Michael McDonald,
     Since you balked, I'll take my base.  Actually, I must tend to
disagree with your reading of the ending of Huckleberry Finn.  In
the first place, Mark Twain would never have "deconstructed"
anything, much less the "American cult of the individual."
Although Clemens the man tended, on occasion, to be swept up with
the fads of his age too, Twain the writer was somewhat more
conscientious, filling up his works with text a bit at a time until
his "tank" went dry for a spell.  He wrote about what preoccupied
him at the time he was writing, be it historical, social, or
biographical in concern, or be it an interesting stew-like mixture
of these things, which may have tended to swap around a bit.  But
deconstruction?  I think not.
     You said:  "What we witness at the end of the novel is not a
Huch (sic) loyal to Jim, but one *still* intimidated by Tom
Sawyer..." Ah, this incredible novel's ending.  Still being debated
after so many years.  Yes, Huck is "controlled" by Tom, who is
Huck's whole social and cultural education personified, for a
while.  And, yes, in almost every way "society" wins out over the
values of the individuality of "the raft."  But Huck's continued
loyalty to Jim is displayed throughout this episode (see Huck's
plans vs. Tom's plans) and his resistance to "society" is offered
up at the end of the book.  I would recommend an excellent essay by
Fritz Oehlschlaeger called "Gwyne to Git Hung."  Tom's takeover of
the novel, Oehlschlaeger argues, is "savagely ironic and morally
courageous."  The irony Twain uses in allowing the forces of
society, Tom, Aunt Sally, and the rest, to succeed offers the
reader a bitter pill to swallow.  I agree with Oehlschlaeger when
he says, "There is no room for a free man in a corrupt society."
Huck's flight to the territory, probably to "end" up at the end of
a rope, is no failure it all.  It is the "success" of a gifted
individual's fate in the face of such a society.

Michael O'Conner
University of Missouri