If you could line up a cast of characters from literature based on their intelligence, would you put a thirteen-year-old barely literate vagabond from the antebellum South? Well, maybe not. But what about common sense? Is this the same thing as intelligence?
Personally, I think it is and it isn't. Intelligence and common sense are both gained through experience and learning, and both enable you to make clear, reasonable decisions. Intelligence is something a little more refined, though, with applied learning instead of experience learning. But back to Huck:
Huck's vision is so clear that he sees straight through the prejudiced, straight-laced society he lives in without even realizing he's doing it. The judge who is supposed to protect his money for him 'buys' it for a dollar. The new judge in town refuses to separate an abusive, drunken father from his son. Later in the book, Huck finally decides to help free Jim from slavery, despite the huge amount of racism in the South that Huck must break away from (true, because of this learned racism, Huck suspects he'll be eternally punished for this, but considers that he's already headed down that way anyway and so he ought to do what he feels is right).
Part of the reason Huck is so clear-headed is because he's an 'other'—he was never truly a part of the society that ought to have made him educated, well-mannered, and racist. His father was the town drunkard and Huck himself was the vagabond son, living off the land for a simple, good-natured existence. He wasn't taught letters or manners or clean habits. Even things which seem to us so natural in a normal child, like imagination, don't come naturally to Huck, because he's never had a need for it.Tom Sawyer, a boy devoted to romantic stories, calls him a saphead for this, (an interesting insult) but what use is imagining something—say, dinner—when you're only going to get it if you physically put a line in the river and catch it yourself?
Interestingly paired with Huck's lack of imagination is his superstitions. Wherever he got them from, they must run deep, because whether it's killing a spider or spilling the salt shaker, Huck walks around with a semi-constant dread over him, expecting disaster to spring from nothing. He believes in witches and hairballs, but not in Sunday school Arab troupes. Why is it that Huck finds it so easy to adhere to the superstitious rules (tying a piece of your hair, throwing salt over your left shoulder, hanging up a horseshoe) but not to the societal ones? I would like to think that since the Widow Douglas' rules were slowing beginning to have an effect, that Huck is therefore susceptible to new codes of society. He's capable of adapting, but is interrupted during his 'sivilizing' and goes back to his old, free ways.
Is it the laws of society who make us who we are? Is it the moral laws (superstitions) we believe in? Is it the books we read, the people we admire, the people we consider equals? To Huck, at least, all of these factors are a part of his identity. As he travels up the river, his outlook on life begins to change, and eventually so must his identity. But the first few chapters of Huck Finn are enough to see how tenuous identity really is, especially a child. Perhaps, if adults view society as a judgmental equal, a child would look at it as a bothersome parent. Rules, customs, habits, traditions. They seem set in stone, but only a few miles up the river, and it's amazing how easily they're washed away.
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