The Formalistic Approach Applied in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn(II) 吴怡雯

St. Petersburg, Missouri (where the story begins)

Pap’s Cabin (Pap kidnaps Huck and holds him in a cabin across the river.)

Jackson’s Island, in the middle of Mississippi (Huck escapes and hides in the Jackson’s Island, where he meets Jim. )

Grangerfords VS. Shepherdsons (Huck and Jim are separated because a steamboat slams into their raft before. When Huck leaves there, they meet again.)

They rescue two men: the duke and the dauphin.

Wilk’s Funeral (The duke and the dauphin pretend to be Wilks’s brothers and want to swindle Peter Wilks’s inheritance.)

Phelp’s Farm (Tom Sawyer hatches a wild plan to free Jim with Huck. Finally, Jim become a free man.)

C. Romance and Reality, Land and River: The Journey as Repetitive Form in Huckleberry Finn One level: a pattern of departures and returns At each end there is a block of chapters set on the land and in a world where Tom Sawyer can exist and even dominate. In the middle are chapters largely related to the river as Huck and Jim travel down that river; here realism, not a Tom Sawyer romanticism, dominates. Further, in the central portion there is a pattern of alternations between land and river.

C. Romance and Reality, Land and River: The Journey as Repetitive Form in Huckleberry Finn Huckleberry Finn: point-of-view character T. S. Eliot: Tom’s story is told by an adult looking at a boy and his gang; Huck’s narrative requires that we see the world through his eyes.

C. Romance and Reality, Land and River: The Journey as Repetitive Form in Huckleberry Finn Is Huckleberry Finn a reliable narrator? Objective narrator He assumes that society is right and that he is simply depraved. Trustworthy narrator He has been forced to lie in order to get out of trouble but he never lies to himself or to his reader. We are forced to see beyond Huck’s simple narration

C. Romance and Reality, Land and River: The Journey as Repetitive Form in Huckleberry Finn T. S. Eliot: Huck has not imagination, in the sense in which Tom has it; he has, instead, vision. He sees the real world; and he does not judge it —— he allows it to judge itself.

C. Romance and Reality, Land and River: The Journey as Repetitive Form in Huckleberry Finn The movement of the novel: straightforward sequence —— what happened, what happened next, and then what happened after that Repetitive Form: The consistent maintaining of a principle under new guises… a restatement of the same thing in different ways… A succession of images, each of them regiving the same lyric mood; a character repeating his identity, his “number”, under changing situations; the sustaining of an attitude as in satire… ——Kenneth Burke

C. Romance and Reality, Land and River: The Journey as Repetitive Form in Huckleberry Finn A journey from north to south A journey from relative innocent to horrifying knowledge Huck learns bit by bit about the depravity that hides beneath respectability and piety. He learns gradually and unwilling that society or civilization is vicious and predatory and monolithic mass. The mass of humanity is hopelessly depraved, and the genuinely honest individual is constantly being victimized, betrayed, and threatened.

C. Romance and Reality, Land and River: The Journey as Repetitive Form in Huckleberry Finn The Mississippi: the novel’s major symbol The real freedom and contemplation We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.

C. Romance and Reality, Land and River: The Journey as Repetitive Form in Huckleberry Finn A major irony: the freedom is never really achieved The circular pattern of flight and captivity