Mark Twain and the Endangered Family

Abstract

L IKE Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain often employed images of endangered families when he told a story. His canon is filled with people trying to cope with disrupted familial relations: mother figures waiting for lost children to return; anguished relatives searching for missing loved ones; children suddenly vulnerable because they have lost parents; and families trying to survive internecine conflicts. These images are often emotionally grounded in the tragedies haunting Twain's own life, and they help form the nightmare world which broods within the web of his humor. Yet, surprisingly, this preoccupation with the endangered family has received little, extended critical attention.' Such neglect is unfortunate, especially since this topic rests at the heart of Twain's pessimism. It also helps define his abiding ambivalence toward the family. My discussion, then, will examine how these images of dislocation affect the literary strategies in some of his works; how they occasionally undermine his satirical and philosophical stances; how they work against his completing some risky fictional ideas; and how they objectify and intensify the dilemmas facing the protagonists in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1 87 6) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (I884).2