So, me and my wife saw the Equalizer this past month, and it got us reading a list of 100 classic books to read. Among the books in the list (with works like Don Quixote, Hamlet, The Old Man and the Sea) was Huckleberry Finn, which I had read half of in high school but never finished. So we both started with that.
I loved the book, since it was hilarious, beautifully critiquing the adult-run world from a kids' point of view. Everything from religion to slavery was covered in an interesting, all-innocent child's point of view, as Huck tries to understand the point of so much hoopla, and is also forced to deal with the (at the time) moral dilemma of helping a slave run away from slavery.
It's important to remember that this would be tantamount to grand theft auto now, considering the usefulness of slaves and the exorbitant prices a good one would fetch. Huck knew the owner and felt bad that he was essentially robbing an old widow of one of her slaves. On the other hand, he knew Jim (the runaway) and liked him and felt partially responsible for his well-being as a friend.
But that's not what I'm writing about today. Apparently, there is some sort of controversy or discussion going on since the 60's about the books ending, and whether or not it was a fair ending.
In the end (spoilers?) Jim turns out to have been freed in the will of the widow, Tom and Huck turn out okay, and Huck's pap was killed by some ruffians early in the book, so Huck is still a rich little brat without his abusive, alcoholic father a constant background threat in his life. It's a slightly unexpected happy ending all around, but I do say, slightly. The overall feeling of the book, as it seemed to me, was intended for children. Granted, children who were either living in that time who understood more than Huck, or young adults living today. And in my opinion, I don't think Mark Twain had it in him to put poor Jim or Huck into a bad spot in the end.
But, that is completely ignoring the last ten chapters of the book. The book seems to cover about three separate arcs: The first third of the book describes Huck and Jim escaping "sivilizayshun" and the misadventures they have together. It's Huck learning more about the world around him and coming to love Jim as a friend.
The second third introduces the King and the Duke, two con-men who Huck takes to traveling with. In some aspects, these represent the lowest possible moral aspect that Huck could achieve. No matter what his moral dilemma is with helping free Jim, he's never so low-down as to completely agree with what these two blackguards are up to. They are so terrible to their fellow man that Huck wants to just be done with them.
This leads into the last third of the book, wherein Tom Sawyer is reintroduced and starts really shining. Here is where the book seems to slow down to an almost irritating level.
Despite what's gone before, it was easy to read the book, as the stories flowed well from one to another. But here is where the story seems to stagnate. Jim is recaptured and is awaiting resale or claim in a very minimum security hold while Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn are both going about planning his escape. Huck starts off by pointing out that the key isn't guarded, there are no guards posted at any time, and the dogs know Jim, Tom, and Huck well enough not to make any noise to arouse suspicion. Considering that the ploys in the book up to this point were both clever and simply executed, it is a very strange change of pace for Tom to come blustering in here on a steamboat and complicating a fairly simple obstacle.
Filled with harrowing stories (mostly fictional) of prisoners escaping, he turns what should be a simple opening of a door and a leisurely amble to the river into the Shawshank Redemption on steroids. Instead of what the previous two sections gave us; Huck running into obstacle after obstacle, overcome by his cleverness or some extremely good luck (or both), the book now gives us nothing but obstacles for literally obstacle's sake. Tom vehemently insists that they dig a tunnel to get Jim out, and that Jim has to befriend animals in his "jail cell", while leaving woeful and cryptic messages hewed on stone and plates.
While we eventually find out that Tom was going through so much hoopla because he already knew that Jim was freed, and therefore there was nothing at stake, it was frustrating to me, as a reader, to watch Tom complicate a mostly simple book. At times I felt so frustrated I wanted to beat the crap out of Tom Sawyer and tell him that I could toss him into a basement, then he could have all the fun he would ever want spending years building up a good escape plan and story. What few chuckles you get from Huck and Jim both shrugging, saying "Well, if that's what all the authorities on jailbreaks say..." and going along with Tom, are easily overshadowed by the suffering of Tom's poor aunt and the anxiety that Jim must be feeling as his freedom is available at every opportunity, and Tom's insistence on complications are closing that window fast. In fact, because of Tom's Tomfoolery (yeah, that just happened), Jim gets caught during the jailbreak and is sentenced to wear heavier chains and is put on bread and water rations and is more closely guarded, essentially losing his chance at freedom.
The grand deus ex machina at the end does leave something of a sour taste in your mouth where in the space of a few paragraphs we find out that both Jim AND Huck are free from their respective slaveries (Jim from actual slavery, and Huck from his proverbial slavery to his father) and then nothing more. I mean, you find out that the body Jim and Huck found early on in the book was Pap Finn's, in the penultimate paragraph in the book. Literally no description is given of how Huck felt about finding out his father had died in a gruesome way. It just ends.
That said, do I think that the book has a good ending? Well, it was the ending that Mark Twain wanted to write, so I think that yes, yes it does. While improbable as it is that Jim would be freed in a will of all things, stranger things have happened. And the abrupt end goes along with the idea that Huck, a child, is narrating the story to us, and therefore would have no sense of decor to give us a proper denouement. He told us what he thought was best to tell and left it at that. It's funny to think that the book sets itself up for a sequel, with Tom and Huck going to the frontier to have crazy adventures with the "injuns". (Apparently Mark Twain did start writing the sequel, but someone else finished it with mixed success)
The ending is as strange and non-consequential as so many other stories in the book, that it seems strangely in place to end like this. No further explanation is given, just this is how things ended up, and now you'd be ready to hear about how Huck and Tom and Jim all got on with their next adventure.
In the end, I think that it's best to look at this book in an academic light first, then pull back and honor the preface that Mark Twain wrote:
"PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it
will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."
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