The Use of the Imaginary in Huckleberry Finn: Mark Twains Bakhtinian Realism

I didn't see no di'monds, and I told Tom Sawyer so. He said there was loads of them there, anyway; and he said there was A-rabs there, too, and elephants and things. I said, why couldn't we see them, then? He said if I warn't so ignorant, but had read a book called Don Quixote, I would know without asking. He said it was all done by enchantment. (HF:41) Mark Twains Huckleberry Finn has been studied extensively within many perspectives: ethics, racism, realism, satire, etc. Therefore, it may seem hard to state a new fact or provide a new approach on this Great American novel. However, some of the former approaches lack multiple perspectives on their readings of Huckleberry Finn, focusing on singular aspects of the book. On this paper, I will concentrate on the ways Mark Twain uses disillusionment in Huckleberry Finn to enforce his understanding of realism, which, I argue, is Bakhtinian. The juxtaposition of the constructed reality of the texts and the characters imagined realities in Twains novel bears a striking similarity to those of Don Quixote, in which the knight Don Quixote and his squire Sancho Panza travel together in search of chivalric adventures. These juxtapositions occur not only between Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer whether in Adventures of Tom Sawyer, or when Tom enters the narrative in Huck Finn but, I argue, more importantly, also between Jim and Huck. Though Olin Harris Moore, in an article called Mark Twain and Don Quixote examines the relationship between Twain and Cervantes novel, he does not fully exhaust the subject in terms of the relationship between Tom and Huck / Huck and Jim. To pick up these traces, I will adopt a Bakhtinian perspective, using the Russian critics approach to the novel as multi voiced, where alien worlds around same objects come to exist. I suggest that, just as there is a substantial difference of perspective of reality between Huck and Tom, there is a similar disillusionment on Hucks part, when he comes to face the several truths about slavery. The influence of Don Quixote on Mark Twain is arguably there. On Life on the Mississippi, Twain comments on the novel in an admiring manner: A curious exemplification of the power of a single book for good or harm is shown in the effects wrought by Don Quixote and those wrought by Ivanhoe. The first swept the world's admiration for the medieval chivalry-silliness out of existence; and the other restored it. As far as our South is concerned, the good work done by Cervantes is pretty nearly a dead letter, so effectually has Scott's pernicious work undermined it. (Chapter 46) In A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court, the imagined imprisoned mistress by the three ogres, and Hank Morgan and Sandys different attitudes in this chapter also bear traces of a Quixotic situation. Tom Sawyer Romantic Huckleberry Finn Realist Jim his own version of truth about nature, herbs etc - alien words around the same objects Annotated huck finn don Quixote p. 43

, is similar to the strategies Cervantes uses in Don Quixote Huck Finn as narrator Huck Finn as speaker Huck Finn as underminer the uses of the word nigger From low class low strate of the society imitating styles carnivalesque In the second part of the paper, having established the realist vs romanticist perspective, I will trace the similarities between the novel and Cervantes Don Quixote, whose inner mechanics bears a striking resemblance to that of Huck Finn.

Realism, in short, was both a response and a solution to the problem of the past. The picturesque tradition was unable to deal with the pres- ent, and so realism made a religion of newness and contemporaneity. It dismissed the problem of artistic form (associated with the past) by refus- ing to acknowledge any distinction between art and life; the writer was not, in fact, a creative artist at all, but rather a reporter, a social commen- tator, or a psychologist. 537 Roger B. Salomon Realism as Disinheritance For both men the only acknowledged alternatives seemed to be, on the one hand, parody or bur- lesque of past styles that fades off into farce comedy and, on the other, what was confidently referred to as "simple and stately facts." 538

Whereas the writer of prose, by contrast as we shall see attempts to talk about even his own world in an alien language (for example, in the nonliterary language of the teller of tales, or the representative of a specific socio-ideological group); he often measures his own world by alien linguistic standards. (bakhtin 1096) 1101 sayfanin ortalari nigger zerine 1104 sayfa sonu Huck Finn and the Nature of Fiction: does not find in nature a single theme or mood, nor does he discover moral improvement in man where the natural scene might touch his soul. 210 Together Huck and Jim pre sent a philosophic dilemma. The one regards each discrete observation as complete in itself. The other tries to unify his experience, to find an overarching plan or purpose that gives shape and continuity to life. 212 And since Huck not only told the story but actually wrote the book, Huckleberry Finn is a novel without a "real" author. All of these de vices direct the reader's attention to the same issue. 213 He fails, however, to see that art imitates life and that it is life which mat ters. 218 Huck, who also pretends to be English despite his accent, tells her preposterous lies to support the king's and the duke's imposture and then swears the truth of what he has said on a dictionary.9 220

Tom, called Sid, behaves like Sid. Huck can not believe that Tom Sawyer would help to free a slave. In fact, Tom only pretends to break the law. 221 BY RENAMING HIMSELF, TOM BECOMES SOMEONEELSE. TOM SAWYER AS TOM SAWYER IN THE TOM SAWYER NOVEL WOULDNT BE ABLE TO DO IT ZORA NEALE HURSTON 1023 !!!