Huckleberry Finn

•Children’s Fiction•Outcast as Hero•Pastoral Escape vs “sivilization”•Huck and Jim

Children’s Literature

• Juvenile fiction often inculcates moral teaching

• American fiction as juvenile: still a young nation whose literature reflects adolescence of the country

• America as “innocent”

• Idealism not reflected in the actual

Outcast as Hero

• Huck’s outcast status

• Individualism vs. convention (Emerson)

• Outcast challenges rule of law (“All right then, I’ll go to hell!”)

Escape vs Civilization

• Country vs. City

• Pastoral vs. culture

• Civilization is corrupt

• Nature as the site of true freedom

Huck and Jim

• Two outcasts together

• Original “buddy” plot – no sex plot

• Portrait of equality?

Realism and Social Critique

• Linguistic Detail

• Social Realism

• Descriptive Realism

Regionalism

• No single United States

• Post-Civil War: South as victim

• West: Land of Promise

• Northeast: represents “America” as a whole

• Rural vs. City / Agrarian vs. Industrialization

Huck Finn: the End

• Reconstruction: 1865-1880

• 13th Amendment: No slavery in the U.S.

• 14th Amendment: All persons born in the U.S. are citizens

• 15th Amendment: Vote could not be denied American men on racial grounds

Reconstruction, continued

• 14th amendment: naturalization would produce a new class of anti-southern voters

• New black vote would prevent white, pro-south politicians from winning office.

Rise of Jim Crow

• Local laws intended to deny federal amendments

• “Grandfather Laws”: you can vote only if you can prove your grandfather did

• “Literacy Laws”: you can vote only if you can prove your own literacy

• “Poll Tax”: you must pay to vote

The Legacy of Reconstruction

• Federal Amendments vs. Jim Crow: which actually affected lives of black people?

• Reconstruction a failure (recall duBois): blacks actually worse off after slavery than before

• “Emancipation” and “Enfranchisement”: a fiction, only a theory

• Huck Finn: written at the end of the Reconstruction period.