"In
Huckleberry Finn I have drawn
Tom Blankenship (the real-life model for Huck) exactly as he was. He was
ignorant,
unwashed, insufficiently fed; but he had as good a
heart as ever any
boy had. His
liberties were totally
unrestricted. He was the only really
independent person-boy or
man-in the
community, and by consequence he was
tranquilly and continuously
happy, and was
envied by the rest of us. We liked him; we enjoyed his
society. And as his society was forbidden us by our
parents, the
prohibition trebled and quadrupled its
value, and therefore we sought and got more of his society than any other boy's. I heard, four years ago, that he was a
justice of the peace in a remote village in
Montana, and was a good
citizen and greatly
respected." (From
Mark Twain's Autobiography, chapter II, 174-75)
Even as a boy,
Samuel Clemens knew who the true
American hero was, and he certainly was not a product of
comfort and
erudition. Especially while on the
Mississippi, Huck Finn personifies the '
natural man',
unspoiled by the
corrupting authority of society. Although Huck is constantly exposed to people eager to make him think the way they do, his
institutional distrust keeps society's
virtues from penetrating him too deeply. He is determined to
judge life for himself and come to his own conclusions. Free from being dictated
morality by the culture of
slavery, Huck is able to judge the virtue of acts using his
logic and
reflection, his only moral requirement being that his act must "
do good." His
purity, both in his
age and in his
intellectual freedom, make him the only character in Clemens' fictional
St. Petersburg capable of not only helping
Jim to run away (what was at the time an
illegal and
morally reprehensible act), but also pledging his
loyalty to a piece of
property, barely human in other people's eyes.
Growing up in Hannibal, Missouri, Clemens had an upbringing closer to that of Tom Sawyer than that of Huck Finn. Having a very structured and upright home, children like Clemens are drawn to characters like Tom Blankenship, whose freedom and satisfaction inspire jealousy in their 'civilized' admirers. The American virtue of 'freedom' is best represented in outcasts like Huck and Tom Blankenship. In a culture warped by racism and hypocrisy, these heroic spirits are the defenders of truth and righteousness.