The Grangerfords and Shepherdsons Feud Flared Up Again by Doing What
Yesterday in class students asked what the bargain was with Emmeline in the Grangerford and Sheperdson epidsode in The Adventures in Blueberry Finn.It's a good question and I'one thousand glad they asked it; it indicates to me that they're wondering about the volume in means that volition lend them insight. Simply asking why a writer includes something in a volume admits that the writer has crafted the work intentionally and that the book has a purpose deeper than just to characterize a series of events.
Our main way of approaching the text for an answer is to explore the crazy cycle of the feud. We need to notice how Huck, our ever adaptable straight man, wants to accommodate to his new setting and fit in with the Grangerford family. He admires them all but admires Colonel Grangerford in particular, as he is a "admirer" who is "well born, every bit the saying is, and that's worth as much in a man equally it is in a horse" (117). I find information technology helpful to realize how this might bring to listen Aunt Alexandra from To Kill a Mockingbird–the idea of beingness from a good family is an important thing in one case once more, and Huck explains that even Pap had always realized this, even though "he warn't no more quality than a mud-true cat, himself" (117).
And then this high class, well bred family is one we should admire, as far as Huck is concerned, and he gives u.s. a detailed clarification of their house to prove his point–all high class belongings, showing the Grangerfords are rich folk. And so we slowly larn how things work for the Grangerfords with the feud. Along with Huck, we larn the definitions of cowardice and honor: laurels is what Buck explains, that you pick of 1 of theirs when they selection off i of yours. Cowardice is shooting from behind a bush-league where your victim can't see you. A grown man shooting an unarmed child is not cowardice, because the child should have known better than to be unarmed, and that man was willing to face his own pursuers with backbone.
On the one hand, equally we discussed in form, nosotros can meet the reasoning behind all this. Buck'southward shooting at a human being from behind a bush does strike us as dishonorable. But the Grangerfords and Shepherdsons are locked into their own special crazy cycle, every bit we mapped out on the board with something like this:
You impale ane of ours, we kill i of yours, and information technology tin can't end unless it ends every bit Buck describes–with everyone being dead. Yet Huck doesn't understand this fully, and he feels responsible for all the killing that takes place later on Miss Sophia runs off. As nosotros pointed out, however, Huck's actions are not the cause on a broader level; the larger problem is that rationale the two families use for standing their feud–the crazy cyle. Tied up in the center of that, insulated from outside explanations of reality, masked by their high-class status, are the Grangerfords' ideas about award and courage. For us equally readers, it'southward similar we are moving along a line above that cycle and tin encounter it all as lunacy; but for Huck, he'southward trapped in the middle and in his adaptability he'due south been drawn slightly into the circumvolve.
What near Emmeline? I am convinced Emmeline is a kind of clue to us equally readers or a display of the family'southward inability to see beyond their insular crazy cycle. They alive this sick life of revenge and expiry, a life so dramatically twisted that it generates the kinds of moments Huck experiences when he starting time arrives at the firm, having guns pointed at him and having to creep within with his hands upward. All that life is capable of producing, it seems, is death. Even in life, expiry is the ascendant theme, as we see with Emmeline and her pictures and poems–the pictures amusingly (and darkly) all ending with "alas" and Emmeline rushing to beat out the undertaker to anyone's death. The family mourns her passing (more than information technology mourns the death of other children, a couple students pointed out) just doesn't see how they have acquired the morbid preoccupation of this potentially talented girl. They don't see annihilation strange about Emmeline's art work, only like they don't see anything strange about listening to a preacher talk forcefully about brotherly love while keeping a gun handy in example they accept to shoot folks on the other side of the aisle. They are well bred and depression class, blind to their own faults, a motion-picture show of hypocrisy.
Nosotros as readers recognize their inconsistencies and blindness, nonetheless, and by at present my class is probably getting wary about what Twain wants us to think and wondering if he's mocking united states. Is he mocking us? I think the answer is, sort of; if in our ain lives we grow too serious about the rationale behind revenge and honor codes, nosotros are his satirical target. I plan on sharing an commodity with the class in a couple weeks that will help the states examine something called the honor codes of the South, and we'll see that Twain had a serious disagreement with the line of thinking such codes engendered. I haven't shared the article with my class however, every bit it discusses a lot of textile nosotros haven't read, merely I call back it will shed some low-cal on this particular episode.
Ultimately, I am convinced the scene is a sharp indicator of Twain'southward focus in the second half of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: with satirical scorn, he chastises what he sees as incorrect with the world, and almost particularly with the Southward. He'll brand united states laugh but if we are his targets, we likely won't be laughing all that much . . .
Thanks for reading.