Huck Finn Experts

Though never studying or being an expert on psychology, Henry Nash Smith writes a psychoanalytical paper called “A Sound Heart and a Deformed Conscience.” Here, Smith explains how Twain uses setting and supernatural ideas to create a deeper understanding for his lead character, and without such, readers would not understand the full of Huck Finn as a character.

Smith describes one of the key parts of Twain’s characterization of Huck is “the boy’s capacity for love,” which is “projected into the natural setting.” Smith believes that “without qualification as a symbolic account of Huck’s emotions he [Twain] would have undercut the complexity of characterization implied in his recognition of Huck’s inner conflict of loyalties. Instead, he uses the natural setting to render a wide range of feelings and motives.” Smith seems to see the line between love and loyalty as thin, and Twain would not have crossed in had the novel not been in a setting where things are constantly out of the characters’ control. Many of the situations that Huck and Jim came across were uncontrollable natural accidents, and in many of the situations, Huck choose to help or stay with Jim. If they had not been in a natural setting, it would have made sense that only loyalty guided Huck’s relationship with Jim, as he would have stayed by his loyalty to others, such as Tom or possibly Widow Douglas, and would have given Jim up. However, since they were together in nature, the Huck’s love for Jim was able to build and over power loyalty.

Another important part of Twain’s writing that Smith touches on is “the characterization of Huck [that goes] beyond the needs of the plot.” After showing a passage from the first chapter of Huck alone, Smith explains “the whimpering ghost with something incommunicable on its mind and Huck’s cold shivers suggest a burden of guilt and anxiety that is perhaps the punishment he inflicts on himself for defying the mores of St. Petersburg,” and believes that “ the narrator whose stream of consciousness is recorded here is much more than the innocent protagonist of the pastoral idyl of the raft, more than an ignorant boy who resists being civilized.” This can connect back to Huck’s “capacity for love” and the complexity of Huck’s character. The author never had to talk about what happened in St. Petersburg, a major part of the novel Huck was previously a part of. However, the “burden of guilt and anxiety” for Huck can lead readers to believe that some of his motives from the novel could have come from that instead of what was implied in the novel. Having multiple motives for the character was unnecessary for the author, though he still chose to do it, most likely to point out that there is more to Huck than the “ignorant boy who resists being civilized,” which is absolutely true. When he is with the King and the Duke, he could have gone with the con’s, as it would have been a great way to resist civilization, but he continually explained his disdain for it, showing there is obviously more.