Huckleberry Finn: A Journey Through Purgatory

The most important theme used in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is religion. Author, Mark Twain delivers this to readers both in obvious and subtle ways. On one hand, Twain directly connects characters from the Old Testament with Huck Finn’s father; he begs us to ask certain questions about Pap’s character. On the other hand, the author enables readers to consider an alternative, religious perspective; i.e., we should consider that Huck Finn must fake his own death in order to view the world from Purgatory, thereby allowing him to choose whether or not to become civilized.

In chapter six, Huck correlates Pap’s appearance, after laying “in the gutter all night”, with Adam from the story of creation (Twain, 29). Twain wants us to understand how soiled Pap’s body and clothing are by relating them to “the dust of the ground” God used to form man (Hooker). Huck also correlates his father’s drunken behavior with Cain from the Bible. Is Huck suggesting that his father is a murderer and are readers given any information to support such a claim? Readers cannot be sure. However, we can infer that Twain’s biblical reference to Cain does fulfill Huck’s need for a (future) scapegoat--someone must be accountable for Huck’s disappearance and staged murder.

Huck says of his father, “every time he got money he got drunk; and every time he got drunk he raised Cain around town; and every time he raised Cain he got jailed. He was just suited” (Twain, 26). It is here that Huck decides to make his pap the scapegoat for his death. Huck reasons, in chapter six, that his Pap is “just suited” to be blamed. Therefore, it should be no surprise when Pap’s fate is suggested to us by Judge Thatcher.

After living the civilized life with the Widow Douglas, Huck is surprisingly reunited with his father in chapter five. Readers quickly learn that Pap is motivated to regain parental rights of Huck primarily over a lust for his son’s money--for the consumption of alcohol--which is now in a custodial account, handled by Judge Thatcher.  Why would the judge go to such trouble to help Huck’s father sober up and straighten out his life? A reasonable assumption might be that Thatcher intends on procuring compensation from Pap in exchange for a custody award. Yet Thatcher fails at his attempt “to make a man of” Huck’s father after Pap succumbs to his alcohol addiction (Twain, 24). The judge postulates that reform will come to Huck’s father “no other way” than by a shotgun (Twain, 25).

Huck did not want to stay with the Widow Douglas “any more and be so cramped up and sivilized” nor did he not want to run off with his Pap and be beaten on an almost daily basis (Twain, 28). Huck is undecided about how he wants to live his life and who he wants to live with. His refusal to live civilized and with Pap implies that Huck wants to live between two worlds--he does not want to affect society one way or another--neither good like the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson nor wicked like his Pap. Key to Huck’s denial of the paths that lead to Heaven and Hell, Huck stages his own death; thus he initiates his own journey through Purgatory. I believe Mark Twain wants us to read Huckleberry Finn as Dante Alighieri wants readers to read The Divine Comedy; i.e., we should think of “Purgatory as a process we can undergo” while living (http://facstaff.elon.edu).

The concept of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as a journey through Purgatory may best be observed at the novel’s end; Huck discovers his friend, Jim, has (already) been free for two months, and he finds a new home with Aunt Sally. Huck exemplifies his own desire to live free, emancipated from his father and the Widow Douglas, by simply floating naked and undetected down the Mississippi River, night after night, aboard a raft with his true friend. Thus it is understood that this entire journey has been an intermediate state for Huck, observed by his companion.  But has Huck been able to choose his own path? Apparently, he has not; Huck at last ends up in familiar territory assuming Aunt Sally adopts him. It may be true that Huck has matured a bit from his experiences while in Purgatory, yet his journey has had little or no bearing on his choice--if there ever was a choice--to become civilized.  

Works Cited

Twain, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York: Doubleday, 1985. Print.

Hooker, Richard. http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/HEBREWS/GENCREAT.HTM#Cain. Washington State University, 1996. Web. 5 December 2009.

http://facstaff.elon.edu/sullivan/hellpurg.htm. Elon University, Web. 6 December 2009.

Hypocrisy & Superstition: Concepts of "Huckleberry Finn"

In the early chapters of Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, the author, Mark Twain, uses many of his characters to convey--what may be construed as--his concepts regarding the hypocrisy of religion and the church. Twain also utilizes his main characters, Huck Finn and Jim, as the instruments of superstition. These ideas are crucial to the development of Finn’s balance of logic throughout the novel.

In chapter two of Finn, readers are introduced to Tom Sawyer’s idea to form a real gang--as real as pretend can be--of robbers and murderers, and the initiation of Huck Finn into the group. Twain walks readers through Tom Sawyers philosophy, his preference, to kill people rather than burglarize them. Sawyer expresses his belief that burglars have “no sort of style”, while killing is “considered best” (Twain, 9). Although Sawyer’s tendency is a departure from God’s law--Ten Commandments declare murder a sin against God’s church--the self-made leader of the gang (and his peers) object to Ben Rogers’ idea of robbing and killing on Sundays. This example of inconsistency, this hypocrisy, may best express Twain’s feelings toward religion--how he felt toward the end of the 19^th century--and the Christian Church.

The elements of hypocrisy are attributive to the Widow Douglas, and Mark Twain uses her character as well as her sister, Miss Watson, to envelop Huckleberry Finn with the purity of the church. In chapter two, Finn wants to smoke his pipe, but Douglas objects to this “mean practice [that] wasn’t clean” even though “she [takes] snuff” which is “of course […] all right” (Twain, 2). Huck shares his infallible logic with readers in chapter one, during a conversation with Miss Watson. He asserts, with respect for Miss Watson’s desire to live each day so she could die and go to Heaven, “I couldn’t see no advantage in going where [Watson] was going, so I made up my mind I wouldn’t try for it” (Twain, 3). However, if Watson tells Finn that Tom Sawyer would end up in Heaven, he would likely live out each day of his life similarly to her. Although both Douglas and Watson wear piety on their sleeves, they do not consider the practice of keeping slaves nor the imposing of one’s religion over a people as being morally detestable.

Superstition is a phenomenon found at several times throughout Finn. In chapter one, Huck flicks a spider off from his shoulder, and he responds to the “awful bad sign and […] bad luck” by stripping off his clothes, spinning around in a circle three times while making the sign of the cross, and by tying “up a little lock of [his] hair with a thread to keep witches away” (Twain, 4). Finn was stopped short of tossing salt over his left shoulder by Miss Watson in chapter four. In chapter ten, superstition accompanies a profound thought.

After Huck rummages through the clothes of a dead man--Jim already warned Huck it was bad luck to even talk about a dead man--Jim’s barefoot toe was bitten by a snake. According to Jim, the natural remedy used to escape the deadly effects of a snakebite include “chop off the snake’s head and throw it away, […] skin the body and roast a piece of it”, and tie the snake’s rattle around the infected person’s wrist (Twain, 57). All of the superstition surrounding Jim’s snakebite nearly averts readers from absorbing a snippet of Huck’s logic “that all comes of [his] being such a fool as to not remember that wherever you leave a dead snake its mate always comes there and curls around it” (Twain, 57).

Works Cited

Twain, Mark, Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn. NY: Doubleday, 1985.