Fleming 1

Alistair Fleming
Mr. Summers
English 11H04
10 February 2010
ἐπιστήμη λόγος
Epistemology is the theory pertaining to the way in which knowledge is obtained by man, where it comes from, and how he uses it. In
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain uses his characters to develop a plethora of epistemological systems. Each character has a different
epistemology, which either competes with a peer's or finds congruence with another's. There are four epistemological approaches Twain
incorporates in his tale: an epistemology centered around practicality, an epistemology controlled by romantic ideals, and an epistemology fueled
by superstitious tradition1. Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, and Jim and Uncle Silas exemplify these epistemologies, respectively. Twain, a pragmatic
realist, displays one of these epistemologies as supreme and debunks the rest as futile, misleading efforts that result in illegitimate knowledge and
satirical ridicule.
Before any statements are made about Huck and practicality, Tom Sawyer and Twain's perspective of romanticism must be clear.
Romanticism condemns rationality and the use of moderated thought processes to make decisions and come to conclusions. Rather, it endorses
impulsive action. Romantics depend on their emotions to govern their lives; they believe logical calculation will hold a person back, as that
person’s intuition is pure and his uninfluenced thoughts genuine. To Twain, romanticism was a crock. His romantic character, Tom Sawyer,
acquires knowledge, makes ridiculous decisions, and formulates ideas with hopeless methodology that is, in Tom's eyes, brilliant. Tom's major
influences are romantic novels which he uses to formulate an alternate world for himself and for others to live in. Tom's epistemology connotes
that romantic books and ideas bring him knowledge and affect his ideals. In the beginning of the novel, Tom and his friends gather and agree to
form a "band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer's Gang" (20). This plays into Tom's romantic hands perfectly as he proposes a vicious oath for
the gang that orders the "men" of Tom Sawyer's Gang to kill each other or anyone else if regulations are broken. The boys are in awe of Tom and
his ingenuity and they ask him if he came up with the oath himself. He did think of "some of it, but the rest was out of pirate books, and robber
books" (21). Tom's designs do not come from himself: the knowledge he extracts from the books give him the ideas. Tom claims that the gang
should kidnap people and keep them in a cave "till they're ransomed," (21) but the boys do not know what ransoming is, and neither does Tom,
but he's "seen it in books; and so of course that's what [they've] got to do" (21). This epistemological pattern follows Tom throughout the book in
instances such as when the gang raids a Sunday school group under the impression, by Tom Sawyer’s doing, that it is an assemblage of wealthy
Arabs. Tom even tells Huck that he would not be so ignorant all the time if he would "read a book called Don Quixote" (25). Later on in the
novel, “the romantic side of Tom Sawyer is shown…in the account of his difficult devices to aid in the easy escape of Jim” (Matthews 333)
which are so complex and so frivolous that the preparations take weeks to complete. These plans, coming from his knowledge of style and
dramaticism from romantic books, would free Jim "and maybe get [them] all killed" (242). Twain uses Huck to show the nonsense in Tom’s
ideology, the lack of realism. Through Huck, Twain’s epistemology is revealed and is bolstered as the best ideology out of the many presented.
Huckleberry Finn is Mark Twain's quintessential pragmatist. Pragmatism claims that anything is right, good, or true if it works
adequately, and anything that does not work should be rejected by the individual for which it did not work. Twain is in direct opposition to
romanticism. A man is not a beautiful and unique snowflake. He is the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and everyone is part of
the same compost pile. Twain may not have believed this (I just wanted to include that: I thought it was good), but he did not agree with
romantic impulsiveness. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a picaresque novel, a satirical and humorous tale of a hero of low social class who
lives by his reason in corrupt society, and Huck is the picaro. Twain uses Huck to debase arguments and to show that practicality can be the
answer in most situations. Huck acquires knowledge of truth through his pragmatic approach. He gets in trouble for fooling around with the
