Narrative Voices In Huck Finn Essay, Research Paper

Huckleberry Finn provides the narrative voice of Mark Twain?s

novel, and his honest voice combined with his personal vulnerabilities

reveal the different levels of the Grangerfords? world. Huck is

without a family: neither the drunken attention of Pap nor the pious

ministrations of Widow Douglas were desirable allegiance. He stumbles

upon the Grangerfords in darkness, lost from Jim and the raft. The

family, after some initial cross-examination, welcomes, feeds and

rooms Huck with an amiable boy his age. With the light of the next

morning, Huck estimates “it was a mighty nice family, and a mighty

nice house, too”(110). This is the first of many compliments Huck

bestows on the Grangerfords and their possessions. Huck is impressed

by all of the Grangerfords? belongings and liberally offers

compliments. The books are piled on the table “perfectly exact”(111),

the table had a cover made from “beautiful oilcloth”(111), and a book

was filled with “beautiful stuff and poetry”(111). He even appraises

the chairs, noting they are “nice split-bottom chairs, and perfectly

sound, too–not bagged down in the middle and busted, like an old

basket”(111). It is apparent Huck is more familar with busted chairs

than sound ones, and he appreciates the distinction.

Huck is also more familar with flawed families than loving,

virtuous ones, and he is happy to sing the praises of the people who

took him in. Col. Grangerford “was a gentleman all over; and so was

his family”(116). The Colonel was kind, well-mannered, quiet and far

from frivolish. Everyone wanted to be around him, and he gave Huck

confidence. Unlike the drunken Pap, the Colonel dressed well, was

clean-shaven and his face had “not a sign of red in it anywheres”

(116). Huck admired how the Colonel gently ruled his family with

hints of a submerged temper. The same temper exists in one of his

daughters: “she had a look that would make you wilt in your tracks,

like her father. She was beautiful”(117). Huck does not think

negatively of the hints of iron in the people he is happy to care for

and let care for him. He does not ask how three of the Colonels?s

sons died, or why the family brings guns to family picnics. He sees

these as small facets of a family with “a handsome lot of quality”

(118). He thinks no more about Jim or the raft, but knows he has

found a new home, one where he doesn?t have to go to school, is

surrounded by interior and exterior beauty, and most importantly,

where he feels safe. Huck “liked that family, dead ones and all, and

warn’t going to let anything come between us”(118).

Huck is a very personable narrator. He tells his story in

plain language, whether describing the Grangerford’s clock or his

hunting expedition with Buck. It is through his precise, trusting

eyes that the reader sees the world of the novel. Because Huck is so

literal, and does not exaggerate experiences like Jim or see a grand,

false version of reality like Tom Sawyer, the reader gains an

understanding of the world Mark Twain created, the reader is able to

catch Twain?s jokes and hear his skepticism. The Grangerford’s

furniture, much admired by Huck, is actually comicly tacky. You can

almost hear Mark Twain laughing over the parrot-flanked clock and the

curtains with cows and castles painted on them even as Huck oohs and

ahhs. And Twain pokes fun at the young dead daughter Huck is so drawn

to. Twain mocks Emmeline as an amateur writer: “She warn’t

particular, she could write about anything you choose to give her to

write about, just so it was sadful”(114). Yet Twain allows the images

of Emmeline and the silly clock to deepen in meaning as the chapter

progresses. Emmeline is realized as an early portent of the

destruction of Huck?s adopted family. The mantel clock was admired by

Huck not only for its beauty, but because the Grangerfords properly

valued beauty and “wouldn?t took any money for her”(111). Huck

admired the Grangerfords? principles, and the stake they placed in

good manners, delicious food, and attractive possessions. But Huck

realizes in Chapter 18 that whereas the Grangerfords may value a

hand-painted clock more than money, they put little value on human

life.

