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Mark Twain's, Huckleberry Finn, although an excellent book, has a very weak and unrealistic ending. The two main characters, Huck and Jim are turned into comic characters and the seriousness of their journey down the river is lost. Twain lets the ending destroy the plot of the book by making it comic and unrelated to the episodes on the raft. Leo Marx points out that the meaning of Huck and Jims journey is lost.
During their journey, Huck and Jim develop a very close relationship. Jim becomes like the father that Huck never truly experienced. Jim is identified even more unmistakably as Huck's father by the love that he gives him. (Lynn p. 214) Jim would do anything for Huck; such as calling him honey, trying to keep him happy, and taking over his watch so Huck could sleep. Likewise, Huck would do anything for Jim. He lies to the men about to search the raft and even decides hell go to Hell for Jim. Although Huck and Jim have bonded throughout their time on the raft, Huck is somehow able to disregard Jim as a human and only regard him as a plaything.
Both boys fill Jims cell with snakes, spiders, and biting rats. They then further his misery by prolonging his stay in the cell while they ready a complicated, risky, and worthless plan. Jims yearning for freedom is made the object of nonsense. (Marx p. 205) Huck accompanies Tom in all his antics and reverts back to his subservient role in the story while Tom takes over. Huck gives little protest to the inhumane treatment of Jim. The reader cannot be expected to believe that Huck would so completely disregard the fate of a man who had become a best friend and a father to him. A second reason that Huck's transformation to subservient is unrealistic is his level of maturity after the journey.
Throughout the journey, Huck continually grows and matures. He sees how inhumane people can be and he realizes that life is not always idealistic as Tom sees it. To Tom life is a continuous game. Huck on the other hand has experienced first hand how cruel people are to each other. He witnessed a friend being shot in the Grangerford/Shepard son feud and saw two men tarred and feathered. He felt compassion for the men even though they had caused him nothing but sorrow and misery.
Huck describes seeing the Duke and King being carried out on a rail after being tarred and feathered: Well it made me sick to see it; and I was sorry for them poor pitiful rascals; it seemed like I couldnt ever feel any hardness against them any more in the world. It was a dreadful thing to see. Human beings can be awful cruel to one another. (Twain p. 225) Leo Marx states that we are now asked to believe that the boy who felt pity for the rogues is now capable of making Jims capture occasion for a game. No statement could be more accurate.
Twain completely contradicts himself when he brings Huck back down to the same level as Tom. By the time he reaches the Phelps place he is not the boy who had been playing robbers with Toms gang in St. Petersburg before. He had deepened his knowledge of human nature and of himself. (Marx p. 205) Huck had matured greatly and it would have been nearly impossible for him to forget all of his experiences on the river and regress to an immature boy playing pranks on a simple Negro. He loved Jim and should not have been able to cause him the misery he did. A final reason that the conclusion to Huckleberry Finn is anything but grand is that Jim himself undergoes a transformation.
When it is the two of them on the raft, Jim becomes human and takes on the prospect of family, feelings, and friendship. He is no longer just an average, stereotypical slave, he is a person and a friend to Huck. On the raft, Jim becomes an individual, man enough to denounce Huck when Huck made him the victim of a practical joke. (Marx p. 205) When on the raft, the two were equal. Whatever money and goods they obtained were split between them. Oftentimes they would sit and gaze at stars in comfortable silence only two equal friends can engage in. However, when Jim was locked up at the Phelps place, he endured Toms escapades with no complaints.
He allowed Tom and Huck to fill his small cell with snakes, rats, spiders and whatever else to boys could think of. He becomes less human and more of a plaything for the boys. He does not protest to the elaborate plan and does not escape when the boys dig a hole into his cell. The Jim the reader knows on the raft is replaced by the Jim that was fooled by Tom in the beginning of the novel. Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, is a powerful novel with a weak ending. The ending of the novel is completely unrealistic and unbelievable.
The disintegration of the main characters all betray the weak ending. (Marx p. 206) Both Huck and Jim are completely altered into having unrecognizable personalities and morals. The ending destroys the purpose of Huck and Jims journey and therefore kills the plot. Bibliography:
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