Huckleberry Finn
"Huck Finn"
This Huck Finn song tells the story of one of literature’s most unique voices: Huckleberry Finn. From faking his death to hanging out with his friend Tom Sawyer, Huck was never short on action. Mark Twain’s classic tale of freedom and adventure hits the screens with this music video.
This video was produced through a partnership with READ Magazine.
The river keeps on churning
And the world just keeps on burning
And I find myself yearning
For the freedom.
You don’t know about me, without you have read a book,
By a Mr. Mark Twain, and the man ain’t a crook,
But a crook’s life has always sort of sounded right to me,
So I joined up with Tom Sawyer’s gang, now I loves some robbery.
I preferred my nature up close, and not through a window,
But Tom said live respectable-like up there with the widow,
So I did, yessiree, and they learned me to read and write,
I knew my math facts cold, man, yeah I had ‘em mesmorized.
Yes I knew the times tables cold, like 6 x 7 is 35,
My life wasn’t half bad, you know it was purty nice,
But all of a sudden my pap showed up, he'd heard I'd struck it rich,
And my dad’s a drunken bum, you know he's a real son of gun.
He locked me in a cabin, I felt like I might just turn to dust,
All he did was beat me up while he drank and he cussed,
He’d cuss the government, and that was just the beginnin'
He’d cuss the folk he knew so well, and all the folk he didn’t,
Now imagine your own dear old dad, all drunk and shaking,
Chasing you ’round a cabin ‘cuz he thinks you might be Satan,
Well, that went on just a little too long, I was ready to escape,
So I hedged my bets, and faked my death, and floated away on…
The river keeps on churning
And the world just keeps on burning
And I find myself yearning
For the freedom.
I floated to an island and there I set up shop,
Meanwhile the whole town scoured the river from the bottom to the top,
And pretty soon it hit me, I wasn’t all alone,
A slave I knew named Jim had also made this isle his home,
Turns out his owner Miss Watson had bigger plans for Jim,
She had found an eager buyer and was planning on selling him,
Too bad, it was really sad, but we knew we couldn’t stay,
The town folk saw our rising smoke over a mile away,
We pushed off in the raft, rather quick in a jiffy,
To get out and live the good life on the Ole Mississippi,
Yippie! I didn’t give a dang if they missed me,
Me and Jim were livin’ large like some 19th Century hippies,
Our goal was the Ohio River, catch a steamer heading north,
Ol’ Jim would be free, and so we set our course,
But a fog set in so thick and damp, you wouldn’t even believe,
Couldn’t see, couldn’t think, no we couldn’t hardly breathe,
We missed the Ohio, and then we met some nasty dudes,
They were out for blood and money, slave hunters through and through.
Now I should've given Jim up, he was someone's property,
But I couldn’t turn my back on him, c'mon man, honestly,
The river keeps on churning
And the world just keeps on burning
And I find myself yearning
For the freedom.
But the river can be mean, and a steam ship downright smashed us,
Splashed us, I lost Jim in the river and the fact is,
I ended up smack dab in the middle of a good ole family feud,
Some people love to kill and others love to be rude,
But Jim came back ("Hey there Jim"), and we escaped on the raft,
Living the lovely life again, watching the stars on our backs,
Sometimes a steamboat would slip by in the dark, and out her chimbley,
She’d belch a whole wide world of sparks, dang it was awful pretty,
As you might of guessed, there were more adventures after that,
Jim was free, my dad was dead, you prolly think I’d go back...
To that "sleeping in a bed" life, but then you'd have it wrong,
Cause civilized means full of lies, and that's why I sing this song.
I’m on…
The river keeps on churning
And the world just keeps on burning
And I find myself yearning
For the freedom.
In the opening sentence, the narrator tells us that we may know him from another book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, written by "Mr. Mark Twain." Twain wrote that novel in the third person. This book is written in the first person, however, and Huck seems to be claiming that he is the one writing this book. The story is told in his unmistakable voice.
Tom Sawyer's gang is a bit like Fight Club. The first rule is: you do not talk about it. The gang members act like robbers, but it's all in fun. They imagine that they're attacking Arab caravans, and they try to figure out what the word ransom means.
By and by, Huck starts to get used to his now "civilized" life. He even gets better at school, finding that "the longer I went to school the easier it got to be. I was getting sort of used to the widow's ways, too, and they warn't so raspy on me."
In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Huck and Tom find a treasure worth thousands of dollars. Judge Thatcher puts the money in the bank for them until they become adults.
Huck was beat up very badly by his dad. As he says, "I was all over welts."
Pap, in many ways, represents the worst of Southern white society. He is angry, violent, ignorant and completely racist. His rants allow Twain the opportunity to voice some critiques of racist and violent behavior.