The third view of the Grangerford?s world is provided by Buck

Grangerford. He is the same age as Huck; he has grown up in a world

of feuding, family picnics, and Sunday sermon that are appreciated but

rarely followed. Buck, from when he meets Huck until he is brutally

murdered, never questions the ways of his family. For the rest of the

chapter, Buck provides a foil for Huck, showing the more mature Huck

questioning and judging the world around him. In fact it seems Buck

does not have the imagination to conceive of a different world. He is

amazed Huck has never heard of a feud, and surprised by Huck?s desire

to hear the history and the rationale behind it. In Buck

Grangerford?s rambling answers we hear Mark Twain?s view of a southern

feuding family, and after Buck finishes his answer, we watch Huck?s

reaction to the true nature of the Grangerfords. Buck details Twain?s

opinion that a feud is not started or continued by thought. The

reasons for the feud have been forgotten, and the Grangerfords do not

hate, but in fact respect, their sworn enemies. They live their lives

by tradition, and the fact that the feud is a tradition justifies its

needless, pointless violence. From the dignified Colonel with “a few

buck-shot in him”(121) to Buck, who is eager for the glory to be

gained from shooting a Shepherdson in the back, the Grangerfords

unquestioningly believe in de-valuing human life because it is a

civilized tradition.

It is interesting that the only compliment Huck gives to a

Grangerford after Buck shot at Harney Shepherdson was to Miss Sophia.

He admitts that the young women who denied part in any family feud is

“powerful pretty”(122). But the rosy sheen that had spurred Huck to

use the word ?beautiful? six times previously in description of the

Grangerfords has evaporated. He attends church with the family and

notices all the Grangerfords keep their guns close by. Huck thinks it

“was pretty ornery preaching”(121), but the feuding patriarchy praises

the good values listed by the Preacher. The hypocritical mixture of

guns and sermons, holy talk and bloodthirstiness make it “one of the

roughest Sundays [Huck] had run across yet”(121). He now questions

the motives of everyone in the household, including Miss Sophia as she

send him to the church on an errand. By this point the cynical,

sarcastic Twain and the disillusioned Huck are of one mind. Huck

walks among a group of hogs who have sought the coolness of the church

and notes “most folks don’t go to church only when they’ve got to; but

a hog is different”(122).

The narration of Huck’s final day with the Grangerfords is

prefaced by: “I don’t want to talk much about the next day”(124). For

Huck’s easy-going fluid dialogue to become stilted and censored, the

reader knows the young boy has been hurt. A senseless fatal feud is

not the only tragedy depicted through the events of that day, also

shown is the heartbreak of a young boy who loses every vestige of the

hopeful trust he put in a father, brothers and sisters. Huck is

shocked to hear the fatherless, brotherless Buck complain he hadn’t

managed to kill his sister’s lover on an earlier occaison. And then

from his perch in the tree, Huck hears Buck’s murderers “singing out,

‘Kill them, kill them!’ It made [Huck] so sick [he] most fell out of

the tree”(127). He wishes he “hadn’t come ashore that night, to see

such things”(127).

The end of chapter nineteen, when Huck returns to the raft and

Jim, almost exactly mirrors the end of chapter eighteen. Both chapter

conclude with Huck enjoying a good meal with good company in a cool,

comfortable place. First it is with the Grangerfords in the cool,

high-ceilinged area in the middle of their double house. “Nothing

could be better”(115), Huck thought. But only a few pages later the

raft and Jim provide the same comforts. Nothing had ever sounded so

good to him as Jim?s voice, and Huck felt “mighty free and easy and

comfortable on [the] raft”(128). . Huck happily slides away from the

bloody scene with the unorthodox father figure of a runaway slave.

Huck has realized he does not need a traditional family to make him

feel safe and happy. He must develop and live by his own integrity,

not the past decisions of a father or grandfather. This is clearly

Mark Twain?s opinion also, and the reader, full of relief at Huck?s

escape, is aware that the author sent us all into the Grangerfords?

world to prove just that point.