Won't Someone Think of the Children?!

We discussed in class how in romanticist stories will often feature the idea of 'the childhood'. In that context one's 'childhood' refers to a period of time in one's youth before the world or culture or whatever has corrupted them. Children are supposedly innocent and pure and possess some sort of wisdom that is lost with age. This idea is still alive and thriving in culture, just look at arguments about censorship or ratings regarding movies or videogames or even books like Huck Finn.

Mark Twain is a realist of sorts: his books are very real but as Twain as Huck says in the beginning of the text, there are "stretchers." You don't want you're writing to be too real, since it might become quite boring.

All of that being said, Twain is attacking romanticism throughout Huckleberry Finn. Huck is about 12 or 13 at the start of the novel and has had some real experiences (discount the "stretching" in Tom Sawyer). His father is an abusive drunk, he's found treasure, and other adventures. He might be scared of ghosts but that is not a feature specific to children in the text as Jim and others are also superstitious. We do see him struggle with his conscious, but it's not so much a specific feature of children as a specific feature to Huck. This is since he's telling the story and has access to his own internal monologue.

On page 39, after a drunk Pap attempts to murder Huck and passes out, Huck calmly acquires the gun and points it at Pap. He waits to potentially murder his father and although it was raised in class that he didn't pull the trigger and there's no way of knowing if he actually would have if he needed, I believe he absolutely would have. Huck doesn't cry later (or at least, how he tells it) about it or think too much about it. He did what was in his best interest in terms of survival. At his next opportunity he escapes the cabin, fakes his death, and steals most if not all of the food, abandoning his alcoholic father. All of this is done rationally and with great cunning. Huck isn't traumatized and he doesn't even flinch or look back, he just leaves.

It could be argued that this is all because Huck's life has already been extraordinary and he's had other experiences. Well, having experiences does not imply a former innocence and if we look to Hadleyburg, it's clear that Twain doesn't believe these experiences have corrupted Huck. In Hadleyburg the town's lack of experience led to it's corruption, but even then it was not corrupted forever. Though they were humiliated, in the end they are vigilant to make sure the same thing never happens again.

Later in the novel, Huck watches Boggs get murdered and observes the subsequent lynch mob. Afterwards, he sneaks into the circus. Again, he doesn't cry or melt down or anything, he goes on with his life.

He is traumatized by some of the things he saw in the midst of the Grangerford feud, but it seems that what he saw there would traumatize anyone, child or adult.

Huck may be naive at times, perhaps in realizing how much Jim really understands, but then again Jim has spent most of his life fooling people in order to survive the hierarchy of the period. He does appear to not understand certain activities (like pretending to be robbers with Tom) or jokes (Buck's joke on pg 111) but he's definitely savvy and arguably the most aware character.

Huck has actually read Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. Although, we don't know if he read it after his own adventure or before. Either way, I think that fact alone demonstrates a profound level of awareness.