moral of the story and the story itself. Many times I like when I read the author's statement at the beginning or end of the book and they say that they weren't intentionally saying anything they just wanted to tell a story- We can take what we want from their work, but they weren't trying to sell us on anything.
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