Huck Finn, Mary Sue

Huck Finn, Mary Sue
Or: Twain Didn’t Write A Political Ending
December 19, 2007
Revised From: November 13, 2005

James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pioneers is one of the first popular American novels. Some might argue that it painted the myth of America that persists through today. Natty Bumpo made the novel successful, with his “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” attitude. Yet, The Pioneers is not a critical favorite. As far as most critics are concerned, American literature began with Mark Twain, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. However, even Twain’s novel is often regarded as a failure in regard to all of its political investments. One might say that almost the entire second half of the novel is unnecessary, and that the real climax occurs between Huck and Jim on the river. Why is Huck Finn regarded as central to America, whereas The Pioneers is not?

As far as bad endings go, Cooper is even worse than Twain. He ends the novel by having Elizabeth Taylor marry Oliver Effingham, the character that Cooper wanted to be the hero, but that no one cared about. Oliver Effingham represents meaningless traditions and upper class values. Oliver Edwards reveals that he is actually Oliver Effingham, son of Major Effingham, on page 437 of the text—chapter 40, just one chapter before the ending. Having Oliver on the periphery, with his identity masked until the very end, makes Oliver come off as unreliable and dishonest. Are we really supposed to believe that it is because of his intellectual superiority that he duped everyone in the novel, and the audience?

Oliver also has to wail about the injustice done to his grandfather—that he had some sort of rightful claim to being a better person than anyone else because of what his lineage suggested. If there’s a sure way to lose an American audience, it’s this. And, compared to what Natty goes through, such as getting shot at the beginning of the novel, Oliver simply has less credibility than Natty.

Why would Cooper want Oliver to be the real hero of the novel? Well, he is an intelligent character, and he does listen to those around him. He’s attentive. In a way, Oliver is exactly what Cooper, in his pretentiousness, wanted his American audience to be. He wanted them to appear to be Pioneers, but to actually end up being Aristocracy in the course of reading his novel. The Americans knew who they were, though. They were Natty Bumpo, victims, heroes, and survivors—and honest. It’s no wonder that Cooper retired in England, where he could return to aristocracy and classical roots.

Perhaps the central reason that Huck Finn is so effective as a protagonist is because he essentially combines the best elements of both Natty and Oliver, without the baggage of either. He has the “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” style of Natty, but the propensity for deception that an author finds so likeable in a hero. Like Natty, Huck is a poor white males on the fringe of society. Just as Natty is shot by a judge at the beginning of The Pioneers, Huck is abused by his father at the onset of Huckleberry Finn. Like Natty, Huck ends the novel by deciding to Go West. Yet, unlike Natty, Huck lies. As Oliver deceives everyone, making them think he’s someone lower in the social hierarchy of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Huck pretends to be dead, pretends to be a girl, and later pretends to be George Jackson. The first two are perhaps more obvious in how they would change Huck’s social relations to those around him. Huck pretends to be George Jackson, however, to retain his anonymity. Who is George Jackson? He, too, is no one, with a name so generic that no one is likely to remember him. These are things Natty Bumpo would never do. And, by casting the story from Huck’s perspective, and keeping the audience in on the jokes, they are amused, rather than offput, by Huck’s deception.

If Twain so fluidly combines the appealing elements of Cooper’s characters, why didn’t he also find a way to write a more satisfying ending? Perhaps it can be understood in how each character tries to legitimate themselves. Huck’s story begins with oppression at the hands of his father. Natty’s story begins with his oppression at the hands of the Judge. Oliver’s story ends (and in a sense begins) with the oppresion of his Grandfather. How does each of those compare, though, to the oppression the slave Jim experiences in Huck Finn? Jim is a slave, whipped to work, and denied education. An audience tends to sympathize with oppressed characters. Yet they also need a character that reminds them of themselves, that they can identify with. When an Other is presented that deserves more sympathy, an audience becomes too aware of the political investments of a story. Suppose Twain had developed the Christian metaphors for Huckleberry Finn. If Jim became a Christ figure, tortured and maimed and killed, the audience would have sympathized with him even more—and Twain would have become a political writer, rather than a comedian.