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Possibly the best known and most persistent controversy in American literature has been over the long, disappointing ending of Huckleberry Finn, where Tom Sawyer returns to stage a burlesque rescue of the slave Jim, only to reveal that Jim had been free all along by the order of Miss Watson. Hemingway called it "just cheating," and ever since Mark Twain has been charged with dodging the tough political questions implied by Huck and Jim's pursuit of freedom.
Critics looking for a clear political message have thought that the ending should have written itself. All Twain had to do was to follow through on the symbolism of the river journey and affirm the ideal of natural equality. He didn't have to free Jim, he just needed to stay focused on Jim's moral claim, to let us know that if history hadn't yet resolved the problem of Jim's inequality, literature would keep the dream alive. In short, literary form would confirm moral principle. Twain's botched ending is, for these critics, not just morally suspect, it's illogical. Neither as artistic nor as political statement does it make any sense.
I'm going to propose that literature is just the place for discovering another kind of sense. To measure this book's achievement by its symbolic resolution is to overlook the difficulties Twain encounters along the way in shaping his message with the unfolding implications of his story. These difficulties suggest that Twain was not only ambivalent about his message, he was suspicious of the symbolism we expect from literature. At times, he seems constrained by his symbolism and writes himself into difficulty just to see what else he can find out.
I have in mind a particularly crucial scene I'll discuss in some detail, one often cited for its moral-symbolic importance: when, in acknowledgment of Jim's feelings, Huck forces himself "to go and humble myself to a nigger." Up until now, this is Huck's strongest expression of commitment to Jim. We are to suppose that he is seeing Jim as his equal. Twain can't resist making one of Huck s best moments also his worst, by degrading Jim in order to acknowledge his humanity; but maybe we can let that pass. The comedy is not supposed to get in the...