BOOK REVIEW

Wieck, Carl F.  Refiguring Huckleberry Finn.  University of Georgia Press,
2000.  Pp. 239.  $40.00  ISBN 0-8203-2238-5.

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Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by:

        William Hecker <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
        United States Military Academy

Copyright © 2001 Mark Twain Forum.  This review may not be published or
redistributed in any medium without permission.

Carl Wieck's preface to Refiguring Huckleberry Finn has perhaps the most
unusual opening to a work of Twain criticism in recent memory.  He offers a
quote from Gerald Posner's Hitler's Children: Inside the Families of the
Third Reich, where young Norman Frank, son of Nuremberg convicted war
criminal Hans Frank, states that reading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
"ruined me for the rest of the Third Reich" by piquing his sense of humane
justice (ix).  The power of Twain's novel to transform individual
perceptions of humanity, as evidenced by this dramatic anecdote, establishes
the thematic base on which Wieck creates an intriguing and expansive work of
criticism.

From this powerful preface, Wieck sets out to explore connections between
keenly felt evocations of humanity in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the
essence of the "wellsprings of the American spirit" (xiii).  He posits that
Twain's novel and the American spirit share a rational humanity necessary to
a society that strives to make "decency, equality, and freedom" available
for all (xiii).  While many critics have written about such "Americaness,"
Wieck constructs his argument from areas neglected by earlier critics,
thereby infusing his chapters with fresh and provocative arguments about
Twain's novel.

Wieck begins his argument by shedding light on Twain's connections to Thomas
Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln.  Although William Howells named him "the
Lincoln of our literature," Wieck points out that surprisingly few scholars
expand on the direct links between Twain and these key figures in American
history.  This observation inspires new reflections on how Huck and Jim
serve as contemporaneous expressions of the American spirit.  The duo
continually declares a Jeffersonian independence from restrictive cultural
norms, thus developing a friendship based on Lincoln's Gettysburg assertion
that our nation is "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created
equal."  While Wieck underscores the significance of the novel's dedication
to America's potential humanity, he tempers this observation by discussing
the nation's failures to live up to such lofty ideals.

Wieck introduces his analysis of the novel's satire with a discussion about
the parallels between Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Frederick
Douglass's writings, especially his Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Douglass, Written by Himself.  Directly connecting Twain's friendship with
Douglass to the well educated, "white-shirted, free nigger" derided by pap
early in Huckleberry Finn, Wieck argues that several recurrent themes in
Twain's narrative directly emerge from his association with the outspoken
abolitionist.  His investigation scrutinizes issues like the scorching
satire of Huck's discussion of the status of English servant compared to
American slaves, and the slippery ways that Twain places the ideas of
"whiteness" and "darkness."  Theses compelling examinations of the
influences of Douglass, Jefferson, and Lincoln on Huckleberry Finn lend
cultural authority to the close readings of the novel that make up the rest
of Wieck's book.

Wieck throws the authority of these historical American paragons into
tension with the cultural authorities from which Huck and Jim spend much of
the novel attempting to break free.  He portrays Huck's conscientious
struggle to accommodate his natural instincts about "rightness" to society's
claims for the rightness of slavery, racism, greed, and religion, as a
devastating commentary about how far America remains from reaching its
democratic potential.

Exploration of these tensions also generates a compelling reading of the
Evasion section of Huckleberry Finn.  Building on Louis Budd's observation
that Tom's dishonesty and selfish manipulation of Jim is unmistakable
commentary on the "Southern question," Wieck asserts that the Evasion
section also foretells the shameful social inequality of America's
post-reconstruction era and forecasts that the nation would not address this
injustice for generations to come.

After addressing the "Southern question," Wieck turns his attention to the
perpetually rewarding study of irony in Huckleberry Finn. Wieck's most
compelling arguments breathe fresh life into episodes that have received
much critical attention. Seizing on Franklin Roger's commentary that Twain
originally had not planned for the narrative to take a raft ride down the
river, he contends that the novel primarily shows Huck and Jim attempting to
go against the flow: against both the natural flow of the river and the
equally inexorable flow of society.  Wieck also lingers over the exploration
of the "Floating House," skillfully calling attention to the ironic fact
that the clothing and Barlow knife liberated from the doomed house and used
by Huck and Jim to escape their old lives were originally connected with
pap's dead body.  These discussions, along with excellent chapters on the
elusive duality of the narrator, blackness and whiteness in the novel, and
Twain's prefatory disclaimer, ensure that scholars, educators and lovers of
Twain's work will find Wieck's criticism extraordinarily useful.

Even the few unconvincing arguments in Wieck's book still provoke thought.
His chapter, "The Figure Forty in Huckleberry Finn," occasionally strains to
attach significance to the appearance of the number throughout the novel.
Wieck acknowleges the common biblical associations with the figure forty,
connecting the slave bounty of forty dollars to Judas's bounty of "thirty
pieces of silver" for delivering Christ to the Romans, and the Jim's gaining
his freedom in the fortieth chapter to the Israelite's wandering for forty
years before gaining the promised land; however, he lacks compelling support
for his connection of the phrase "forty acres and a mule" with the novel's
text.  The possibility of this link raises interesting and relevant
questions: particularly about the self and societal deception implicit in
Tom rewarding Jim with forty dollars as the novel closes.  Yet this
link-culled from cultural speculation and conjecture about the nebulous
phrase "De Mule" in Twain's working notes-remains too subtle for such a
strong assertion.

In many ways Wieck's final chapter, "Knowledge and Knowing in Huckleberry
Finn," both traces aspects of Huck's intellectual and moral journey and
accounts for the novel's durable resonance in American culture.  He argues
that Huck's escape from extensive formal schooling empowers the growth of
the practical wisdom and morality that he acquires by the end of the novel.
This practical wisdom, Wieck suggests, ultimately lies in Huck's ability to
expand his understandings of tolerance and humanity in the face of an
inflexible and often bigoted society.  Such capacity for moral maturation,
literarily figured in Huck, directly evokes the democratic influences of
Jefferson, Lincoln and Douglass discussed early in Wieck's book.  This is
the conclusion to which Wieck's criticism leads us: that the American spirit
ultimately exists in "refiguring" our identities in response to our
consciences.

This conclusion holds great promise for other Twain works as well.  The
connections between Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and foundational American
political philosophy beg similar considerations of A Connecticut Yankee in
King Arthur's Court, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, and other
writings that negotiate themes of personal freedom.  Thus, Wieck's unusual
preface functions not only to demonstrate the transformative power of
Huckleberry Finn, but it also acts as an invitation to rediscover key
aspects of our American roots in a notoriously cynical age.  Wieck's
meditative analysis of the "vital human echo" heard in Huckleberry Finn
reinforces Twain's position as our most "American" author.