Monday, December 9, 2013
Smiley Article
Hey everyone! I was reading Smiley's article about Huck Finn, and honestly, I thought most of what she was saying was shoddy. I didn't think she backed up her statements with very good evidence, and disagreed with almost all of her arguments, especially when she attacked Huck and Jim. However, how do we all feel about this? Is there some truth to what she is saying, such as Uncle Tom's Cabin being a better book then Huck Finn?
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Although I do agree that most of her points in the article were shoddy, I did like one of the things she said in the last paragraph. She said, "all you have to do to be a hero is acknowledge that your poor sidekick is human; you don’t actually have to act in the interests of his humanity" (67). This part really stood out to me because I knew that there was something that sort of bothered be about Huck as the book ended, and I think this is it. Throughout the whole novel, I felt as though I was waiting for Huck to take that big step forward in morality and recognize that slavery is wrong, yet he never does. And I agree that it is silly to consider Huck a hero because all he really does is act kindly to Jim when they are separated from society on the raft and recognize him as a human. To him, all he has to do is call Jim a "white person" as he does at the end of the novel and that is just fine. I do not think that Jim deserves that after all that he does for Huck in the novel. I do not believe that Huck is a hero in any way because all he does is think these nice thoughts about how Jim is a really great black person, almost comparable to a white person, yet he never acts on these thoughts or takes it a step further to really be a true hero.
ReplyDeleteNot having read Uncle Tom's Cabin, I think it's hard to judge whether her argument about its being better is valid, but I definitely agree that she's very critical without using a lot of references. I think she does have a point that there are other books that highlight racism and show all the worst aspects of slavery more thoroughly, but I don't agree with her argument that this makes Huck Finn the less valuable. I think the fact that Huck is a believable character, a child who has to slowly develop in moral character despite conflicting ideas ingrained in him by society, is actually very important. Smiley says Huck never really emerges as a hero, but pursues his own interests and sees Jim as only a sidekick. He only thinks blacks are humans without acting on it. She also heavily criticizes Twain as being racist toward Jim's character by having Huck treat him this way, and says that Twain's own conflicts between the morality of slavery and the society in which he grew up that it was a part of make the book weak. I think this actually makes the book more effective: readers are more likely to accept the characters because they too have misgivings and have to gradually come to the decision that slavery is wrong despite what society says to the contrary. The characters from Uncle Tom's Cabin sound more clearly cut as good (Uncle Tom) and bad (Legree) from the start, and so might seem less realistic to a reader. The fact that Twain acknowledges the difficulty and complexity involved in taking a stand against slavery surrounded by a society that is built on it, yet still has Huck ultimately decide to risk everything by helping Jim escape instead of turning Jim in as everything else encourages him to do, makes Huck Finn a book with a moral based on more than characters' "feelings". Even though I wasn't completely satisfied with the ending to the novel, reading Smiley's article made me decide that at least there is more to Huck Finn than her description of it as "[not] even a serious novel".
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