. . .does Huckleberry Finn deserve its celebration as a testimony to freedom? What exact place, in fact, does freedom have among the book’s themes? . . . a firm grip upon the complete and total text is necessary to understand the form freedom takes in the book.

. . .In the broadest sense, the theme of freedom begins to engage us at the outset: Huck feels cramped and confined in his new condition as ward of Widow Douglas and closet neophyte of Miss Watson. The early episodes with Tom Sawyer add a complicating paradox: to enjoy the freedom of being “bad"--joining Tom’s gang--Huck must submit himself to his adopted household and appear “respectable.” With Pap’s arrival the paradox is reversed; now he can enjoy his former freedom to lounge and choose his time, but the expense is a confinement even more threatening, a virtual imprisonment. The only release is, escape, flight, and effacement of the identity through which both town and Pap oppress him; he can resume autonomy only by assuming “death” for his name.

In brief and general terms, such is the inner logic of the theme of freedom as we arrive at the Jackson Island episode. With Jim’s appearance as a runaway slave a new and decisive development begins. We now have two runaways, and their conjunction generates the rest of the narrative,’ deepens the theme, and forces nuances to the surface. Jim’s situation is both simpler and more urgent than Huck’s. His freedom is no more or less than escape, from bondage, escape to free territory. He expects there to assume what is denied him in slave society, his identity as an adult man, husband, and father. The fact that the reader is made to share this expectation with Jim, that the novel does not allow us to anticipate a reversal of hope if Jim reaches free territory, is important; as readers we are freed of normal historical ambiguities in order to accept as a powerful given the possibility of fulfilled freedom for Jim. Thus by confining the action to the area of slave society, Mark Twain compels us (at the expense of historical accuracy, perhaps) to imagine the boundary between “slave” and “free” as real and unequivocal, and to accept that boundary as the definition of Jim’s plight: on the one side, enslaved; on the other, free.

Jim presents himself, then, unencumbered by the paradoxes of Huck’s problem: to be free, to possess himself, to reveal a firm identity--these will be equal consequences of the single act of crossing the border. The effect of such a simplifying and unambiguous presence in the book is, first, to bring into relief the more subtle forms of denial of freedom, forms which cannot be overcome by simple geographical relocation, and second, to force Huck, once the boy commits himself to the slave, into a personal contradiction. Jim can say, as soon as he escapes from Miss Watson, “I owns myself,” while Huck is still “owned” by the official values supervised by his “conscience.” Once Jim’s freedom becomes Huck’s problem, the boy finds himself at odds with what Mark Twain called his “ deformed conscience.” Huck’s “sound heart” may respond to Jim’s desire to recover his humanity at the border, but his. conscience wants to repress that response.

In light of this conflict, implicit in Huck’s words at the end of Chapter 11, “They’re after us!” what would constitute: freedom for Huck? Clearly, getting Jim to the free states would not be enough. He would need to free himself of moral deformity before he too can say “I owns myself.” Just as clearly neither issue is resolved in the novel. And the book’s indecision is reflected in the criticism. The controversies regarding the “Evasion” at the Phelps farm need not be reviewed here, but it is useful to point out that the question of the ending eventually becomes a question of form, of judgment about the book’s unity of tone and intention. Those who wish for Jim’s release through a heroic act by Huck tend to feel the ending flawed, and those who wish for Huck’s escape from all consciences, including a “good” abolitionist conscience, tend to accept the ending. . .

The Critical Response to Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. Contributors: Laurie Champion - editor. Greenwood Press: Westport, CT. 1991.