Huck hatches a brilliant plan for escaping. Gathering everything of value onto a canoe hidden by the river, he then kills a wild pig and smears the blood throughout the cabin. Not only does he want to escape, he wants his father to think that he's dead.
Most contemporary criticism of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn focuses on the portrayal of race in the novel. Some critics argue that Twain humanizes Jim, makes him relatable, and thus challenges the basic assumptions of slavery: that black people were somehow less than people. But other critics have argued that Twain falls far short of this goal, and that his portrayal of Jim is itself rooted in stereotypes and ignorance.
Huck dresses as a girl and goes to a nearby town to find out what people know about his disappearance. He wants to know whether everyone thinks he's dead and what's happened with his father. He learns that the townsfolk have seen the smoke from his campfire on the island, and that they plan on going there to capture Jim.
On the raft, Jim and Huck "live pretty high," buying, hunting, or "borrowing" food along the way. They don't feel great about the stealing part, though; so they make a list of everything they're allowed to steal and cross out "crabapples and p'simmons," both of which would be gross to eat anyway.
Jim and Huck aim for the Ohio River, which runs into the free states, but they miss it one night in a thick fog. Huck, meanwhile, is troubled by his conscience. He acknowledges that Miss Watson is Jim's "rightful owner." But he's also reluctant to turn in Jim, who tells Huck that he is "de on'y white genlman dat ever kep' his promise to ole Jim."
This is the moment when Huck's personal attachment to Jim trumps his belief in society's laws. In doing so, he explains his guiding moral compass. When he must choose whether to do "right" or "wrong," he decides to "always do whichever come handiest at the time."
"Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft."
Steamboats (or steam ships or steamers) began taking voyages down the Mississippi in 1811. In the decades that followed, they exploded in popularity, offering a relaxing and relatively quick way to travel. But there were negative effects too. The large boats changed the movement of water and silt, affecting the environment and making it harder for smaller boats to navigate. In addition, the ships themselves were fairly dangerous. Boiler explosions and onboard fires were common.
Huck spends some time with a family called the Grangerfords, who take him in. He soon finds that his hosts have a long-standing feud with another family, the Shepherdsons. Twain was remarkably skilled at introducing surprising, barely believable plot elements that allowed him to comment on the state of society. In the case of this deadly family feud, Twain was most likely commenting on the infamous Hatfield-McCoy feud (1878-1891). These two West Virginia-Kentucky families had a long-standing grudge that eventually ended in the death of over a dozen family members. Twain was also making a larger point about conflicts and war in general. What point do you think he was making?
Twain was a phenomenally talented writer, as demonstrated in his choice of narrators. Letting Huck Finn tell the story was a smart idea. Huck's unique voice allowed Twain to make all sorts of humorous observations and also allowed him to get very lyrical:
"Once or twice of a night we would see a steamboat slipping along in the dark, and now and then she would belch a whole world of sparks up out of her chimbleys, and they would rain down in the river and look awful pretty; then she would turn a corner and her lights would wink out and her powwow shut off and leave the river still again; and by and by her waves would get to us, a long time after she was gone, and joggle the raft a bit, and after that you wouldn't hear nothing for you couldn't tell how long, except maybe frogs or something."
"Once or twice of a night we would see a steamboat slipping along in the dark, and now and then she would belch a whole world of sparks up out of her chimbleys, and they would rain down in the river and look awful pretty; then she would turn a corner and her lights would wink out and her powwow shut off and leave the river still again; and by and by her waves would get to us, a long time after she was gone, and joggle the raft a bit, and after that you wouldn't hear nothing for you couldn't tell how long, except maybe frogs or something."
This song skips over all the adventure with the duke and the dauphin, two scam artists who work various cons as they travel down the river. Nor do we mention all the hijinks that happen when Jim gets out of prison, while Huck pretends to be Tom, or when Tom is shot in the leg, etc. If you want to learn about all that, you should read the book.
We learn that Jim was free and had been nearly the whole time because Miss Watson died and freed him in her will. Jim reveals that the dead body he had found floating earlier was in fact Huck's "pap."
Does Huck change in the story? In some ways he's the same guy: playful, distrustful of authority, yearning for independence and contradictory. But it's hard not to feel that he has matured in some way, that his moral compass is stronger, and that he is a hero of sorts. This interpretation is strengthened by the reappearance of Tom Sawyer, whose make-believe games have real consequences or nearly do.
But for anyone trying to glorify Huck or think he's changed too much, he would strenuously object. In fact, he maintains his voice and his yearning for freedom right to the end: "I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before."
But for anyone trying to glorify Huck or think he's changed too much, he would strenuously object. In fact, he maintains his voice and his yearning for freedom right to the end: "I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before."
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