gang, and Miss Watson prays for him, “but nothing come of it” (23). She tells him he should pray, too, and that he can get whatever he wants out
of it: he prays for fishing hooks and never gets any, so he decides he “wouldn’t worry about it any more, but just let it go” (23). If praying did not
work for Huck, then why do it? Pragmatism says not to, so Huck would “take no stock in it.” Huck is constantly picking apart Tom’s romantic
ideas, observing the frivolity that everyone else seems to miss. After the Arab-ambuscade, he concludes that it “was only just one of Tom
Sawyer’s lies” (26) and he learns, through pragmatic trial and error, that genies do not come out of lamps when you rub them, as Tom Sawyer so
romantically theorizes. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn can also be classified as a bildungsroman, where the protagonist grows (in a positive
manner) throughout the course. Huck battles to determine whether he should follow things proposed by society or by his conscience. As he
makes more decisions, his conscience is augmented, and he matures mentally and morally as the book progresses. His pragmatic epistemology
fuels this: his knowledge increases as he finds more good and bad things. He protects Jim from capture on numerous occasions, and in each he
has to choose between fabrication and cooperation. He chooses to lie, and feels badly about it, but he learns that his actions are good and right
when he sees how good of a friend Jim is. The pivotal moment in Huck’s epistemology is when he proclaims he will “go to hell” (223) because
he will help Jim. Society’s laws and religion’s teachings do not coincide with Huck’s actions and intent, but they never worked for him,
anyways, and helping Jim and spurring social norms did work and they satisfied his conscience, so if Hell was the consequence for doing
something true to himself, then “so it goes.” Huck does not succumb to his emotions. He is also not institutionalized by the power of someone
with an alternate ideology: religion does not control him and neither do the premises of society. The power of his own reasoning allows him to
know what is good for him, and this makes him Twain’s epistemological hero.
Twain sets Huck apart from and above the other characters in the novel who depend on their tradition, whether superstition or religion,
for knowledge. Jim relies on superstitious beliefs to attain knowledge. Near the beginning of the story, Jim tells Huck that he held in his
possession a hairball from the stomach of an ox “he used to do magic with” (29) and predict the future. Jim claimed there “was a spirit inside of
it, and it knowed everything” (29). Epistemologically, Jim receives knowledge from the hairball, from superstition. Jim also claims that he
knows that he’ll be a rich man one day because he has a hairy chest. Superstition gives him the knowledge that he will be rich. Twain deflates
this epistemology when Jim says that the hairball sometimes “wouldn’t talk without money” (29) and Huck offers to fool it with a counterfeit
coin, proving the worthlessness of knowledge attained by false notion. Religion is also a traditional epistemology, and Twain sees it as both
hypocritical and false. Uncle Silas is a preacher in charge of an entire southern congregation, yet he is the most slow-witted individual in the
novel. How can a man of no mental capacity be the head of a group of religious practitioners? A perfect set up for Twain, as he believes
religious followers who do not think for themselves are mislead because religion is authoritative and overbearing unless it is kept at bay. The
retardation of Silas’ reasoning and his position in the church and the absurdity of Jim’s omniscient hairball prove that epistemologies based on
traditional superstitious or religious practices do not work.
Twain stresses epistemology in its most correct form, pragmatic and methodical. He uses characters like Tom, a romantic idealist
obsessed with style and folly, and Jim and Silas, two characters influenced and trapped by traditional systems, to display the idiocy in the
epistemology each represents. Huck Finn serves as Twain’s practical picaro who lives his life pragmatically2, berating the ideas of Tom and Jim
and reinforcing the precision of realism.

1
Parallelism - equivalent presentation structurally
2
Alliteration – parallel consonance in successive words
 Fleming 2

Works Cited
Matthews, Brander. "Review: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." Saturday Review [London] 31 Jan. 1885.

Twain, Mark, and Thomas Cooley. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: an Authoritative Text, Contexts and Sources, Criticism. New York: Norton,
1999.