Talk About It
In our day Eastern philosophy has made its way into our culture through yoga, meditation and the popularity of such figures as the Dalai Lama. But can we truly be both eastern and western in our life-view, both accepting fate as it comes and also striving to change our circumstances through sheer will power? Are we kidding ourselves when we attempt to assimilate both philosophies?
About the Author: Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay (now Mumbai), India in 1865. Indian servants cared for him and taught him the Hindi language. At age five, his parents boarded him in England with paid foster parents. This custom among English parents living in India sought to remove their children from the heat and deadly diseases of the colony. But, it was an unhappy five years as he felt abandoned and was physically abused and neglected in turn. He found solace in literature and poetry, voraciously reading the magazines and books his parents sent him. After enrolling in school at age 12, he was made editor of the school journal. The family’s limited finances prevented Kipling from attending a university. He returned, instead, to India and worked as a journalist in Lahore.
Kipling’s first book of fiction, consisting of forty stories, was published in 1888. The following year, he returned to England. His popularity grew as his stories proliferated. He lived in the United States briefly, returning again to England. He wrote The Jungle Book (1894), children’s stories that gained a wide international audience. For his finest novel, Kim (1900), Kipling revisited the subject of India, and an Irish orphan who adapts “early and completely to Indian ways.”
Considered one of the most popular writers in English in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Kipling was known for both his verse and his prose. George Orwell recognized him as “a prophet of British Imperialism,” a subject immediately followed with controversy. However, as the age of the European empires withdraws, Kipling proves an incomparable interpreter of how empire was experienced. He was the first English writer to receive the Nobel Prize for literature and remains the youngest laureate (at age 42) in that prize area. He died in 1936.
Sources:
Pinney, Thomas. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. ed. ‘Kipling, (Joseph) Rudyard (1865-1936)’. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, September 2004.
A Ride Down the River of Life:
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The same issues that were introduced in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer are raised in the sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, with the added theme of racial harmony, a courageous move on Twain’s part and one that caused the book to be banned in many places. This story of Tom’s best friend, Huck Finn, has the young white boy risking life and limb to help a black slave escape. The irony of political correctness is such that Huckleberry Finn has become controversial again in our time, and now for the opposite reason, namely, that Twain’s use of the offensive word, “nigger,” makes the book unacceptably racist. True, it is a jarring word, but, as Toni Morrison so brilliantly asserts, the word is inextricable from the novel, since Huck would not have referred to a black man in any other term. Morrison makes the point that Huck’s love for the runaway slave Jim represents racial harmony, but not racial equality. Neither Huck, nor Twain, could truly conceive of the black man as an equal. That Twain portrays Jim as human, fallible and with the same emotional complexity as his white characters, represented a great leap forward in literature, and one which we can celebrate while eschewing the epithet.
Synopsis
At the close of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” Huck and Tom end up wealthy young men, but Huck’s $6,000 share of Injun Joe’s treasure is too much temptation for Huck’s despicable father. He kidnaps Huck and holds him prisoner, trying to pry the money out of him. When Huck finally escapes he teams up with Jim, a runaway slave in search of his family, and they take a raft down the Mississippi river. Along the way they find a house lost in a flood and ransack it for valuables. They encounter feuding families and become embroiled in the dispute. Later they meet up with two con men named the King and the Duke and get into trouble with them. The King sells Jim and he ends up back at Aunt Polly’s house. Huck and Tom rescue him and all ends well.
Did You Know?
Mark Twain has the final word on any effort to find a deeper meaning in his works. He begins this book with the following “author’s notice:”
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. Author’s Notice.
Huck’s journey down the river is a journey of inner discovery as well. His conversations with Jim reveal Huck’s deep-seated prejudice and Jim’s great moral sense. Though he has little of the snobbery of his white neighbors, Huck simply cannot see Jim as a man like himself until it is almost too late. When Huck finally risks everything to rescue his friend Twain shows us an ideal of racial equality that was unheard of his day.
What Makes it Great?
