85TJ123-8-2009 LK VWD0011 Tradition Humanistic 6th Edition W:220mm x H:292mm 175L 115 Stora Enso M/A Magenta (V)Q How does Twain bring to life the personalities
of Huck and Jim?
Q How does Huck resolve his moral dilemma?CHAPTER 30 Industry, Empire, and the Realist Style 8585put a twenty dollar gold piece on this board, and you get it
when it floats by. I feel mighty mean to leave you, but my
kingdom! it won’t do to fool with small-pox, don’t you see?”
“Hold on, Parker,” says the other man, “here’s a twenty to
put on the board for me. Good-bye, boy, you do as Mr. Parker
told you, and you’ll be all right.”
“That’s so, my boy—good-bye, good-bye. If you see any
runaway niggers, you get help and nab them, and you can 170
make some money by it.”
“Good-bye, sir,” says I, “I won’t let no runaway niggers get
by me if I can help it.”
They went off, and I got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low,
because I knowed very well I had done wrong, and I see it
warn’t no use for me to try to learn to do right; a body that don’t
get startedright when he’s little, ain’t got no show^6 —when the
pinch comes there ain’t nothing to back him up and keep him to
his work, and so he gets beat. Then I thought a minute, and
says to myself, hold on,—s’pose you’d a done right and give 180
Jim up; would you felt better than what you do now? No, says
I, I’d feel bad—I’d feel just the same way I do now. Well, then,
says I, 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? I was stuck. I couldn’t answer that.
So I reckoned I wouldn’t bother no more about it, but after this
always do whichever come handiest at the time....Russian Realism: Dostoevsky and Tolstoy
More pessimistic than Dickens or Twain, and more pro-
foundly analytic of the universal human condition, were the
Russian novelists Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881) and Leo
Tolstoy (1828–1910). Both men were born and bred in
wealth, but both turned against upper-class Russian socie-
ty and sympathized with the plight of the lower classes.
Tolstoyultimately renounced his wealth and property
and went to live and work among the peasants. His histor-
ical novel War and Peace(1869), often hailed as the great-
est example of realistic Russian fiction, traces the progress
of five families whose destinies unroll against the back-
ground of Napoleon’sinvasion of Russia in 1812. In this
sprawling narrative, as in many of his other novels, Tolstoy
exposes the privileged position of the nobility and the
cruel exploitation of the great masses of Russian people.
This task, along with sympathy for the cause of Russian
nationalism in general, was shared by Tolstoy’s friend and
admirer, Ilya Repin (1844–1930), whose portrait of Tolstoy
brings the writer to life with skillful candor (Figure 30.6).
Russia’s preeminent Realist painter, Repin rendered with
detailed accuracy the miserable lives of ordinary
Russians—peasants, laborers, and beggars—in genre paint-
ings that might well serve as illustrations for the novels of
Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.
Dostoevsky paid greater attention than Tolstoy to
philosophical and psychological issues. His characters are
often victims of a dual plight: poverty and conscience.
Their energies are foiled by bitter efforts to resolve their
own contradictory passions. Dostoesvsky’s personal life
contributed to his bleak outlook: associated with a group of
proletarian revolutionaries, he was arrested and deported to
Siberia, where he spent five years at hard labor. The neces-
sity of suffering is a central theme in his writing, as is the
hope of salvation through suffering.
The novels Crime and Punishment(1866), The Possessed
(1871), and The Brothers Karamazov(1880) feature protag-
onists whose irrational behavior and its psychological con-
sequences form the central theme of the novel. In Crime
and Punishment, Raskolnikov, a young, poor student,
murders an old woman and her younger sister; his crime
goes undetected. Thereafter, he struggles with guilt—the
self-punishment for his criminal act. He also explores the
problems arising from one’s freedom to commit evil. In the
following excerpt, the protagonist addresses the moral
question of whether extraordinary individuals, by dint of
their uniqueness, have the right to commit immoral acts.
The conversation, which takes place between Raskolnikov
and his friends, is spurred by an article on crime that
Raskolnikov had published in a journal shortly after drop-
ping out of university. This excerpt is typical of Dostoevsky’s
fondness for developing character through monologue
and dialogue, rather than through descriptive detail.Figure 30.6 ILYA REPIN, Portrait of Leo Tolstoy, 1887. Oil on canvas.
Repin was celebrated for his realistic depictions of contemporary
Russian life and for the psychological insight he brought to his portraits
of notable Russian writers and composers.(^6) Has no chance.