448
PARTISAN REVIEW
Before criticism grew instrumental, it had begun to explore the cen–
tral philosophical and cultural problem posed by the ending of
HucklebmJ
Finn:
that the book's American-style rejection of conventional morality
does not adequately serve its protagonist in all of the moral problems
he
faces. The runaway ethos of Huck, for example, contains nothing
within
it to prevent Tom and Huck's own callous treatment of Jim in the
last
adventure. James
L.
Johnson put it this way in his book
Mark Twain
tm4
the Limits
of
Power (1982):
The most horrible thing about Tom and Huck is that in the midst of
their betrayal ofJim they do maintain a grotesque innocence. There is
in them no malice, no desire to harm Jim or to make fools of those
around them. They are simply unconscious of any moral implications
that might be attached to their play. Thus, while we may object on
moral grounds to the game, our objections mean nothing.
This is, if anything, a more troubling indictment than Leo Marx's.
In
Johnson's reading, Huck has not forgotten his commitment to freedom, as
Leo Marx charged. Instead, that freedom, because it is divorced from
principle and devoted to the self alone, cannot sustain a commitment to
Jim. The question left hanging is that of whence morality can be reliably
derived.
It
is a question appropriate for both literature and criticism.
In
contrast, the demand for an unequivocal antislavery commitment from ei–
ther Mark Twain or Huck Finn amounts to a relatively crude, and as we
have seen, unsuccessful enlistment ofliterature in a cause.
But is the moral problem of the unfettered self, as it is revealed
in
Huck's last adventure, actually what Mark Twain was driving at? Johnson
tries to answer this by asking why the plot contrives that Huck, though
he goes along with Tom's cruelties, "does not himself initiate those cruel–
ties." Johnson suggests that Huck's equivocal position amounts to a strat–
egy:
Mark Twain seeks to avoid an outright condemnation of Huck, while
still pursuing a truth he was reluctant to admit: that to remain a child
in the real world was not to maintain a spontaneous benevolence, but
to treat others as tools and fools, as playthings to be manipulated and
sacrificed on the altar of Self
(1983), and Mera
J.
Flaumenhaft, "Housebound or Floating Free: The American Home
in
Huckleberry Finn,"
in
The St.John's Review
(Summer 1985).
