Huckleberry Finn and the Adventures of God

I AM A CAPUCHIN PRIEST by vocation and a theologian by trade. Every August, which often slips into September, I allow myself to read a few books that I would not normally read—works of literature or secular history. Over the past five years I have read, on three occasions, Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I have enjoyed it immensely. It is a whopping good tale. Moreover, I have become convinced that Twain has not only narrated the adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, but that he has also woven within their adventures the "adventures" of God. My thesis is that Twain presents within The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn his understanding of salvation history or, what might be called, "Twain's Soteriology."

In this essay I wish to present the basis for such a thesis. I have not done any academic research on this topic, other than studying the text. The only other work of Twain that I have read is his biography of St. Joan of Arc. I have presented my thesis to a number of scholars who are versed in American literature, and they have all said, always with a smile and occasionally with laughter, that they were not acquainted with any books or articles that have proposed my thesis. Nonetheless, if there is anyone who has said what I am about to say, I apologize.

Giving Notice

It would appear that an interpretation of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is in itself forbidden. In his opening "NOTICE," Twain vehemently warned—and I do believe that he must be taken seriously—that "[p]ersons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot." Twain seems to be cautioning the reader that the tale he is about to tell is just a "good yarn," narrated for the pure entertainment of the telling and the reading. Any intellectual rapscallion who attempts to read some profundity into it should be prosecuted, banished, and shot.

However, the first clue to my thesis is in the "NOTICE" itself. I am convinced that Twain, in his "NOTICE," is forewarning, not his readers, but his own characters. He is warning Huck, Jim, Tom, and the Duke and the Dauphin what will happen to them if they attempt to find or place a motive, a moral, or a plot in their adventures. They, recklessly but innocently, pay no heed to the "NOTICE" and so suffer the consequences. Huck and Jim are banished precisely because they are putting a moral in the story. The Duke and Dauphin are prosecuted because they place a motive in the story. Tom is shot because he, most of all, is desperate to add a plot to the story. The true motive, moral, and plot that these characters, each in their own distinctive way, unbeknownst even to themselves, enact within the story has to do with my thesis that Twain is here presenting his history of salvation—the adventures of God.

Huck represents a reluctant Moses leading the slave Jim, who embodies the whole of sinful humanity, to freedom and the promised land, and, in so doing, they are banished from their homes. The moral of the story is that truth and goodness succeed despite ourselves, or that God uses those who often appear to be of no account to serve his purposes, even when they are unaware of it.

The Duke and the Dauphin personify all that is false and deceptive (including hypocritical religion) and so are prosecuted, tarred and feathered, and run out of town on a rail. The motive of the story, a major theme around which the moral unfolds, is to discern truth from falsehood. All of the characters are motivated by either truth or...