Before turning to Twain’s novel, I want to note differences and similari-
ties between probability as it applies to events and probability as it applies to
narration. Probability as it applies to events is primarily about an unfolding
sequence of causality: how probable is the initiating event (in light of what
we know about character and storyworld), and how probably does cause X
within the constraints of this storyworld lead to event Y? Probability as it
applies to narration is primarily a question of epistemology: How can such
and such a narrator in such and such a situation know what he or she knows?
Alternatively, how can a naïve, unself-conscious narrator withhold important
information until its revelation has maximum effect? (Gérard Genette has
labeled situations in which narrators tell more than they seemingly should be
able to know paralepsis, and situations in which narrators tell less than they
know paralipsis [Narrative Discourse 195].) But underneath this epistemologi-
cal question is a concern with causality: how this effect (this narrator’s know-
ing or withholding this information) can be reconciled with what appear to be
insufficient causes to produce it (the limitations of what such and such a nar-
rator in such and such a situation can be presumed to know, or the limitations
that unself-conscious naïveté put on a narrator’s command of the telling).
There is an additional important consideration about probability as it
applies to narration: the role of conventions. For example, there is a conven-
tion in fictional narrative that authorizes omniscient narration, and there is a
convention in nonfictional narrative that authorizes memoirists to quote long-
past conversations verbatim. The existence of such conventions is instruc-
tive for two reasons: (1) It indicates that authors and audiences have found
it worthwhile to suspend the laws of extratextual probability in exchange for
the positive effects on the overall feedback loop that the conventions make
possible. (2) Once established, a convention can function as part of the domi-
nant probability scheme of a narrative. In practical terms, then, an omni-
scient narrator in a nineteenth-century novel is neither an impossibility nor
an improbability, and a memoirist quoting long-ago conversations is not a liar.
This point about conventions also entails a point about history: since conven-
tions change over time, what counts as a violation at one period may become
conventional at another.
Although the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn includes some outlandish
episodes, Mark Twain, in the first two-thirds of the novel, primarily oper-
ates with the probability system of fictional mimesis: Huck is designed to be
a plausible adolescent and his adventures are designed to follow extratextual
patterns of cause and effect. In the beginning of chapter 2, Huck reports two
events that occur on a nighttime excursion he has with Tom Sawyer, events
that are consistent with this system of probability. Tom helps himself to some
44 • CHAPTER 2