EVIL! *><*

At this point, I just really want to finish the book and be done with it, but yet again we have not only an extended ending, but it completely contradicts everything that Mark Twain seemed to be building up to about Huck maturing and how his views towards Jim have changed. The last few (what should have been the last) chapters took the book into a full loop right back to where it started with Huck and Tom messing around and pranking Jim. What happened there? It would have been much better off if Jim was set free and Huck ventured into the distance to an exciting new adventure out west, but of course there must have been one last point Mark Twain was trying to make, that is if he even wrote it at all. To me it didn’t seem like the style of writing he had been imposing on us before, but who am I to say he didn’t necessarily write it?

“Picks is the thing, moral or no moral; and as for me, I don’t care shucks for the morality of it, nohow. When I start in to steal a nigger, or a watermelon, or a Sunday school book, I ain’t no ways particular how it’s done so it’s done. What I want is my nigger; or I want my watermelon; or what I want is my Sunday school book; and if a pick’s the handiest thing, that’s the thing I’m a-going to dig that nigger or that watermelon or that Sunday school book out with; and I don’t give a dead rat what the authorities thinks about it nuther.” -p237

Wow. If this doesn’t show total disregard to everything Huck and Jim have gone through, then I don’t know what else does. Perhaps there are better quotes in the same part when they actually make him go into the shed, stain his own shirt with blood then throw it out the window, etc etc but this should do just the same. Huck seems to be explaining his point by using the examples “nigger” referring to Jim as if his life wasn’t depending on getting out of that shed despite the fact he was in there for several weeks; “watermelon” which I thought interesting because Huck did steal things he absolutely needed (food yes) and a “Sunday School book”. That interested me the most because Huck didn’t believe that Heaven was the ideal place to go since his friends would all be hanging out in Hell and it didn’t sound like one could have fun in Heaven anyways. So why would Huck care about a Sunday School Book if he didn’t give a dead rat for dead people (like Moses), didn’t want to go to Heaven, and certainly gave up trying to do good in the first place, knowing he had broken the law by freeing Jim? So here we have the “nigger”, the person he had once thought of as a father and a brother now reduced to a piece of property or even a simple object, a “watermelon” being food, something he could get anywhere or steal because he wanted it, and a “Sunday School Book” which doesn’t sound all that important to him anyway. My last and only other thought is how dare Huck do that to Jim after all they’ve been through! Such a complete turn around from the great ending I was expecting. Very anti-climactic if you ask me.

As this book just seems to go on, and on, and even onner (my word, add it to the dictionary) I just seem to get more bored. Mark Twain sure can extend the moment, but jeese sometimes it just goes on long enough! What could have been maybe a chapter or two like the encounter with the King and Duke just went too far. I really didn’t like them to begin with, but I grew to resent reading the dang thing as I went along. Here’s a really good example of the really poor impression they presented to me;

“…And every little while the prettiest kind of girls, with the tears running down their cheeks, would up and ask him would he let them kiss him for to remember him by; and he always done it; and some of them he hugged and kissed as many as five or six times- and he was invited to stay a week; and everyone wanted him to live in their houses…” -p128

Though at first when I read this, I thought it was sweet that he would do that for those nice young women, but another look I realized that he might very well just be taking advantage of all of them. Was he really a pirate needing sustenance for a lost crew? He didn’t seem that way when he told Huck and Jim that he was an exile from France, meaning he had a seat of great power at one time. It seems he’s just lying to get a nice house, more attention than what’s needed and some extra money to get by. He’s also “doing good” to the women of the audience a little excess. Hugs and kisses are nice, and inspire a few “awww” moments I suppose, but it says only some of them got extra, so that makes it sound a little bit like he’s exerting his racial superiority by taking advantage of their pity. If this sounds offensive or like I’m over considering the passage, contact me. Though I probably won’t shut up, I’ll most definitely accept the comment .