Huckleberry Finn, Chapter Two

After the somewhat telescoped events of the first chapter, the novel sets out in a linear fashion from here until its resolution. The action is simple: Huck and Tom Sawyer, in prowling around the Widow's back door awaken the attention of Miss Watson's slave, Jim. He nearly stumbles on where they are hiding outside, but falls asleep on his watch and the boys get away.

Tom goes back to play a prank on the sleeping man by hanging his hat on the tree he is resting against, and then appropriates several candles from the Widow's kitchen, leaving behind a nickel in payment.

The two meet up with several other boys, including Joe Harper and Ben Rogers, and proceed to float a couple miles down the river on a skiff, to a landing near a hidden cave, which they enter and crawl some considerable distance into. There Tom convokes the first meeting of his pirate gang--the very outfit he promised Huck he'd start--outlining its duties and rules. These are both bloodthirsty and comic, showing Tom to be an avid reader of the adventure novels of his day.

The boys finish their playing and Huck gets back to his bedroom a little before dawn.

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I want to pay attention here to a little-remarked aspect of Twain's two most famous novels. Namely that Tom Sawyer, the all-American boy of sentimental national mythology, was sketched by his creator as having--besides an abundance of personal charm and bravery--clearly sadistic and manipulative impulses, fed by an over-heated Romantic imagination. In short, exactly the sort of southern lad who'd grow up and fight the Civil War.

Twain tips his hand in Chapter Three of the first book (pg. 23 of the Library of America edition. Online here.)

[Tom] hastened toward the public square of the village, where two "military" companies of boys had met for conflict, according to previous appointment. Tom was General of one of these armies, Joe Harper (a bosom friend) General of the other. These two great commanders did not condescend to fight in person -- that being better suited to the still smaller fry -- but sat together on an eminence and conducted the field operations by orders delivered through aides-de-camp. Tom's army won a great victory, after a long and hard-fought battle. Then the dead were counted, prisoners exchanged, the terms of the next disagreement agreed upon, and the day for the necessary battle appointed; after which the armies fell into line and marched away, and Tom turned homeward alone.

Recall that Tom Sawyer's great popularity came during a middle-class celebration of childhood that was very much in reaction against the stupefying horrors of the War of Rebellion. (I use Ulysses Grant's favored term.) The veterans among Twain's readers would have known exactly what sort of commanding officer he described here, one who did not condescend to fight in person. And the final phrase of the passage lets us know the sort of life he led: Tom turned homeward alone.

While this dark undercurrent to Tom's character was but hinted at in the earlier, far more juvenile fiction, Twain lets it flow in Huckleberry Finn (by no means a children's book), though few care to notice.

I don't think a mature reader, then or now, can consider Tom's proposed prank on Jim without a moral retch: When we was ten foot off Tom whispered to me, and wanted to tie Jim to the tree for fun. He thinks tying a black man to a tree would be . . . fun! (Note here that the novel appeared in the wake of Reconstruction, as lynchings were becoming a frequent southern pastime.) Huck will have no part of it, and thinks of a way to stop him. But I said no; he might wake and make a disturbance, and then they'd find out I warn't in. This is Huck's first rescue of Jim, here cloaked in self-interest.

The casual murders and kidnappings Tom outlines as the obligations of his gang may be taken for comedy and left as such. The resolution with the crying Tommy Barnes is funny. But consider if Twain had finished the scene without it. Tom's violent fantasies might seem a bit stranger. Nevertheless we should ask ourselves what kind of person he is. His sadism will appear in full bloom much later in the story.

Jim is certainly one of the slaves fetched in for prayers in the first chapter. His owner, Miss Watson, has only recently joined the household, therefore so has he. Perhaps this has separated him from his wife and children, if only by a short distance. We learn by inference later in the book that they are owned by someone else.

The tiptoeing in the dark done by all three characters is a genuinely funny scene, if a bit broad. Shakespeare would have recognized the nonsense in an instant, and approved. Some may question the taste of this digression:

Afterwards Jim said the witches bewitched him and put him in a trance, and rode him all over the State, and then set him under the trees again, and hung his hat on a limb to show who done it. And next time Jim told it he said they rode him down to New Orleans; and, after that, every time he told it he spread it more and more, till by and by he said they rode him all over the world, and tired him most to death, [....] Niggers would come miles to hear Jim tell about it, and he was more looked up to than any nigger in that country. Strange niggers would stand with their mouths open and look him all over, same as if he was a wonder. Niggers is always talking about witches in the dark by the kitchen fire; but whenever one was talking and letting on to know all about such things, Jim would happen in and say, "Hm! What you know 'bout witches?". . .

But one finds similar fare among the country folk in Cervantes, an author Twain knew intimately, and the superstition in question is congruent with Huck's own beliefs he mentioned in the previous chapter.

Next Sunday, Chapters III & IV