Copyright 2006 mue

NOTE: Numbers in the text paratheses are page numbers from the 2001 edition of

Huckleberry Finn, 2001, University of California Press, Berkeley 

Since its publication the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has retained its popularity with the reading public. Its theme, Motive, Moral and Plot, though, have eluded acclaiming readers, skeptical detractors and literary critics. This confusion was the author’s who wanted the book to endure and to sell.

Slavery, Southern society and the Mississippi River seemingly move the story. However, a river of Christianity and faith runs through the writing. Unlike the river waters purifying Huck and Jim as they float into slaveland, Southern professions of faith, hope and charity from 1 Corinthians 13 are not Christian, and they pollute civilization. This thematic flow makes the novel an irony, making the Adventures a tract against religion as it is practiced.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Mark Twain, was raised a Presbyterian, and he was well acquainted with the King James Version of the Bible and other works of English Protestantism. Despite wide circulation of those books, Southerners had religion but little Christianity. Huck notes the,

pretty ornery preaching – all about brotherly love and

such-like tiresomeness, but everybody said it was a 

good sermon, and they all talked it over, going home,

and had such a powerful lot to say about faith, and 

good works, and free grace, and preforeordestination,

criticismand I don’t know what all, that it did seem to me to be

one of the roughest Sundays I had run across yet.(147)

Huck’s questioning comes to him naturally. Startled by Pap and quizzed, Huck reads aloud. Pap growls, First thing you know you’ll get religion, too.(24) Religion practiced in the South corrupts. A note warning Jim’s captors of a plan to free the slave pleads, I am one of the gang, but have got religion and wish to quit it and lead an honest life again.(334)

Huck learned the Bible from the widow and Miss Douglas. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Matthew 6:24.  If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast…and come and follow me. Huck gives Judge Thatcher his money in Chapter 5, and throughout the novel he never thinks he can reclaim the money and buy Jim’s freedom. Huck seeks the more excellent way.

The King James Version of the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13, prescribes the conduct of a Christian:

THOUGH I speak with tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

2. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries,

and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains,

and have not charity, if profiteth me nothing.

3. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

4. Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,

5. Doth not behave itself unseemly, seekth not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;

6. Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;

7. Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

8. Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophesies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

9. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.

10. But when that which is perfect is come, than that which is in part shall be done away.

11. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

12. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as I also am known.

13. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

One must act with charity, a Christian love which burns into the heart and pilots all action. A mere act of liturgy, prophecy or giving without the requisite state of mind and heart is nothing. Christians must not be envious, boastful, conceited, proud, rude, selfish or vengeant; they must seek truth and ride the joy of charity overflowing with kindness while withstanding suffering. Throughout the Adventures Huck lives this life hope and eventually learns the greatest of these is charity.

    FAITH

In the Adventures faith is evinced through prayer and professions to piety: …You had to wait for the widow to tuck her head down and grumble a little over the victuals…(2) Then Miss Watson she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing come of it.(13) When the King and Duke commenced their swindle of the heirs of Peter Wilkes, …they kneeled down and rested their foreheads on the coffin, and let on to pray, all to their selves.(212) A preacher at the camp meeting aroused the crowd with imaginary visions of the Holy Ghost. They shout[ed] and cri[ed]…tears running down their faces; singing and flinging …themselves down on the straw, just crazy and wild.(172) And the king got agoing (172) about being a pirate in the Indian Ocean, collecting eighty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents. And then he fetched away a three-gallon jug of whisky, too, that he found under a wagon…(174) Slaveowner/preacher, Silas Phelps come in every day or two to pray with Jim, the captured, runaway slave.(309)

But prayer described in the novel mostly departs from Scripture. Matthew, Chapter 6:5-6 directs:

And when thou prayest, thou shall not be as the hypocrites

are: for they love to pray standing in synagogues and in

the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. 

Verily, I say unto you, They have their reward.

