The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Chapter 15

Juxtaposition and Join• PLOT: Escape downriver: slave v. free

states (join at Cairo)

• LITERARY STYLE: River v. land; Romanticism v. Realism (join in the fog)

• SOCIAL COMMENT: Slave state v. natural hierarchy (transition in 15)

• CHARACTERIZATION/MORALITY: Huck the conformist v. Huck the individualist (transition in 15?)

Missing Cairo in the Fog

Upper Mississippi

RiverOhio River

Cairo, Illinois

(pn: Kay-row)

Romanticism• “love of nature; sympathetic interest in the past,

especially the medieval; mysticism; individualism.• “specific characteristics embraced by these general

attitudes are . . . the dropping of the conventional poetic diction in favor of fresher language and bolder figures; the idealization of rural life

• “enthusiasm for the wild, irregular, or grotesque in nature and art; unrestrained imagination; enthusiasm for the uncivilized or "natural";

• “interest in human rights (Burns, Byron); sympathy with animal life (Cowper); sentimental melancholy (Gray); emotional psychology in fiction (Richardson).”

• Definitions from A Handbook to Literature, Sixth Edition C. Hugh Holman and William Harmon.

Realism• “in the broadest sense, fidelity to actuality. . .verisimilitude.

• “pragmatism. . . with discernable consequences and verifiable by experience. . .a realist is] a believer in democracy, and the materials he elects to describe are the common, the average, the everyday. . .the ultimate of middle class art. . .subjects in bourgeois life and actions.

• “The realist eschews the traditional patterns of the novel. In part. . . a protest against the falseness and sentimentality . . .in Romantic fiction.

• “truthfully reflected life . . .avoid symmetry and plot. . value the individual very highly. . .praise characterization as the center of the novel.

• “ Simple, clear, direct prose. . .objectivity.

• Definitions from A Handbook to Literature, Sixth Edition C. Hugh Holman and William Harmon.

Romanticism v. Realism

• River: Romantic, ideal

• Land: Realist, social comment

• “Romanticism seeks to find the Absolute, the Ideal, by transcending the actual, whereas Realism finds its values in the actual and Naturalism in the scientific laws that undergird the actual.”

• Definitions from A Handbook to Literature, Sixth Edition C. Hugh Holman and William Harmon.

Social Hierarchiesand Morality c. 1850

Free

• Adult man• Adult woman

• Male child • Female child

Slave• White man• White woman

• White childChattel; human?

• Slave man• Slave woman• Slave child

“It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger- but I done it, and I warn't ever sorry for it afterwards, neither. I didn't do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn't done that one if I'd a knowed it would make him feel that way” (86).

Chapter 31

• What is Huck’s moral dilemma and what does he resolve to do about it?