When Robert Frost writes of “two roads diverged in a wood, and I-/ I took the one less traveled by/And that has made all the difference” (“The Road Not Taken”), he demonstrates the realization of both writers and the hoi-polloi that following the accepted path of society not always directs an individual in the proper direction. While few people would disagree with the principle, most do not concede to the action. Since such moral conflicts continuously plague the lives of common people, writers commonly portray such simple problems in their novels.
But just as not all moral decisions allow for an obvious solution, not all writers choose to portray such one-dimensional conflicts. Often a person’s intuition conflicts with pervading conventions in solving an obscure problem, as demonstrated by the Mark Twain in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The main character of the novel, the youthful Huckleberry Finn, uses his intuition throughout the novel to guide him in the correct path.
Employing various episodes involving not only the runaway slave Jim but also other characters, Twain efectively conveys to the reader a complex moral problem that the young Huck must face in the nineteenth century slave-holding society. Even Huck, with a limited education and sparse worldly knowledge, finds himself bursting to escape from the shackles of society’s brainwashing in order to follow his heart. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain examines the struggle between Huck’s corrupt societal conscience and his moral heart to criticize society’s seeming morality.
In order to impart on the reader the true moral standing which he wishes him to uphold through the rest of the book, Twain extrapolates on the subject of slavery in the nineteenth century in the first few chapters of the novel. Up to Huck and Jim’s confrontation in the woods, Twain only allows Huck to view Jim as a ridiculously ignorant slave who converses with hairballs and boasts of being kidnapped by witches (16-26). But when the culture of the time period is researched, one encounters such plethora of evidence of these magical practices that Jim’s behavior becomes valid. In an essay entitled “Conjure,”
Because of the onslaught of brainwasing by the slaveholding community, Huck accomplishes a formidable feat when he reject’s its philosophies. His first decision to accept Jim as his companion for travel illustrates Huck’s debunking of the preconceived notion of “slavery’s refusal to see blacks as people. ” (D) Jim will not allow Huck, whom he knows as a person, to assume his old status towards him in this new community. Then, when Huck brands himself a “lowdown abolitionist,” Twain manipulates irony to criticize the “lowdown” society that stigmatizes men who attempt to free slaves.
Huck then attempts to destroy the “conscience” barrier society has instilled in him when he accepts Jim, the runaway black slave, as an equal in their partnership for survival. With Huck’s utterance of the famous phrase, “they’re after us,” the reader realizes that to Huck, he and the black slave stand on equal footing. (67) Huck realizes the innate goodness within Jim that so few men possess, because “his profound and bitter knowledge of human depravity never prevents him from being a friend to man. Marks, 47)
Once he rejects society’s stereotype of the black man, Huckleberry will go to great lengths to protect his travelling companion. In order to protect Jim and himself, Huck must imitate a fragile female as he pries for information in the Loftus household. When Mrs. Loftus accuses Huck of lying, he verifies this suggestion, but only with another lie. (66) The purpose of this ironic passage is to demonstrate that even though he lies to respectable ladies, he “is really a very respectable person” because his deception allows an innocent black man to escape the evil grasps of servitude (Marks, 47).
But Huck is not yet a purely altruistic soul; he must still travel miles of river before he can wash away the stains of his initial assistance to Jim which was based partly on his own self-interest in escaping. Throughout the adventure on the river, “uncivilized” Huckleberry Finn demonstrates the truest probity when confronted with various moral dilemmas. An example of Huck’s moral probity occurrs during the shipwreck scene. While searching the ship for valuables, he encounters two murdering thieves who are preparing to kill another man.
Huck and Jim managed to escape, but once safe, Huck’s first thought focuses on possible ways to rescue the two murders as he considers “how dreadful it was, even for murderers, to be in such a fix. I says to myself, there ain’t no telling but I might come to be a murderer myself yet, and then how would I like it? ” (B, p47) Huck heroically exemplifies his pure will as he actively pursues the rescue attempt of the gang of murderers. So when Huck must virtually bribe the watchman to save the men with a tall tale, his moral heart shines in the face of the lazy watchman’s societal corruption from which Huck’s “conscience” stems.
And when later in the novel he attends a circus where a drunken man insists riding a wild horse, Huck once again deomnstrates his superiority over society. As the audience laughs hysterically at the poor drunk, Huck admits that it “[is]n’t funny to [him]… ;[he] was all of a tremble to see his danger” (p. #) In all of these incidents, Huckleberry Finn’s active concern for his fellow man demonstrates the uprightness of his intuitive “heart” when compared to the society which surrounds it. Huck’s instinctive senses prove to surpass his societal “conscience” as he encounters new characters on his travel down the river with Jim.
Simplicity stands as one of Huck’s overriding virtues. Although civilization severely mistreats him, he is a boy who will never cease to forgive, befriend and car about his fellow man. (C, p21) With his collision with the Duke and King, this factor becomes crucial in explaining Huck’s behavior. Twain seriously explores the ethics of self- interest throughout the many underhanded schemes instituted by the two frauds. When these two hooligans swindle the grieving Wilks family out of $6,000, they cross the intrinsic moral line present throughout the book.
Mary Jane Wilks overwhelms him with honesty until he can no longer tolerate his society of frauds. The fact that this infuriates Huck to the point of resolving to steal back the very money that he assisted in pilfering demonstrates the inherent goodness which presides in his moral heart. And when these same two frauds are tarred and feathered, overly-compassionate Huck is actually “sick to see it; and I was sorry for them poor pitiful rascals… [because] human beings can be awful cruel to one another” (C, p70).
And as Huck develops his moraltiy on the river, his relationship with Jim transforms as well. Reverting to the dilemna of slavery in the end of the novel, Huck reaches the highest moral peaks as he acknowledges Jim as an actual friend who he decides to protect out of the goodness of his heart. Perhaps the most famous line of the novel is, “All right then, I’ll go to hell! ” When Mark Twain allows his main character to utter these self-damning words, he forces the reader to face the irony of benevolent Huck’s accepance that “whoso would save his soul must lose it” (A, p79).
By offering to sacrifice himself to the devil for Jim, Huck wins his moral struggle as innate goodness triumphs over evil. However, his justification for saving Jim must be an alarm. Twain repeatedly demonstrates how absurdly immoral the larger world was, and to a certain extent currently is. Since so little is to be hoped for from such a world, a moral theory of individual expediency acquires plausibility. Huck declares that he will go to hell to save Jim, but in actuality the whole world will go to hell for not wanting to save him.
The intensity of this moral struggle suggests his deep involvement in the society, which he now rejects. This decision ends Huck’s moral quest, his commitment to a human community. He resolves each conflict in the same way: without repudiating the authority of his conscience, he will disobey it and come to Jim’s rescue. (D, p412) But when Huck finally rejects the authority of his conscience by not writing to Miss Watson, he reaches this true community.
