Huck Finn wrestles
with conscience
A classic case of comic (but thematically serious) dramatic
irony is Huck Finn's decision at the end of Mark Twain's The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to free the runaway slave
Jim, who has been sold back into captivity by two con men they
have met along the way, the "King" and the
"Duke." Huck agonizes over what to do
- I
went to the raft, and set down in the wigwam to think.
But I couldn't come to nothing. I thought, till I wore my
head sore, but I couldn't see no way out of the trouble.
After all this long journey, and after all we'd done for
them scoundrels, here was it all come to nothing,
everything all busted up and ruined, because they could
have the heart to serve Jim such a trick as that, and
make him a slave again all his life, and amongst
strangers, too, for forty dirty dollars.
- Once
I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for
Jim to be a slave at home where his family was, as long
as he'd got to be a slave, and so I'd better write a
letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss Watson
were he was. But I soon give up that notion, for two
things: she'd be mad and disgusted at his rascality
and ungratefulness for leaving her, and so she'd sell him
straight down the river again; and if she didn't,
everybody naturally despises an ungrateful nigger, and
they'd make Jim feel it all the time, and so he'd feel
ornery and disgraced. And then think of me!
It would get all around, that Huck Finn helped a nigger
to get his freedom; and if I was to ever see anybody from
that town again, I'd be ready to get down and lick his
boots for shame. That's just the way: a person does a
low-down thing, and then he don't want to take no
consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide it, it
ain't no disgrace. That was my fix exactly. The more I
studied about this, the more down and ornery I got to
feeling. And at last, when it hit me all of a sudden that
here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the
face and letting me know my wickedness was being watchd
all the time from up there in heaven, whilst I was
stealing a poor old woman's nigger that hadn't ever done
me no harm, and now was showing me there's One that's
always on the lookout, and In't agoing to allow no such
miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further, I
most dropped in my tracks I was so scared. Well, I tried
the best I could to kinder soften it up somehow for
myself, by saying I was brung up wicked, and so I warn't
so much to blam; but something inside of me kept saying,
"There was the Sunday School, you could a gone to
it; and if you'd a done it they'd a learnt you, there,
that people that acts as I'd been acting about that
niggert goes to everlasting fire."
- It
made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray; and
see if I couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy I
was, and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words
wouldn't come. Why wouldn't they? It warn't no use to try
and hid it from Him. Nor from me,
neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn't come. It
was because my heart warn't right; it was because I
warn't square; it was because I was playing double. I was
letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was
holding on
to the biggest on of all. I was trying to make my mouth say
I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go
and write to that nigger's owner and tell where he was;
but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie -- and He
knowed it. You can't pray a lie -- I found that out.
- So
I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't
know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I'll
go and write the letter -- and then
see if I can pray. Why it was astonishing, the way I felt
as light as a feather, right stratight off, and my
troubles all gone. So I got a piece of papter and a
pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:
- Miss Watson your
runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below
Pikesville and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will
give him up for the reward if you send. HUCK FINN.
- I
felt good and washed clean of sin for the first time I
had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray
now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper
down and set there thinking; thinking of how good it was
all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost
and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to
thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim
before me, all the time, in the day, and in the
night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we
a floating along, talking, and singing, and laughing. But
somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me
against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him
standing my watch on top of hisn, stead of calling
me -- so I could go on sleeping; and see him how
glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I
come to him in the swamp, up there where the feud was;
and would always call me honey, and pet me, and do
everything he could think of for me, and how good he
always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by
telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so
grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had
in the world, and the only
one he's got now; and then I happend to look around, and
see that paper.
- It
was a close place. I took it [the letter] up, and
held it in my hand. I was a trembling, because I'd
got to decide, forever, between two things. I
studied a minute, holding my breath, and then says to my
self:
- "All
right, then, I'll go to hell" -- and tore it
up.
- It
was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they was
said. And I let them stay said; and never thought
no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing
out of my head; and I said I would take up wickedness
again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and
the other warn't. And for a starter, I would go to
work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could
think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as
long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the
whole hog.