Rediscovering Twain: Beyond Huck Finn and the Tall Tale

Abstract

I was not a “Twainiac,” as many of my cohorts came to call themselves, during the summer of 2011. Yet I understood and valued Twain’s contribution to the American literary canon and had looked forward to attending the NEH Summer Institute “Twain and the Culture of Progress” with the hope that I would gain a fresh perspective. Facilitated by Kerry Driscoll and the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut, the institute was a three-week-long intensive study of Twain’s formative experiences in Virginia City, Nevada, as well as in Hartford, Connecticut. We spent time in Virginia City tracing Clemens’s emergence as a writer capable of rendering the nuances of regionalism and humor during westward expansion, and then we studied at the Twain House in Hartford where Samuel Clemens lived the life of Mark Twain. I began my career as a public high school English teacher, so my e xperiences with Mark Twain had been limited to the requisite teaching of the c anonical titles and tales, and in many ways, I had grown tired of it. It had become harder for me to make the text relevant for my students—I had read and taught it so many times that I could anticipate almost all of my students’ questions and responses. I was tired of reading (and trying to explain to sixteen-year-olds) the “duke and the dauphin” chapters and I just needed a break. When I began teaching at the Community School of Naples a few years ago, I vowed, “Never again.” I said to anyone who would listen that I would no longer teach Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in my classroom. Ever. For the last several years, I have adhered to this admonition. However, after spending those few weeks participating in the institute I was ready to invite Sam (I became more intrigued with the man than the myth) and some of his lesser-known characters into my classroom. And while I don’t know if I will ever invite Huck back, I have shifted into using Twain primarily to teach the technicalities of style, satire, and humor in my classes. Certainly Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has a place in the American literary tradition because it is a rich text full of all of the literary devices and tropes of American realism. Yet, too often, teachers are limited—either by their departments or districts or by themselves—in their teaching of this text. They gloss over the moral wrangling that Huck goes through and often work to make everything “come out alright” in the end, but in doing so I think they ultimately do a disservice to their students and the text. Huck’s pivotal decision to face damnation for the man who has now become his friend is complex, and many