从_哈克贝利费恩历险记_看马克吐温小说的艺术特点_

Conclusion

That a writer’s works becomes a classic and stands testing of time depends on no more than two factors. One is that the contents of the works reflect the characteristics of culture and ideology in a certain time and provide with the values of recognition or history. The other is that the works enjoys distinctive qualities in art and presents the sense of aesthetics or offers new methods or technique of writing. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is such a piece of works in terms of both contents and art.

Mark Twain is an eminent representative of American realist literature in the 19th century. Through his whole life of hard work, Twain wrote a large number of literary works that deride, satirize and reprimand the crazy mammonism, corrupted politics, hypocritical morality, sham religion, bogus interrelationship, avarice for money and power, etc. He experienced the process of from non-monopoly capitalism to monopoly capitalism in America. Steadfast in a progressive stand in democracy and on the basis of inheriting the tradition of western literature of humor in America, Twain forms his specific artistic characteristics and makes great contributions to push American literature to a high standard.

Henry Seidel Canby stated in his Decline and Fall: Mark Twain that “It is true that, superficially, he was as representative of that country as a tough, sweet, maple tree whose sap flows cold nights and sunny days, and whose roots are deep in the soil… He had undoubted shifted with his times from the extravagant optimism of Walt Whitman and his own Colonel Sellers and Manifest Destiny to the social criticism of the eighties and nineties and the Henry and Brooks Adamses who, like Henry James, believed that America, having overrun a continent, had failed to make a civilization.” ① Henry’s words have vigorously summarized Mark Twain’s whole life and a literary giant ramming the way for the real American literature.

As one of the most important works in American literary history, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn achieves high levels of thoughts and art and embodies the artistic characteristics of Mark Twain.

①Scott, Arthur L., 1967, Mark Twain, Selected Criticism, Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, p265

First, Mark Twain resorts to intricate plots in this novel with practical and immediate significance. Fantasy, mythology, satire, tragic, realism and romanticism are all melted in it. Apart from religion, superstition, humor, money, Twain’s concern is the conflict between nature and so-called civilization, showing that nature is better and civilization corrupts rather than improves humanity. Through the novel, we can sense Twain’s appreciation of human values. The explicit thread in which Huck and Jim’s pursuit of freedom and liberty and the implicit thread of Huck’s patricide perfectly interweave together and simultaneously converge on the theme in the denouement. It is difficult to rebel against the authority. The way to subsistence is to rebel moderately, a sensible choice in certain circumstances. “As the novel demonstrates, many otherwise good people are unaware of their racist attitudes; and so the abuses continue. Twain’s hope, as expressed through Huck Finn, is for a better understanding among racial groups. His expectation, as expressed in the east section of the novel, is that times and attitudes do not change much. The persistence of the awful word nigger in the mouths of white characters symbolizes Twain’s pessimism regarding progress in race relations.” ①Therefore, we can further comprehend the complexity of the race issues and better understand why Twain designs the plot of the novel in a special way.

Mark Twain’s another unique literary characteristic is that he can combine the objective realistic depiction with the subjective romantic lyricism in a consummate way. In the grave and stern description of the dilapidation and indecorousness of the towns along the Mississippi River and the folly, ignorance, greed, meanness, impudence, cruelty, hypocrisy and vulgarity of the folks, he describes the picturesque natural scenery imbued with deep love, pride and enthusiasm, which can express the discontent of the reality and the yearn for the natural life.

Second, the characterization in this novel is minute and graphic and the characters, full of distinctive personality, reflect the distinct features of the times. Huck, a white lad of smartness, goodness, fearlessness, and righteousness, is fond of free life, but fed up with the fetters of so-called discipline and civilization as well as the banal way of school education. Unwillingly to be barely resigned to the surroundings, Huck indomitably pursues his freedom and independence, the process of which forms a kind of admirable ①Sloane, David E.E., 2001, Student Companion to Mark Twain, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, p104