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when

thou has shut the door, pray to thy Father, which is in secret;

and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

Southerners manipulated faith. The widow,

learned me about Moses and the “Bulrushers;” and I was in a

sweat to find all about him; but by and by she let it out Moses

had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn’t care

no more about him; because I don’t take no stock in dead 

people.(2)…I wanted to smoke…She said it was a mean 

practice and wasn’t clean…Here she was a-bothering about 

Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody… yet

finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some

good in it. And she took snuff too; of course that was all right,

because she done it herself.(3)

The King’s duds was 

all black, and he looked real swell and starchy…when he’d

take off his new white beaver and make a bow and do a 

smile, he looked that grand and good and pious that you’d

say he had walked right out of the ark, and maybe was old

Leviticus himself.(204)

The King and Duke, …took on about that dead tanner [Peter Wilkes] like they’d lost the twelve disciples.(212)

Despite biblical interdiction, Acts 17:22, superstition of white people through the novel resembles the superstition of black folk. Huck thought differently, I judged that all that stuff was only just one of Tom Sawyer’s lies…It had all the marks of a Sunday school.(17)

Southerners have no greater understanding of Christianity than the sensibility of the slave, Jim. The commandment, Ye shall not steal, is modified: The best way would be for us to pick out two or three things…and say we wouldn’t borrow them any more…it wouldn’t be no harm to borrow the others.(80) About Solomon and his million wives, Jim poses: Now I want to ast you: …what use of half a chile? I wouldn’t give a dern for a million un um…He as soon shop a chile in two as a cat. Dey’s plent mo’. A chile or two, mo’er less warn’t no consekens to Sollermun…(95-96)

Southern white ignore the tenets of Christianity. The Grangerfords and Shepardsons go to the same church yet feud: If you notice, most folks don’t go to church only when they’ve got to; but a hog is different.(148) Educated whites disregard the creed. A new judge leading Pap to temperance fails: The judge he felt kind of sore. He said he reckoned a body could reform the old man with a shot-gun, maybe, but he didn’t know no other way.(28) Silas Phelps …was a-studying over. Acts seventeen…(316), an anti-slavery verse, yet Phelps remained a slaveowner.

CHARITY

These professions of faith accompany the revelation of charity in chapter three. Relying on Mark 11:24 [Therefore, I say unto you, What things so ever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye shall receive them, and ye shall have them.], Miss Watson tells Huck, to pray every day whatever I asked for I would get it. But it warn’t so…Once I got a fish line, but no hooks. It warn’t any good to me without the hooks.(13) Miss Watson chides the foolishness.

Huck asks. The widow tells him …the thing a body could get by praying for it was “spiritual gifts,” 1 Corinthians 14.(13) Benefits of these gifts elude Huck, especially after the widow explained, 

…I must help other people and do everything I could for 

other people, and look out for them all the time, and never 

think about myself,…I went out in the woods and turned it 

over in my mind a long time, but I couldn’t see no advantage 

about it – except for the other people…(13-14)

Both the widow and Miss Watson urge Huck to practice charity but describe the rewards differently. The widow will make Huck’s actions closely relate to public benefits of conforming to Southern society. She described Providence …to make a body’s mouth water.(14) When Huck dirtied his clothes after a night out

the widow she didn’t scold, but only cleaned off the 

grease and clay and looked so sorry that I thought I

would behave a while if I could.(13) [B]ut maybe the

next day Miss Watson would take hold and knock it

[the widow’s Providence] all down again.(14) 

Miss Watson demanded individual immediate internal reformation of character to make Huck Christian, and she was direct:

Well, I got a good-going over from old Miss Watson,

on account of my clothes; (13) Miss Watson told me

about the bad place, and I said I wished I was there.

She got mad; …she was going to live so as to go to 

the good place. Well, I couldn’t see no advantage in

going where she was going…(3-4)

Listening to each woman, Huck

could see that there was two Providences, and a poor

chap would stand considerable show with the widow’s

Providence, but if Miss Watson got him there warn’t no

help for him any more. I thought it all out, and reckoned

I would belong to the widow’s if he wanted me, though 

I couldn’t make out how he was going to be any better

off then than what he was before…(14)

Miss Watson drives Huck away. She wants to sell Jim, separating him from familiar surroundings and family. Helping Jim escape, a large step to leaving the widow’s Providence, bothers Huck(52, 124-125, 127-128), but he passes over the ramifications as they float South where Huck will learn charity and receive spiritual gifts.