Huck Finn is a remarkable creation, all boy, yet everyman as well. Through Huck’s eyes Twain teaches us to see the world in a new way. He manages the impossible task of preserving Huck’s dialect, mannerisms and vocal style while tackling themes that range from domestic abuse to moral integrity, and from democracy to religious faith. A pivotal moment in the narrative occurs when Huck, who delights in pranks, convinces Jim that he dreamed their frightening passage down part of the river. Jim, trusting as always, tries to interpret the dream, and suddenly realizes that the young man he considers his true friend has made a fool of him. Watch how Twain, while capturing the Negro vernacular perfectly, shows us the black man rising in dignity and the white boy seeing him, for the first time, as a man, with the same feelings, yet with even greater integrity than himself:
“Jim looked at the trash, and then looked at me, and back at the trash again. He had got the dream fixed so strong in his head that he couldn’t seem to shake it loose and get the facts back into its place again right away. But when he did get the thing straightened around he looked at me steady without ever smiling, and says: “What do dey stan’ for? I’se gwyne to tell you. When I got all wore out wid work, en wid de callin’ for you, en went to sleep, my heart wuz mos’ broke bekase you wuz los’, en I didn’ k’yer no’ mo’ what become er me en de raf’. En when I wake up en fine you back agin, all safe en soun’, de tears come, en I could a got down on my knees en kiss yo’ foot, I’s so thankful. En all you wuz thinkin’ ’bout wuz how you could make a fool uv ole Jim wid a lie. Dat truck dah is TRASH; en trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de head er dey fren’s en makes ‘em ashamed.”
Then he got up slow and walked to the wigwam, and went in there without saying anything but that. But that was enough. It made me feel so mean I could almost kissed HIS foot to get him to take it back.
It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger; but I done it, and I warn’t ever sorry for it afterwards, neither. I didn’t do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn’t done that one if I’d a knowed it would make him feel that way.” (98)
There are many moments of pure hilarity as well. Here for example, is Huck’s take on the various Christian virtues as they are taught to him:
On Bible learning with the Widow Douglas: “After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by and by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn’t care no more about him, because I don’t take no stock in dead people.” (10)
On right choices: “What’s the use you learning to do right, when it’s troublesome to do right and ain’t no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?” (104)
On church attendance: “There warn’t anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn’t any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in summer-time becau
se it’s cool. If you notice, most folks don’t go to church only when they’ve got to; but a hog is different.” (121)
There are also moments of majestic descriptive power, such as Huck’s picture of a sudden storm in Chapter Nine:
“It would get so dark that it looked all blue-black outside, and lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spider-webby; and here would come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale underside of the leaves; and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set the branches to tossing their arms as if they was just wild; and next, when it was just about the bluest and blackest—fst! It was as bright as glory and you’d have a little glimpse of tree tops a plunging about, away off yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see before; dark as sin again in a second, and now you’d hear the thunder let go with an awful crash and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling down the sky towards the under side of the world, like rolling empty barrels downstairs, where it’s long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you know.” (113)
Mark Twain, the man William Dean Howells referred to as “the Lincoln of our literature,” uses the backwoods vernacular of an unlearned boy to teach a higher set of ideals about human behavior. And he put a nation on notice when he had the white boy say of the black slave, “I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks does for their’n.”(23) Finally, when threatened with eternal damnation for breaking the law and aiding the runaway slave, he takes a stand between the false teachings of society and his inner voice.
“I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:
“All right, then, I’ll GO to hell.” (30)
This young boy, on a journey to discovery with a runaway slave, took a nation along for the ride, and changed the course of history.
Quotations taken from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Penguin Classics Edition, New York. 1986
Talk About It
Political correctness could be called the new Puritanism of our day. What is the limit? Is Huck Finn an objectionable book because of its use of an objectionable word? What are the justifications for keeping it in the canon?
Road Trips: Take it Personally
Huck Finn has had an impact on my thinking. When quite young I remember hearing a quote from the novel in a sermon about prayer:
“I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I couldn’t try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn’t come. Why wouldn’t they? It warn’t no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from ME, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn’t come. It was because my heart warn’t right; it was because I warn’t square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting ON to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth SAY I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger’s owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can’t pray a lie—I found that out.” (221)
This great quote speaks eloquently on two levels. On its face, it’s an excellent lesson about the dangers of lying to oneself, and, by extension, to God. But it’s more than just a Sunday School lesson. Huck has been taught, in church, that it is right to turn in a runaway slave, and so he is trying to feel right about that, even though in his heart he can feel that it is wrong. Twain is saying something deeply profound through this simple boy’s prayer, indicting an entire society for teaching its young people that wrong is right, and causing their moral confusion. Are we teaching our children right or wrong traditions?
This leads to another ice-axe question: where does racial prejudice come from, and can we see it in ourselves? Do you have racial prejudices that no amount of education or training can obliterate? Where do they surface? For example, if your child wanted to marry someone of a different race or culture, would you object? Why?
Chapter Five
True Romance
And think not you can direct the course of love, For love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
Kahlil Gibran
Romance is the fiction that owes no allegiance to the God of things as they are. In the novel the writer’s thought is tethered to the realm of probability, but in romance it ranges at will over the entire region of the imagination.