spirit. In addition, the superb description of Huck’s psychological conflict of whether to turn in Jim is both the symbol of Huck’s moral maturity and the quintessential part where the theme of the novel is distilled. As a slave, superstitious as Jim is, he never meekly submits to oppression or resigns himself to adversity. Instead, Jim resists the destiny as actively as he can. In pursuit of the freedom and liberty, Jim always accompanies Huck and takes great care of him like a father on the way. His goodness so deeply touches Huck that Huck gives up the idea of informing against him at last. Through Jim’s sincerity, generosity, intrepidity and tenacity, Twain forcibly castigates the prejudice of racism and enthusiastically extols the fine moral characters of black. Meanwhile, Twain has a talented grounding in language. We take delight in the colloquial and dialectal speech, which is precise, poetic and unpretentious. The immense uses of southern vernacular and black dialects in this novel not only manifest the strong flavor of southern regions but also maintain the black tradition. In other words, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn plays an indispensable role of carrying forward the black and southern culture. As the distinguished American poet, T.S. Eliot says,

“It is Huck who gives the book style. The River gives the book its form. But for the River, the book might be only a sequence of adventures with a happy ending. A river, a very big and

powerful river, is the only natural force that can wholly determine the course of human

peregrination.... Thus the River makes the book a great book... Mark Twain is a native, and

the River God is his God.”①

Third, Mark Twain is a master humorist. Lu Xun, the Chinese great writer, said that his humor contains grievance and satire. Mark selects the things of satiric meaning and exaggerates them in a caricatural way. Convulsed with laughter, people will deeply ponder over the reality. For this reason, his humor is abundant in the significances of reality. The major feature of his humor is that the narrator is in all seriousness while the narration is of preposterousness. Both of them focus on a distinctive contrast and accordingly create an effect of comedy, which can be also achieved through irony and ridicule of seriocomicness at the same time. The occurrence of this effect is related to the times when literature of humor prevails. At that time, most of them is commonly lacking in profound thoughts, aiming at amusement. Nevertheless, Twain closely links humor or satire with reality, that is to say, using humor as a weapon, he satirizes and condemns the falseness, ugliness and

① https://www.wendangku.net/doc/459440332.html,/od/adventuresofhuckleberry/a/huckfinn_writer.htm

unfairness in the society. It is necessary for him to be clear-minded, sharp-eyed and highly responsible. In Mark Twain’s own autobiography, he said,

“Humorists of the "mere" sort cannot survive. Humor is only a fragrance, a decoration.

Often is merely an odd trick of speech and of spelling. ...Humor must not professedly teach,

and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever. By forever, I

mean thirty years. ... I have always preached. That is the reason that I have lasted thirty years.”①

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the book in which Twain discovers the fullest possibilities of his humor. Humor and satire are smelted in the same furnace and integrated into a perfect mixture, which is full of both witticism and pun and no lack of social insight and analyses. What’s more, owning to the marvelous manifestation of black humor, Twain can be too regarded as the precursor of black humor in American literature.

Since the birth of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, more than one century has elapsed. Yet it has been among the most favorite books by readers all over the world and still in the spotlight of miscellaneous scrutiny and controversies. It not merely portrays vivid characters, white and black, good and bad, sincere and hypocritical, selfless and selfish, mean and noble, but also the panorama of the American society, both superficial and philosophical. It is taken as an epic of grandeur. It is no wonder that H. L. Mencken states,

“I believe that ‘Huckleberry Finn’ is one of the great masterpieces of the world, that it is the full equal of ‘Don Quixote’ and ‘Robinson Crusoe,’ that it is vastly better than Gil Blas,

‘Tristram Shandy,’ ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ or ‘Tom Jones.’ I believe that it will be read by

human beings of all ages, not as a solemn duty but for the honest love of it, and over and

over again, long after every book written in American between the years 1800 and 1860, with

perhaps three exceptions, has disappeared entirely save as a classroom fossil. I believe that

Mark Twain had a clearer vision of life, which he came nearer to its elementals and was less

deceived by its false appearances, than any other American who has ever presumed to

manufacture generalizations, not excepting Emerson. I believe that, admitting all his defects,

he wrote better English, in the sense of cleaner, straighter, vivider, saner English, than either

Irving or Hawthorne. …I believe that he was the true father of our national literature, the first

genuinely American artist of the royal blood.”②

①Twain, Mark, 2006, The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Beijing: Unity Press, Chapter 55, p352

②H. L. Mencken, 1913, Review of Albert Bigelow Paine's biography of Mark Twain, in “The Smart Set”

ct. https://www.wendangku.net/doc/459440332.html,/od/adventuresofhuckleberry/a/huckfinn_writer.htm

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