He witnesses events …to make a body ashamed of the human race.(210) The legal system tolerates Pap going for Huck’s money. (Chapters 5,6) Boastful boatmen are …chicken-livered cowards.(111) The Grangerford and Shepardson families feud. (Chapters 17,18) After Boggs is killed, Colonel Sherburn defies the mob: …If any real lynching’s going to be done, it will be done in the dark, southern fashion, and when they come, they’ll bring their masks…(191)

Southerners suffer frauds in the camp meeting, hold overly romantic notions and are duped by the King and Duke, giving new significance to the reference about praying hypocrites: Verily, I say unto you, They have their reward. Matthew 6:5)

Huck is edgy when the King trusts …in Providence to lead him the profitable way – meaning the devil(204): [B]eing brothers to a rich dead man, and representatives of furrin heirs that’s got left, is the line for you and me, Bilge. Thish-her comes to trust’n to Providence.(214)

In Chapter 28 Huck balks, hides the money in the coffin and tells Mary Jane about the scam. He knows he cannot join the widow’s Providence, be good and civilized and receive the rewards of Southern society. He tells Mary Jane, I’d be all right, but there’d be another person that you don’t know about who’d be in big trouble.(240) Mary Jane responds, 

I’m going to do everything just as you’ve told me; …and I’ll

pray for you too!

Pray for me! I reckoned if she knowed me she’d take a job

that was more nearer her size…and if ever I’d a thought it 

would do any good for me to pray for her, blamed if I 

wouldn’t a done it or bust.(244) 

In Chapter 31 the King takes a bounty for Jim, the runaway slave. Jim is imprisoned. Huck must choose. Should Huck gain spiritual gifts from the Widow’s Providence, again. Seeking absolution, he considers telling her by letter where Jim is:

…it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of

Providence slapping me in the face and letting me know 

my wickedness was begin watched all the time from up 

there in heaven, whilst I was stealing a poor old woman’s 

nigger that hadn’t ever done me no harm, and now was 

showing me that there’s One that’s always on the lookout,

and ain’t agoing to allow no such miserable doings to go 

only just so fur and no further, I most dropped in my tracks,

I was so scared…It made me shiver. And I about made up 

my mind to pray; and see if I couldn’t try to quit being the 

kind of boy I was, and be better. So I kneeled down. But

the words wouldn’t come. Why wouldn’t they? It warn’t no 

use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from me, neither. I 

knowed very well why they wouldn’t come. It was because 

my heart warn’t right; it was because I warn’t square; it was

because I was playing double…You can’t pray a lie – I 

found that out. (268-269)

But Huck doesn’t send the letter because he is taking faith private, before God full face. In the wigwam of the raft – the wigwam (and the dilemma) – was a close place like the closet Miss Watson took him into in Chapter Three. Huck ponders whether the follow Christian charity, to help Jim and do everything he could for Jim, look out for Jim and not think about himself.(13)

He resolves to rescue Jim, thereby choosing the Providence described by Miss Watson. But he still believes he is controlled by the Providence described by the widow, Southern society will condemn him. Huck says, All right, then, I’ll go to hell…(271)

Clemens made the structure of the Adventures a cross. Faith, hope and charity on the vertical pole (patibulata) intersecting Southern civilization of whites and Negroes in the Mississippi Valley on the cross beam (patibulum):

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When Huck becomes charitable, he finds himself before the cross, before the only character who is charitable and Christian throughout the story: Jim. After Jim’s capture, Huck reflects in the wigwam and voices a prayer:

I see Jim before me, all the time, in the day and in night-time,

sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a floating,

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 such-like 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 least I struck the time I 

saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and

he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever 

had in the world, and the only one’s he’s got now;…(270)

Jim is a slave, and in the novel he who is hung on the patibulum of Southern society. Questions arise: Should Huck save Jim? Should Huck attempt to save the nigger on the cross? Should Huck work himself …up and go and humble [himself] to a nigger? Huck …done it, and I warn’t ever sorry for it afterward, neither.(105) It is inexplicable that present-day detractors of Huckleberry Finn, like ante-bellum Southerners, don’t believe in humbling themselves to the nigger on the cross and dispute Huck’s decision to save him.

Putting Jim on the cross is controversial, but Clemens advanced the idea in Huck’s prayer. In doing so he mocked camp meetings and the glory of the evangelists’ timeless voices describing the appearances of Jesus Christ: I see Jesus before me, all the time, in the day, in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms… Moonlight is necessary because Southerners and detractors of this novel cannot see Jesus in the dark.

