Journal #15 Twain

Liana Laskin

English 48B

"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (Chapter 31) and "Fennimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" by Mark Twain

February 25, 2009

"The father of American literature" (What William Faulkner called Twain) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain

Summary:

In chapter 31 of Huckleberry Finn, the duke, the dauphin, Huck, and Jim continue on their raft for days without stopping. After attempting to get money through various schemes and failing, the duke and dauphin start to make the other two nervous with private discussion, leading them to decide be gone their first chance. The group (sans Jim) goes into a town to get money. After a bar fight, Huck leaves and returns to the raft to find Jim gone; he finds out that Jim has been captured, recognized as a runaway slave. The boy Huck talks to says that Jim was later sold for forty dollars the farmer Silas Phelps. At this point, Huck thinks of writing to Tom Sawyer to let Miss Watson know Jim's whereabouts. But he thinks about it, he realizes not only will Jim be sold but that his part in the story would shame him. After trying to pray but failing, he writes the letter. Going to pray again he thinks of his friendship with Jim; deciding he's going to hell anyway, he tears up the letter. Huck then goes to see Phelps, but runs into the duke, who questions him about where he has been. After telling him about how both Jim and the raft were gone, the accidentally tells him where Jim is but changes his story; he tells Huck where to "find" him, a journey that is forty miles and will take three days. In "Fennimore Cooper's Literary Offenses," Twain's criticism of the author's writing, he points out the many problems he has with Cooper. These issues include having a very convenient twig handy for someone to step on when silence is worth a lot, dumbing down his Native American characters to the point that they cannot jump onto a boat that is so big it is scraping each side of the river, and having shooters know that their bullets hit a nail from so far away it would be impossible and not checking because they are so sure of themselves.

Response:

I definitely appreciated the criticism of Fennimore Cooper more than chapter 31 of Huck Finn. I find it hard to really get into a reading when I start in the middle of a story I have never read before (I had the same issue with the Ruiz de Burton reading). Unlike that chapter, chapter 31 was not as hard to understand because the story is pretty straightforward, even with the way Twain's characters speak. I liked that Twain did not put himself into the story (i.e. as someone making an observation) because the writing becomes more personal since it feels like Huck, not Twain, is telling the story from his perspective. I also thought it made the story more interesting when it seems like Huck is going to tell Miss Watson where to find Jim, but decides that because Jim is a good person that would be a betrayal. Although I have never read anything by Fennimore Cooper (which would probably make the criticism more clear) I could still find humor in it; the overused twig that gets snapped at the worst possible time is something that has transcended Cooper and made its way into popular culture, making it even funnier when Twain goes on and on about it. When Twain talks how a character who is not described in an elegant way suddenly has a very flowing dialogue, I could understand the frustration because there are many authors who make this amateurish mistake and are able to publish books with characters like that.