Master of Dialect

Mark Twain pulled that off for the entire length of Huckleberry Finn. I managed a paragraph…well, truth be told (as we know, always a Noble Thing to be done)…I managed to rip off Twain’s opening paragraph and change a few words. I was sorely tempted to write this whole post like that, but that would have quickly turned into an intolerable wrestle with words and meaning, and, let’s be honest, even if I spent a month on this one blog post, I would fail.

Twain, on the other hand, not only pulled it off for a whole book, but managed to work in seven variants of the dialect as assorted characters stroll onto the stage. Twain is a better writer than me.

Or should that be “Twain is a better writer than I”? See what I mean? I have a hard time with Standard English, let alone mastering a dialect—though I guess writing like Huck wouldn’t entail spending time worrying about whether “than” should be followed by “me” or “I.” I, however, just spent 15 minutes examining the matter, knowing full well that Huck still doesn’t care. Merriam-Webster, a fine example of the type of schoolmaster who never corrects your faults, would allow either “Me” or “I.” H.W. and F.G. Fowler, who wrote the strict manual, The King’s English, insist on “I.” Ah, but H.W. also wrote Modern English Usage (without F.W. looking over his shoulder), providing this helpful bit of advice:

But the prepositional use of than is now so common colloquially (He is older than me; they travelled much faster than us) that the bare subjective pronoun in such a position strikes the reader as pedantic, and it is better either to give it a more natural appearance by supplying it with a verb or to dodge the difficulty by not using an inflective pronoun at all.

And so, ahem: Twain is a better writer than I am.

Now you, Dear Reader, may think this is all an aside to the Main Point which was presumably to discuss the Greatness of Huckleberry Finn. You would be wrong. While this is a discussion of the Greatness of Said Book, the grammatical aside points to one of the reasons Huckleberry Finn is so Great.

The Background: I read Huckleberry Finn with one of my reading groups last year. The discussion took place on Slack, which is, as it should come as no surprise to anyone, not as desirable a platform for discussions as Live In Person, which was the O.G. But, when Live In Person went down as part of The Great College Shutdown of 2020, we, Noble Readers All, adapted.

The discussion was wide ranging, and life was chaotic, so I didn’t get around to writing up a blog post about Huckleberry Finn. The book lingered on my “To Be Reviewed” pile, a Daily Note of Sadness. Huckleberry Finn is my answer of choice to the Eternal Parlor Game Question: What is the Great American Novel. (You said The Great Gatsby? Please. Don’t make me Laugh.) The problem: there is just So Much Goodness in this book. Normally for a book of this scope I would have picked up the themes from a wide-ranging two hour discussion with my reading group, but Slack discussions don’t really develop very well, so arguments just don’t get sharpened.

Then came the fateful moment. The other day I was chastised by a former member of this Dignified Reading Group for the lack of a blog post on Huckleberry Finn. I replied with the lament above that I knew not what to write. Her reply: “I think you should write about dialect and communication for Huck Finn. That is literally the only redeemable part of the book.”

Egads! I was about to write that my former student is a philistine, dismissing the Great American Novel in such a manner, but that would stretch a stretcher to the breaking point, and while a stretcher or two might be permissible for anyone other than Aunt Polly, a Lie Outright is not allowed. Said former student is not a philistine. She is merely totally irrational when Huckleberry Finn is mentioned.

So while it is not true that the language and dialect of Huckleberry Finn is the only redeemable part of the book, it is certainly an object meriting much admiration. When you start the book, the dialect seems like a high hurdle to jump; the book is most certainly not Easy Reading. But persist, and with a dozen pages, there you are strolling along with Huck, just as natural as can be. The cadence drives the story. You move along at the speed of a raft on a river, lazily idling away.

The brilliance of this prose has two interesting effects. First, it is easy to miss the deep waters into which this book is sailing. Consider the end of the novel, one of the subjects which was discussed on Slack. Jim has been set free, Tom Sawyer knows Jim has been set free, but Tom goes through an over-the-top elaborate ritual of freeing Jim, imposing all manner of indignities on Jim, rather than just telling everyone that Jim is no longer a slave. Jim endures the barrage of toils and troubles with an admirable stoicism.

What is the Reader to Think in all of this? Because of the style of the writing, it is easy to be lulled into seeing this as just some childish prank. We can laugh when Tom seriously suggests filling the shed in which Jim is imprisoned with poisonous snakes. We can smile at Tom dismissing all manner of suggestions because they are too easy to pull off. The escape has to be difficult to fit Tom’s Romantic Fantasies. But, if you pause and think of Poor Jim, you suddenly realize that the whole rescue plan is just cruel. Suddenly, you might want to scream that Mark Twain is exhibiting the same callous cruelty toward Jim that apologists for slavery habitually demonstrated.

At the point you start thinking that, however, Twain has you right where he wants you. You care about Jim? You think Tom is being cruel? You stopped laughing and think Jim deserves to be treated better? Congratulations! You just internalized the point of Huckleberry Finn. Huck’s laconic style discussing Tom’s bewildering array of requirements to effect a proper rescue means it takes a while for your sympathies for Jim to build. Had Tom just announced that Jim was free, you might never have built up such an impassioned distaste for the horrors of slavery. Had the rescue attempt been delivered in straightforward prose, Twain’s subterfuge of building sympathy for Jim would have quickly failed. Twain wants you to realize that Jim is not a slave and he is not going to be an ex-slave, but rather Jim is a Man and deserves to be treated like a Man.

The second effect of Twain’s brilliant use of dialect is that that book is too easily confused with a children’s book. Tom Sawyer could easily be read by children with great pleasure. Huckleberry Finn? Don’t even think about it. I know this from personal experience; I tried reading it when I was in elementary school; I had no idea what was going on. None. But, reading it as an adult, because it is so easy to read the prose once your mind adapts itself to the speed of the prose, it is hard to remember that this book is not an easy book for an untrained 11 year old mind to read.

Stripped of the dialect, Huckleberry Finn is undoubtedly still a good book. Maybe it is even still a Great Book; hard to say. With the dialect, the book is incandescent. Marvelous prose, memorable characters, and a theme which will never become dated. Then, on top of all that, it captures the Great American Idea of heading out past the Frontiers in search of that God-given right to pursue Liberty.

Tom’s most well now, and got his bullet around his neck on a watch-guard for a watch, and is always seeing what time it is, and so there ain’t nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I’d a knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn’t a tackled it, and ain’t a-going to no more. But 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.