Heroic Parody in Twain's Huckleberry Finn

The Creation of an Ironic Anti-Hero In American Literature

Jul 27, 2009

In Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain satirizes the portrayal of the great hero by making the protagonist a dirty, mischievous, fowl-mouthed little boy.

Throughout the history of literature, heroes have been strong, courageous, and honorable. From Hercules to Douglas Quaid, a hero is man amongst men, and a savior to many. Then, upon the writing of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Charles L. Webster and Company, ISBN: 05532107931884), 1884), a new type of hero was created in spite of the typical “hero.”

The “Confined” Huck

The book starts with Huck being confined to a “civilized life” by Miss Watson and the Widow Douglas. If he isn’t out on adventures, he is nothing at all. Twain uses this fact to parallel a hero’s plight of being a hero. Just as Perseus wasn’t anything if he wasn’t slaying Medusa or messing with the Gods, Huck Finn is less of a person if he isn’t getting in trouble and running around like a misdirected youth.

He fakes his death and, in effect, kills the confined Huck. The same commitment and need for excitement could be said about Huck and Jim’s journey as a whole. It could be said that lesser men would have fled the scene as they did. It is more accurate, however, to say that Huck was bound by his internal desire to be on a never ending adventure.

A Humorous Pastiche of a Hero

Even the book’s most famous line is a satire on a hero’s valor. Huck, when deciding whether or not he wants to turn in Jim via a letter to Miss Watson, rips up the letter and declares “All right, then, I’ll go to hell.” This declaration is no less weighty and important than Nathan Hale’s regret that he has but one life to lose for his country, but Huck’s fluctuating morals and questionable treatment of Jim as a “friend” make the statement a humorous take on a hero’s ethical upholding.

When Huck hides the inheritance money of Peter Wilks in the coffin of Wilks himself, he is attempting to rectify a major wrong (the liquidation of Wilks’ estate to the Duke and the Dauphin). The whole situation is reminiscent of a heroic tale: a beautiful woman (Mary Jane), villains (the Duke and the Dauphin), innocent bystanders (the sisters), and even a sidekick (Jim).

Twain twists this whole ordeal and not only paints the non-villains as somewhat inhuman, but lets the Duke and the Dauphin get away with the money. Huck tries, fails, and doesn’t get overly worked up about it. In the same way that a hero moves on to the next adventure or crime, win or lose, Huck perseveres relatively unscathed.

A Hero’s Plan

In the process of freeing Jim, Twain sets up one of his biggest heroic metaphors. Even though breaking Jim out was a relatively easy job, Huck and his friend of equal heroic symbolism, Tom Sawyer, set up an elaborate scheme to break him out. All they had to do was sneak Jim out of the shed, but instead they devised a plan that used encoded messages, tunnels, and many other ridiculous loops to jump through to do a simple task.

Huck is amazed at Tom’s plan, and even states that it’s worth about fifteen of Huck’s plan in the style category (plus it has the added bonus of getting them both killed). Here we see the ever necessary element of danger being forcibly moved into Huck’s situation. Twain realized the lack spectacle in Huck’s original idea, and needed to parody the dramatic battle scene that can be seen everywhere from Milton’s Paradise Lost to a Schwarzenegger film like Total Recall.

A Grand Ending

Just as almost all of the work that a hero does, Huck Finn ends in a grand and overly forced “happily ever after” manner. The ending brings mixed reactions from people, usually resulting in one of two ideas. The first is that Twain was tired of the novel, had changed his views and style since the start of the book many years ago, and just wanted to end it. The other is that Twain was satirizing a popular ending of the times by using the ending himself.

As with many stories, things just work themselves out, and this is no exception. The hero (In this case, Huck) returns from his adventures (his journey on the Mississippi river) to find that evil is dead (Huck’s father Pap) and the wrong has been righted (Jim is now free). The story even has the added mystery factor that the dead man that Jim saw on Jackson Island may have been Pap Finn. Twain wraps up the story in the only way that it shouldn’t have been wrapped up: happiness and justice served by happenstance and a little mischievous boy.

The copyright of the article Heroic Parody in Twain's Huckleberry Finn in American Fiction is owned by Ryan Werner. Permission to republish Heroic Parody in Twain's Huckleberry Finn in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.