Abstract

Chapter 2 examines Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) in terms of the changing economic structure of Twain's time. Twain's realist novel is framed by episodes that feature Tom Sawyer as the casuistic leader of a gang and the mastermind of intricate plots. Tom is a parody of the manager of Twain's age, personifying a culture so deeply embedded in system management that it has lost the moral sense. In a culture without moral sense, sentimentality is fraudulent, and manipulation, as the Duke and the King prove, is easy. Huck and Jim, in the center of the text, develop a sensibility that is deeply sentimental. For the runaway orphan and the escaped slave, the sentimental touch is not a sham, but is a restoration of the moral sense and a vindication of sentimentalism. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn warns against the emotional excess of sentimental literature, but the text endorses sentimental values.

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