ABOUT THE WRITER
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1834-1910), popularly known as Mark Twain, was an American writer, humourist, publisher and lecturer.
He was lauded as “the greatest humourist the United States has produced” and entitled with “the father of American Literature” by William Faulkner.
Before Twain, the language used in producing literature in America was that of the puritanical i.e polished and refined as in the case of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Thus, the language missed the mark of exploring the ruggedness of the country.
He was the first person in the history of American literature to ever use the regional dialect in a work of fiction. Very appropriately remarked by Earnest Hemmingway, " there were nothing like Mark Twain and there will not be anything quite like him".
Twain was born in Florida, Missouri to John Marshall Clemens and Jane Lampton. However, at the age of three the family moved to Hannibal where Twain was raised.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, assumed the name of Mark Twain at the end of 1863. Thereafter published all his works under this assume name.
The literal meaning of the name “Mark Twain” is two marks, which means two fathoms or 12 feet which is a way to measure the depths of water. It is a term used by leadsmen of steamboat as a dividing line between safe and dangerous shallow water.
Twain started his literary career with the publication of his first successful story “Jim Smiley and his Jumping Frog” which later became the title story of “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” (1865). This established Twain as a leading humourist and brought him international attention and being translated into French as well.
This reputation was further consolidated with the publication of “The Innocent Absurd” (1869).
Marked for his wit and satire , Twain earned widespread praise from critics and peers and was a friend to many dignitaries including European royalty. He was much influenced by Artemus Ward (Charles Farrar Browne) and tried to replicate his stage aura in him as far as humour is concerned.
In the last two decades of his life, however, Twain was beset with financial anxieties due to his chimarical business enterprises which he eventually recovered through his writings and lecture tours.
He visited India in 1896 as part of one of his lecture tour and held the country in highest regard saying,
“India was the cradle of human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great grandmother of tradition ..... the one land that all men desire to see, and having once seen, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for all the shows of all the rest of the globe combined.”
IMPORTANT WORKS
• The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (18645)
• The Innocents Absurd (1869)
• Roughing It (1872)
• Tramp Absurd (1880)
• Life on the Mississippi (1880)
• The Guilded Age (1873)
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889)
• Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894)
THE NARRATIVE STRUCTURE IN HUCKLEBERRY FINN
On defining narrative, it could have said that, “a narrative is the manner in which the events of tale is being told to the audience.”
In the process of narration, there are three important factors viz. The teller of the tale, the events of the tale and how the teller presents these events.
The narrative of a tale is influenced by a number of considerations which includes the age, sex, race, social status of both the teller and the audience.
Other factors influencing a narrative is the convention governing the narration and the language used in it.
Bearing this in mind it can be concluded that as far as the narrative structure of the novel is concerned it is episodic in nature and it could be divided into three parts viz.
• Prelude to the Journey of Escape
• Journey on a Raft
• Freeing of Jim
Prelude to the Journey of Escape
The first part of the episodic structure of the narrative, encapsulated in the first 11 chapters, provides a groundwork to the epic journey of escape that awaits.
The novel opens with Huckleberry Finn introducing himself as the narrator of the tale.
From chapter 4 the narrative takes a sharp turn with the introduction of Pap Finn, Huck’s drunken abusive father.
In order to escape from the clutches of his tyrannical father, Huck stages his own death in the cabin where his father had confined him and escapes to Jackson’s island.
On the island he meets a fugitive slave , Jim, who escaped from an impeding fate.
Together they decide to escape further on a raft down the Mississippi river in quest of freedom.
Journey on a Raft
This is the central part of the novel and is grouped together from chapter 12 to chapter 31. This part is mainly concerned with the journey of Huck and Jim down the river Mississippi in which they befriend two frauds. Their journey have been interrupted several times with episodes on the shore.
This part of the episodic structure can be briefly jotted down in the following points :-
• Jim’s plans to escape to freedom go awry because of the fog and he and Huck move deeper into the slave territory.
• Huck successfully wrestles with his conscience over being a party to Jim’s escape.
• Huck becomes an unwilling witness of cruelty, selfishness and greed during the adventures on shore.
Freeing Jim
This is the final part of the novel which consists of 12 chapters. This part includes Tom’s elaborate plan of freeing Jim which he terms as ‘evasion’.
Here Tom agrees of becoming a ‘nigger stealer’ and pairs up with Huck in freeing Jim. During the process he gets injured and Jim, despite having the chance of escaping by running away, decides to stay nd nurse Tom back to health.
By the end of this part, Tom discloses of the emancipation of Jim in Miss Watson’s will along with Huck lighting out to a new journey on the territory of river Mississippi to escape Aunt Sally’s attempt to ‘sivilize’ him.
The Un-unified Structure
As Mark Twain being described as someone who is temperamentally incapable of sustained concentration required for tight and well-developed plot, looking for unity and coherence in Twain’s novel will only lead a reader to get lost.
Appropriate Representation In the Form of Picaresque
According to Bernard De Voto, Twain , “was not a systematic thinker.” And it is due to this status of his that he used the form of picaresque for his narrative that suited him ideally.
Despite the picaresque form n the episodic structure of the novel, the novel does has the credit of possessing unity and coherence internally.
This is Mark Twain’s use of picaresque form in a modified way which enables him to make social criticism vicariously through the eye witness first person boy narrator and to put a focus on Huck’s moral growth. The plot seems, however un-unified, the thematic unity sustain itself by the unifying voice of the narrator and his point of view.
The River as an Unifying Agent
The structure also is not without a design. For instance, the journey on the river is both preceded and succeeded by the events on the shore in St. Petersburg and Pikesville respectively.
The Mississippi river plays an unifying role here as T.S Eliot Haas put it ,
“The river will not let the land at Cairo, where Jim could have reached freedom; it is the River that separates them ...... and the River that unites them.”
Similarly, Lionel Trilling suggests in hi essay “The Greatness of Huckleberry Finn”,
“the hero’s departure from the river and his return to it compose a subtle and significant pattern.”
The Recurrent Symbolic Pattern of Death and Rebirth
The episodic structure of the narrative is also reaches a unification through the recurrent symbolic pattern of death and rebirth, beginning with Huck faking his own death to escape from the abuses of his father and continues until the end when he has to find his ow identity at the Phelp’s place.
When Aunt Sally mistakes Huck for Tom, Huck feels a great deal of relief. In his own words,
“It was like being born again, I was so glad to find who I was.”
Conclusion
In this way, Mark Twain structure his magnum opus i.e The Huckleberry Finn by giving it an un-unified plot which is episodic in nature with an internal thematic unity by employing various narrative strategy.
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