Mark Twain's "Remarkable Achievement": Effacing the South for Northern Audiences

Johnston, Carrie

doi:10.1353/rmr.2013.0011

rmr

2013

DOI: 10.1353/rmr.2013.0011

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Mark Twain's "Remarkable Achievement": Effacing the South for Northern Audiences

Carrie Johnston¹

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2020

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“… 34 Johnston argues that Twain’s description of Jim’s acquiescence to Tom, during the evasion, is intended as a message for black readers, cautioning them against deferring to white Southern authorities ( 2013 : 68). …”

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Huckleberry Finn’s Conscience: Reckoning with the Evasion

Clarke

2020

J Ethics

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Huck Finn’s struggles with his conscience, as depicted in Mark Twain’s famous novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (AHF) (1884), have been much discussed by philosophers; and various philosophical lessons have been extracted from Twain’s depiction of those struggles. Two of these philosophers stand out, in terms of influence: Jonathan Bennett and Nomy Arpaly. Here I argue that the lessons that Bennett and Arpaly draw are not supported by a careful reading of AHF. This becomes particularly apparent when we consider the final part of the book, commonly referred to, by literary scholars, as ‘the evasion’. During the evasion Huck behaves in ways that are extremely difficult to reconcile with the interpretations of AHF offered by Bennett and Arpaly. I extract a different philosophical lesson from AHF than either Bennett or Arpaly, which makes sense of the presence of the evasion in AHF. This lesson concerns the importance of conscious moral deliberation for moral guidance and for overcoming wrongful moral assumptions. I rely on an interpretation of AHF that is influential in literary scholarship. On it the evasion is understood as an allegory about US race relations during the 20-year period from the end of the US Civil War to the publication of AHF.

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Huckleberry Finn’s Conscience: Reckoning with the Evasion

Clarke

2020

J Ethics

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Mark Twain's "Remarkable Achievement": Effacing the South for Northern Audiences

Cited by 1 publication

References 8 publications

Huckleberry Finn’s Conscience: Reckoning with the Evasion

Huckleberry Finn’s Conscience: Reckoning with the Evasion

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