Why did Mark Twain drop the ball in the last part of HUCKLEBERRY FINN?

All through the book, Huck is learning about human nature, life, the world he lives in, etc., and then in the last few chapters he and Tom Sawyer are playing a childish game.

It's as if in HAMLET, in the last scene, Hamlet realizes that Claudius didn't really kill Hamlet's father, the man died of natural causes and it was all just a big misunderstanding.


(What made me think of this is, this morning Radio Reader started a book about the Mississippi.)

You learn valuable lessons and then play childish games.

Also, as Twain said, "anyone seeking a moral in this book will be shot".

Your remark may make me read the book again.

However, I'm not sure that you can say Twain dropped the ball at the end of the book. He was a pretty good storyteller, and the story he was telling may have been different from the story you were expecting to hear. I do remember that Huck was young in this story, and even after all that happened to him, he is still young at the end. Besides being a good story teller, Twain was a good student of human nature and may have (again, I can't really remember the ending) been making a point that's worth thinking about - a point about the young, a point about human nature in general.

I teach American Lit and the other teacher at my school that teaches American Lit hates the ending, so we argue about this every year.

He thinks Twain just copped out with the ending because he had no good way to get out of it.

I think Twain writes it this way to highlight Huck's growth. Tom is Huck's foil. We get to see Tom's foolishness in the beginning of the novel and the way that he treats Jim as a non-human. Then Huck abandons Tom (society) and grows to realize the true humanity of Jim (and, hence, all blacks). At the end of the novel, we are reminded of how Tom sees Jim (i.e. how society views blacks after the Civil War--that even though they/Jim are/is free, they/he are/is treated like a slave) and, more importantly in this coming of age novel, we get to see the enormous strides Huck has made. The static nature of Tom is necessary to show us how extremely dynamic Huck is.

I could talk about this forever. That's my $0.02, anyway.

Just got around to reading it in my Google Reader
http://www.betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/?p=6521
I wholeheartedly agree with the description of Tom representing reconstruction whites.

a very enlightening take. I would have enjoyed taking your class.

At what level do you teach?

At our school, 11th graders take American Lit. Can't wait until second semester and Gatsby!