Three important concepts in "the Blue Hotel"

Considering it spans less than 20 pages, Stephen Crane's short story "The Blue Hotel" manages to evoke critical thought about an impressive array of topics of significant merit. Some are quite heavy, dealing with aspects of human nature, while others are less-involved observations that might not warrant as much discussion, but are still worth thinking about. For an example of the latter, note the shift in behavior in "the Swede" after Scully shares his whiskey with him. He was initially meek and cowardly, but the more alcohol he consumed, the more brazen, arrogant, and generally antagonistic he became. Eventually, this new behavior gets him killed. That cause-and-effect is worth thinking about, I suppose, but that people undergo personality transformations when they imbibe isn't exactly headline news.

More worthwhile for long-term consideration, I think, is the lesson learned from the Easterner at the end of the story. Of course, his assertion that each of the five tenants of the Blue Hotel were partially responsible for the Swede's death lends credence to the Swede's wild accusations upon first entering the Hotel. This makes for a nice storytelling device at least, while also potentially forcing readers to consider whether the Swede was truly crazy or if his supposition that "there have been a good many men killed in this room" (603) was meant to be interpreted in the same manner the Easterner interpreted the Swede's death.

I'm not sure how comfortable I am with this idea. Certainly, we can affect other people indirectly, and even harm a person indirectly. There are ample examples of this, to the extent that I don't feel compelled to provide another. However, to what extent can we truly assume blame for occurrences outside of our direct control? Sometimes, when trying to attribute things indirectly, we lose sight of the direct causes. Consider the unfortunate school shootings that have taken place over the last decade and a half; in every instance, somebody, be it family of the shooter or the media, decides to try to identify root causes of the act and use the opportunity to critique those influences. I find this problematic because it seems to defer blame from the shooter to external sources. Though nobody wishes to possess it, blame is not entirely a bad thing--when we are to blame for a shameful act, that scorn teaches us not to repeat the act. If we do not assume the blame for our own actions, how are we to ever learn not to repeat them?

Another important concept to take away from "the Blue Hotel," potentially, is the flimsy nature of human self-control. Even if it's tightly maintained 99% of the time, it only takes a moment of lost focus for disaster to ensue. The Gambler is described by Crane as "a man so delicate in manner, when among people of fair class, and so judicious in his choice of victims, that in the strictly masculine part of the town's life he had come to be explicitly trusted and admired." (616) Essentially, he is an upstanding gentleman who possesses great self-control, a man "so delicate in manner." However, it takes only an aggressive drunk Swede grasping at his throat for him to eschew caution and reason, and end up with a corpse on his hands and a prison sentence to boot.

Any and all of these three main concepts are worth applying to our daily lives, and there are surely others I either didn't address or didn't notice in my first reading, as this short story is densely packed with important concepts to consider. I cannot quite fully subscribe to the idea that a man's death at the hands of another man is the fault of a third man who cheated him at cards, but I do recognize the impact our actions can indirectly create without our awareness, and "the Blue Hotel" will serve as a poignant reminder for me to be more conscious of this effect and exert better control over my actions.

Divided We Fall

It’s a shame Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois are so frequently pitted against each other when contemporary critics discuss their careers. Sure, their ideas for African American integration differed on some key points, but by and large, their goals were the same, and we should not feel compelled to pick a side. Too often, we do feel that inclination, to the extent that Washington’s name is well-known outside of scholarly circles while Du Bois’s work is rarely discussed outside of academics—rarely in comparison to Washington’s work, at least. It seems as if the fact that it was Washington’s approach and not Du Bois’s that achieved African American integration—some would argue that the job still isn’t done, over a century later—invalidates or devalues Du Bois’s ideas. Sure, Washington’s approach turned out to be the more practical and achievable one, but does that necessarily mean it was better? Most realistic and “best” aren’t always the same. Perhaps Du Bois’s ideas are “better” conceptually (acknowledging the subjectivity of this point,) but they were simply “ahead of his time,” to borrow an oft-abused idiom.

Interestingly, to me at least, I actually think Booker T. Washington himself would agree that Du Bois’s ideas were “better,” that they held more merit. He was, though, perhaps a bit more of a realist, and he proposed methods that he believed to be achievable rather than argue for the ideal. It’s hard to condemn him for not sticking to his true beliefs, if that is the case, when we have the luxury of present-day context to guide us. Knowing that African American integration is in some ways still not fully complete over a century later—only the truly naïve believe racism to be dead—it’s fair to wonder how much longer African Americans may have had to wait to get even this far if they didn’t make concessions to allow the transition to occur gradually.

Pitting the two activists against each other, forcing us to pick a side, fails to recognize this fact about the nature of their arguments: both were right. Washington simply had the privilege of living during the appropriate time period to convey his message. W.E.B. Du Bois could accomplish so much more today than he could in the early 1900s. African Americans have now been mostly successfully integrated on a physical level, but racism still exists because they have not been accepted on an emotional level by everybody. “The Souls of Black Folk” is a step towards correcting these moral deficiencies some people still possess, but it doesn’t receive the widespread recognition it should simply because it wasn’t put into practice when it was first proposed. Should we also have never gradually begun to accept that the Earth isn’t flat? Booker T. Washington may have been a more important figure in his time than W.E.B. Du Bois, but I would argue that Du Bois’s ideas are infinitely more relevant today and should receive far more recognition than they do at present. Perhaps when Du Bois’s name is known to as many households as Washington’s, the last few steps to complete African American integration can finally be taken. In that sense, their different approaches are merely two halves of the same whole, and the futility in pitting them against each other is even more evident.

Is Huck Finn ban-worthy?

I stated in a previous blog post that I would post my final thoughts on the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn's place in American literature and whether it deserves to be banned. Well, I'd rather not be made a liar, so I guess it's time to collect my thoughts. My apologies if this comes out as jumbled as I'm thinking it might.

