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