Ambrose Bierce
The search for love is at the center of human existence. So it’s no surprise that romance fiction is the best-selling genre of popular literature, accounting for $1.4 billion in annual sales and outselling both religious/inspirational books and science fiction/ fantasy, according to the Business of Consumer Book Publishing. But are we looking for love in all the wrong places? These three novels take a look at what we really ought to be seeking when it comes to romance, taking us to a deeper level than the romance novel ever dared. Jane Eyre teaches us that the route to a perfect union may be a long and treacherous one of self-denial. And according to E.M. Forster and A. S. Byatt, you may have to truly change your mind, that is, your whole way of thinking, before you can recognize that soul mate. So open your eyes and your heart and read on. Love may be just around the corner.
Beyond the Counterfeits of Love:
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
When Jane Eyre was first published in 1847, it was an immediate success, and at the same time, very controversial. Readers loved the tiny, feisty heroine and critics admired the mastery with which Bronte tackled a variety of thorny issues, such as the educational system, organized religion, and class prejudice. However, there seemed to be a rebelliousness about Jane, and about the novel, that frightened some, and the book was immediately attacked for its insistence on the idea that personal fulfillment is an acceptable goal for a woman, just as it is for a man. Though this seems hardly revolutionary stuff to us today, the defiant tone of the heroine shocked polite society.
Synopsis
Jane Eyre, an orphan taken in by her wealthy uncle, suffers an unhappy childhood. Bullied by her cousins and treated coldly by her aunt, she eventually rebels and is sent away to one of the infamous schools in Northern England. There she suffers cold, privation and humiliation at the hands of corrupt schoolmasters, yet also finds her gifts through the kindness of a few teachers and friends. She is eventually hired as a governess by Edward Rochester of Thornfield manor, a gruff yet charismatic man who is raising the French daughter of a former lover. Almost immediately she falls under his spell, and as their friendship deepens it blossoms into romance.
But Mr. Rochester has a secret: someone is hidden in the attic of the manor. It is only on the morning of their wedding that Jane learns that the hidden lunatic in the attic is the first Mrs. Rochester. Though Edward begs her to live with him as a mistress, Jane refuses and runs away. She suffers near starvation on the road and is eventually taken in by a minister and his sisters, to whom she is actually related. The minister proposes to Jane and wants to take her to India as a missionary/wife, but at the last moment Jane senses Mr. Rochester calling to her and travels home to Thornfield, only to find it burned to the ground. Mr. Rochester, blind and maimed from his attempt to save his first wife’s life, lives in a cottage nearby. They are reunited and marry, and eventually have a child.
What Makes it Great?
A great book has many layers, and the closer one examines the work the more one finds. Perhaps it might be useful to take an in-depth look at just one scene of this magnificent novel to appreciate the beauty of the language and the layers of symbolism it offers the reader. The climactic scene of the narrative takes place in the garden at Thornfield manor, Mr. Rochester’s ancestral home. The name itself (“Thorn field”) already has us thinking about Adam’s curse and his expulsion from Eden. Before Jane’s arrival, Thornfield had been a cursed place for Mr. Rochester. Now, in this great scene, Bronte br
ings her two lovers into their own garden of Eden through language, symbolism and Biblical and mythological allusions.
The scene opens on Midsummer Eve, a deeply symbolic night for the English, (still just a few hundred years away from their Druidic roots), and it truly is a Midsummer Night’s dream, with all the magic Shakespeare ever imagined about to commence. Jane describes her desire to enjoy the beautiful grounds, but, aware that Rochester is watching from the house, she steals into the orchard to be alone. “No nook in the grounds more sheltered and more Eden-like; it was full of trees, it bloomed with flowers . . .” Well, now we are with Jane (our Eve) in Eden, and all of our senses are called into play. Flowers and their fragrances are described, our sight is drawn to the lovely rising moon, and each sound of bird and breeze is carefully described. As Bronte, the master craftsman, slips quietly into the present tense we are drawn right into the garden with Jane; with her, we smell a familiar fragrance, Mr. Rochester’s cigar. (Until the recent past, this was one fragrance that was distinctly and exclusively masculine.) Adam has arrived.
And of course, he is eating fruit! He wanders among the trees and vines, sampling this cherry and that plum, and stoops to examine a great moth. (Watch out Jane, moths are drawn to flame. There is fire imagery everywhere.) As Jane attempts to escape she is accosted not by his person, but only by his voice. He speaks without turning and she is as much his captive as the moth. Jane wonders how he knows she is there: “could his shadow feel?” she asks herself. It is the first reference to the spiritual communication she senses between them. Since we are in Eden we are not surprised that they seat themselves at the base of a great tree.
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