  HOPE

At the beginning of the novel, the widow wants to sivilize Huckleberry. After charity is explicated in Chapter 31, the remaining eleven chapters exhaust hope found in the widow’s Providence, Southern society. Tom Sawyer returns to the story, and he conceives a plot to free Jim. But Huck was bothered that Tom …a boy that was respectable, and well brung up; and had character to lose(292) would help the slave escape. Huck did not know it was Tom’s sport; the widow had died and freed Jim in her will.(358) Again, Huck is homeless. He subordinates himself and his new faith to the tomfoolery: He [Tom Sawyer] was always just that particular. Full of principle.(307) Jim, too, recognized the folly but …allowed we was white folks and knowed better.(309)

About the escape and Jim’s recapture, Southerners blather about the complexity of the escape scheme and wonder who had done the planning and why – conversations not reflecting reality.(Chapter 41) Tom Sawyer was proud of the adventure and especially the bullet he took in the leg, which he wore around his neck.(362)

At book’s end Huck heads for the freedom of the Territory; otherwise Aunt Sally is …going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’t stand it. I’ve been there before.(362)

Tom Sawyer was published in 1876, the same year Clemens was feverishly writing Huckleberry Finn. He had more material about the river and Southern society than he could use in one book.

The jarring impact of the Civil War was fresh. Clemens had lost his chosen profession of riverboat captain. He set aside the Adventures until 1879-1880, when he wrote a bit more. Follow a trip on the Mississippi in 1882, Clemens pumped out Life on the Mississippi also detailing the downside of Southern society and Huckleberry Finn in 1884. These books along with Pudd’nhead Wilson’s

exposition of the black man’s plight, 1894, are a trilogy. The Adventures is the hinge book integrating both themes – Southern society and race.

As a novelist Clemens had responsibilities to art and to society. The trilogy was his response to the War and its outcomes – expressions of despair that lessons of the horrible slaughter were forgotten or never learned. America was the same. The South had not changed. Reconstruction had failed. Slaves, now free Negroes, were drowning in tides of caste and race supported by the society which fueled Southern war fever in 1861.

Upon expressing the issues, Mark Twain had to camouflage the most damning religious themes. He released the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as a boy’s book, a sequel to the popular Tom Sawyer. Many of the same characters appear at the beginning of each, but the similarities end with writing, style and content. Later, more Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn sequels were published which have nothing to do with the thematic content of Huckleberry Finn.

Next, Twain approved original illustrations for the Adventures which show the protagonist as a meek boy of eight or ten years, not the savvy adolescent telling the narrative. Also some captions to the illustrations are misleading e.g. Thinking.(270)

Twain maintained his standing as a novelist accepting responsibilities to readers. Twain met and befriended an invaluable ally, Ulysses S. Grant, the most popular American of his day. Twain became the publisher of Grant’s AUTOBIOGRAPHY (1885). Grant also wanted the end of racism (our term today).African-Americans should have equal standing in the country, yet the War had not accomplished that change. The end of Grant’s presidency stopped economic, sociological and politic efforts. Indeed, slavery’s end as an economic institution become insidious, repressive political, economic and social measures. Twain had written the novel as a simile of faith, hope and charity, spiritual gifts, always distorted in the South and its civilization, a crude, greedy, perverse, non-charitable, vulgar society including frequent use of offensive language. Readers gloss over orgies and obsequies (Chapter 25) and the Royal Nonesuch (Chapter 22) Such behaviors and attitudes are not surprising in the ante-bellum South. Americans see the same from Southerners and many other Americans in organized religion and Christianity today.

Twain told all this to Grant who read the book and encouraged Twain. Grant’s approval is found in Twain’s 

NOTICE – 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. By Order of the Author, Per G.G., 

Chief of Ordnance.

Twain inferred the novel was not about religion as it is proselytized and practiced in the South. However, repeatedly the novel levies on the practice of religion and unChristianity in the South [and today in America]. And the GG in the NOTICE was never Chief of Ordnance. Ordnance of the novel had changed from military supplies for use in War to ideas and concepts explaining the social, cultural and economic ways in the novel always producing iniquitous and unchristian outcomes. It was GG who backed up and gave heart to the wary Mark Twain, writing a novel lobbing shells into Southern Civilization and into present day America today. 

For seven score years readers have recognized the obvious and have been sidetracked by Mark Twain’s counsel to seek no motive, moral or plot. America’s hope is to discover and understand the motives, morals and plots in the Adventures, as Samuel Langhorne Clemens wrote them, and to live accordingly.