Re: Salinger & Burns (NOT George!)actually not, but Gatsby
Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Mon, 20 Dec 1999 17:51:53 -0500
On Mon, Dec 20, 1999 at 04:47:11PM -0500, rev. bob pigeon wrote:
> Well all right Tim, but now explain why "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"
> is considered such a great American novel (making the questions a little bit
> harder...)
This *is* a bit trickier, but here is my take on it. Twain was writing
a 19th century Catcher in the Rye. Huck goes off on an adventure,
encounters a lot of strange strangers, and has to learn to fend for
himself.
But all that matters for nothing if not for his crisis of conscience
when he has Jim hidden and has to choose between the twin swords of
lying and defying the social rules as he knows them, and safeguarding
Jim, who has already proven his friendship and loyalty to Huck. In
Huck's world, there is no such thing as friendship between a black man
and a white boy. The critical part is when Huck says, after deciding
that Jim is more important than societal rules, something like, "All
right, then, I'll go to hell" for lying about Jim.
That was pretty revolutionary literature for the time, and it lets us
peer into the mind of a 19th century confused boy the way, in a hundred
years, people will look at Holden Caulfield's action to get a sense of
what teenagedom was like in the 20th century.
It also has one of the best prefaces in print, and one of the classic
American literary traits, also present in part in Gatsby: run away to
change your identity and avoid being "civilized" by meddlers. And it
was full of real dialogue, the way people presumably spoke, just as
Holden speaks in the argot of his time.
Now, given that I have neither book at hand, I may need someone to step
in and lend assistance. 8-)
--tim