1082 Twain, Mark
nihilist view that life is insignificant and that noth-
ing endures after death, Bazarov has been unable to
reconcile it with the pain of his unrequited love for
Odintsova. He acknowledges that the pious routines
of his parents’ lives represent some level of security.
After he dies, it is his parents’ unwavering devotion
to his memory that indicates his ultimate tran-
scendence of death and dissolution. Through their
prayers for his redemption, they will ensure their son
a “life everlasting.”
Turgenev closes the novel with his affirmation
of the redeeming power of parenthood and parental
love: “Can it be that love, holy devoted love is not
omnipotent? Oh nay!” Even in their grief, Bazarov’s
parents represent the reconciliation of ideological
conflict and the coming of peace, not from an indif-
ferent cosmic nature but something much greater
and “everlasting.”
Divya Saksena
TwaiN, mark Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn (1884; 1885 [u.S.])
Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a
classic—and controversial—American novel. The
story is told in the first person, and Huck’s unique
voice has played a major role in establishing the
book’s reputation, both good and bad. Huck Finn
(as the title is often abbreviated) demonstrated for
the first time in American literature what could be
accomplished with the language of everyday speech
rather than the formal “literary” language employed
by earlier authors. But Huck’s words have shocked
as well as impressed readers since its publication:
The novel has a history of being banned from school
reading lists, initially for its use of profanity and
poor grammar and more recently for its treatment
of race. It is, however, a brilliant novel that accu-
rately reflects the American society and attitudes of
Twain’s time.
The book opens with Huck living with the
Widow Douglas and chafing under the constraints
of “sivilized” life. When his abusive and alcoholic
father reappears to stake a claim on his money, Huck
sets off down the river with a runaway slave named
Jim. Both are outsiders from society who seek refuge
on their small raft and friendship in one another.
As they travel, Huck and Jim encounter a colorful
parade of characters, including would-be murderers,
violent raftsmen, an aristocratic family caught in a
blood feud, two tramps claiming to be royalty, and
three orphaned sisters whose inheritance “the king”
and “the duke” would gladly steal. When Jim is
captured, Huck enlists his old friend Tom Sawyer to
help him escape. In scenes ranging from poignant to
hilarious, Huck learns to see Jim as a man equal to
any white person in dignity and feeling and comes to
his own conclusions about what it means to do the
right thing in the slaveholding South.
Cassandra NelsonISoLatIon in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Huck Finn may be one of the loneliest boys in all
of literature. He has no family to speak of, aside
from his adoptive guardian, the Widow Douglas,
and her spinster sister, Miss Watson. His mother is
dead, and his father has abandoned him, a fact he is
reminded of when the other boys in Tom Sawyer’s
gang struggle to figure out whom they would kill by
way of punishment if Huck were to betray the group.
Pa’s return only makes life more lonely for Huck,
with the abusive old man pulling him out of school
and locking him up alone inside the shack where
they live, for days at a time. There, Huck says, the
atmosphere is “dreadful lonesome.”
Huck freely and repeatedly confesses his feelings
of isolation to the reader. Often, they are connected
with thoughts about death. Alone in his room one
night, after listening to Miss Watson harp on about
a conception of heaven that does not at all match
Huck’s idea of paradise, he says, “I felt so lonesome I
most wished I was dead”—a sentiment he will echo
over and over again in the novel.
In addition to conflating thoughts of loneli-
ness with thoughts of death, Huck has a tendency
to project his feelings onto external objects. In the
scene quoted above, he hears leaves rustling “in the
woods ever so mournful” and “an owl who-whooing
about somebody that was dead.” Later on, in Pikes-
ville, he imagines the entire landscape imbued with
loneliness. The hum of insects “makes it seem so
lonesome and like everybody’s dead and gone,”
and the breeze makes him feel “mournful,” possibly
even suicidal. When a spinning wheel starts to wail