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Huckleberry Finn/ introduction and first thoughts

#93: Jan. - Feb. 2011 (Fiction)
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Robert Tulip

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Re: Huckleberry Finn/ introduction and first thoughts

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DWill wrote:Interesting, Robert. Do you also think that there could be similarities between the frontier histories of Australia and the U.S. that make HF a book that Australians can relate to more directly than perhaps Europeans can?
It is both a similarity and a contrast. The contrast jumps out more. Australians imagined there would be an inland sea, a new Mississippi, but found only desert. An old friend of mine by the name of Peter Thorley recently wrote a book called Desert Tsunami, about the big floods in the desert ten years ago, and Australia's long term climate history, how disappointment of aridity created a laconic hardbitten culture. Peter tells the story that when the settlers first tried to explore the desert, Sturt carried a whale boat with him from Adelaide in the hope of finding a sea. He had to abandon it among the sand dunes and salt flats of the arid interior. America has an abundance that gave rise to the doctrines of providence, liberty and manifest destiny, and then the theory of the happy ending as part of the Hollywood myth. The Australian dream is much more constrained and laconic, whereas the US has an imaginary fantasy of infinite abundance, which I suspect helped to give rise to the creationist tea party idea that humans are above nature. I'm not sure how these myths of national identity key in to Huckleberry Finn though. For Huck, there is this backstory of infinite optimism and freedom grounded in the wealth of rich soil and perfect climate. Perhaps part of it is that the myth of infinite abundance is based on the lie of racial inequality, and even though the Mississippi seems inexhaustible it is still finite.

The similarity is that both Australia and the US were founded as white settler frontier societies in which the conquest of virgin nature has shaped national identity. I suspect Europeans relate less well to this theme of encounter with virgin paradise because such long history of artificial cultures in urban Europe have established a purely human horizon in which nature is effectively eliminated from sight. Both the US and Australia are built on the bones of indigenous cultures who were so far behind in technology that the invaders did not even recognise the conquest as a war, which was primarily conducted by paper, metal, measles and influenza.

As I mentioned, I have just finished Anthill by EO Wilson, and it picks up some of these themes of how long history of relation to nature shapes cultural identity. I will write a review of it soon.
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Re: Huckleberry Finn/ introduction and first thoughts

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Can you all BELIEVE they are changing Huck Finn to be PC? The audacity!!!
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Today DWill and I had an interesting discussion about the use of the word nigger in Huckleberry Finn. I've been thinking about it ever since. As I was driving home from work I remembered hearing a discussion on one of NPR/WAMU (our local station) radio shows of Huckleberry Finn and the controversy over the use of the word "nigger." I tried hard to find the show, but alas no luck. However, for anyone interested there are several spots on the recent release of the "sanitized" version of the book. If you follow the link you should see a list of programs that have a spot on HF and the N-word.


http://www.npr.org/search/index.php?sea ... berry+finn
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This morning NPR's Weekend Edition has yet one more piece on Huck Finn. Here are the last few lines and I agree heartily.

Scott Simon of Weekend Edition:
But take the N-word out of Huckleberry Finn and you take away a chance for students to learn and adults to remember the history that made the story daring and bold before it got labeled and shelved as a classic.

If you want to listen:
http://www.npr.org/2011/01/08/132759360 ... t=1&f=1001
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A problem that no readers of a translation from English have ever had. I suppose some would think that "lost in translation" is a good thing in this case.
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Robert Tulip

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A while ago I heard a radio interview with an Australian aboriginal singer who covered the old lullaby Alabama Coon. She said appropriating a pervasive term of abuse was a way of achieving racial pride.

The song is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOWuerPPEcQ

See also http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/ ... 876961.htm
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Re: Huckleberry Finn/ introduction and first thoughts

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I downloaded Huckleberry Finn and read the first 6 chapters fairly quickly. There's a good chance I'll keep reading it, even though I'm in the middle of a few other books.

The fuss over the word "nigger" always seems a little odd to me, since it's a word that I never hear in real life. In the communities I've lived in my entire life, the fraction of black people has been small and hardly anyone engages in overt racism. The word only appears in fiction, documentaries, and discussions of its usage. Still, there may be parts of America in which white people use "nigger" as an insult, and it's not just a historical relic.

It's the same attitude I have towards the word "kike", a derogatory word for "Jew" that I've never heard anyone say aloud.
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Re: Huckleberry Finn/ introduction and first thoughts

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Huck actually believes that by helping Jim he is committing robbery, because he truly thinks that Jim is someone else's property.

And his instrospection on this is illuminating and sad. He thinks that he will go to hell for the robbery he is committing in helping Jim. And he decides it is worth it, to enable Jim to live free.

That is one hell of a commitment to another human being.

Who among us would be willing to go to hell for all eternity for the sake of another person's temporal benefit?

But Huck does. Or so he thinks.

There is a copout at the end when it turns out that Jim is actually free anyway so Huck is now "innocent" of the sin of robbery.

To me, this takes away from the power of the book.

But that moment when Huck, thinking he will go to hell, decides to help Jim anyway, IS powerful.
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I look at the plot device of Miss Watson freeing Jim as making sense (it that's the word) of Tom Sawyer's willingness to help Huck "free" Jim. It only makes the contrast between the two boys more glaring. Tom had never had a serious thought and like most people was out for himself. He would never have risked anything for a mere slave. Huck, I think because he had no illusions about status equaling moral goodness, knew that Jim was actually more worth saving than many of his "betters."
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Does a person have to be "better" in order to be worth saving?

Or is it enough simply to be human?
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