First, to address what seems to me to be the most commonly held opinion in support of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: the clichéd aphorism "those who ignore the past are condemned to repeat it," or any variant thereof. Generally, people who hail the novel as a classic and oppose efforts to ban it do so on the grounds that it is important that we know our past, especially if we want to prevent it from reoccurring. While I would usually agree with that--clichés become clichés for a reason; they're often true--in this case, I'm not so sure the expression fits. To apply it to the issue of American slavery seems to suggest that slavery isn't inherently wrong, because we don't need to look to the past to figure out things that are inherently known to us. For example, we don't research the history of American cuisine to determine that we should eat food. We instinctively become hungry and eat; no particular knowledge is required. Slavery is similar in that regard. We should instinctively recognize that all human beings have equal humanity and should be treated as such. If we have to look to our past to see that slavery is wrong, it's more likely that we're trying to find logical reasons why slavery shouldn't exist, not moral or ethical reasons. I think I can safely say we all agree that there are ethical and moral reasons slavery is wrong, though, so the cliché doesn't fit very well in this particular case.


Additionally, that particular defense doesn't make much sense because slavery is now illegal. We don't need to look to the past to remind us that slavery is wrong, even without innately recognizing it, because the law tells us so. So, if there is a viable reason Adventures of Huckleberry Finn should have a place among American classics, for me, it's not because it helps remind us how horrible slavery is. Neither is it to remind  us of the harm done by the "N word," which is another reason some people say we should read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, sans censorship (since some texts replace the racial epithet with "slave".) I would argue that the mere fact that most of us are bothered by the way Twain's characters speak demonstrates that our society has now internalized those feelings. We don't need to read Twain's characters using the "N word" hundreds of times to remind us how hurtful the term is; we've already internalized those feelings because that's how society taught us to feel, just as society taught Huck to use the word.

So is Adventures of Huckleberry Finn without value? I certainly don't think so, despite the ending. The value of the novel as a whole can be, I think, summed up in this one quote from Huck upon returning to Jackson's Island after pretending to be a girl named Sarah Williams: "Git up and hump yourself, Jim! There ain't a minute to lose. They're after us!" (143) It can be lost if you just skim over it, but this quote is powerfully compelling. We must remember that, in fact, they're not after "us," they were after Jim. Huck was supposedly dead, so who could possibly be after him? Nobody. The technology to locate a person we have today largely did not exist in Huck's time, and he could have probably lived out the rest of his days not far from home without anyone ever discovering him. His whole journey, then, isn't really his adventure, it's Jim's. The beauty in it is that Huck acted on impulse (since the men were already on their way) to hurry back to Jim and help him escape, indicating that he recognized his natural right to freedom instinctively, which is incredible when considered in light of his upbringing. In that, there is certainly value, and not even the poor ending can ruin it. In fact, the ending could lend it even more value. Tom may not have been concerned with Jim's well-being, but that only makes Huck's instinctual concern more admirable. He had no positive influences to help form his instinctual response to Jim's plight, but makes the right choice anyway.

Since I do see a certain value in reading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, I couldn't possibly endorse banning the novel. In thinking about the debate, though, I've come to realize something even more significant: I don't believe any book should be banned. To be sure, some books can be dangerous and promote dangerous ideas, and it would be better if nobody read them. However, nobody should have the right to make that distinction. Giving a person or a group (I have no idea how banning books works) the power to ban a book is more dangerous than anything that could be written in any book. The right to decide what books we can read is essentially the right to decide what knowledge we can consume, and that's a dangerous proposition in a democratic country. I'll take the chance of somebody writing something that promotes harmful ideas, and trust in human nature to prevent the majority from attaching themselves to these ideas, over submitting to yet another control system, any day.

Tom Sawyer's prank

"They hain't no right to shut him up," Tom Sawyer begins, and for a moment it seems as if he's going to launch into an impassioned diatribe against slavery to cap off the novel, leading me to wonder how scholars could condemn it as racist.

And then it becomes oh so clear. Instead of a diatribe against slavery, we receive the knowledge that Jim has been free for two months, and the entire rescue was yet another fanciful Tom Sawyer adventure--essentially just a prank. Knowledge is power, but I'd much rather have never acquired that knowledge; I wish I stopped reading around Chapter 30, free to imagine my own ending.

By revealing that Jim was already free, Tom makes it much more difficult to read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as a social protest, particularly in regard to slavery. Instead of Tom joining Huck in a noble quest to grant Jim his freedom in recognition of his equal humanity, it's Huck joining Tom (unknowingly, but the fact remains) in pranking the community to fulfill a desire for adventure, using Jim as an object in meeting those ends.

Up to that point, I was firmly in the camp defending The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but the ending requires me to re-evaluate. I'm not sure at this point if Tom's prank ruins or undoes the social commentary throughout the rest of the novel for me, but I can see why it might for some people. While much of the novel builds on the idea that Huck innately recognizes Jim's full humanity and identifies with him and his flight for freedom without conscious consideration, the ending seems to "flip the script" and objectify Jim. Tom doesn't seem to seriously consider Jim as he would another human being, since he risks his health and his very life by acting out his prank. Jim was lucky not to be lynched when he got caught, and Tom either didn't consider that possibility or that risk didn't outweigh the benefit of pulling the prank in his mind. Essentially, either Tom is a deeply disturbed character, or he doesn't take Jim's full humanity seriously.

For now, I'm actually leaning towards the former. Tom is clearly an eccentric sort--he was ecstatic to discover he'd been shot in the calf! Just as he doesn't see anything wrong with suffering that physical trauma, I'm not sure he really recognized what he was putting Jim through by making him sleep with rats, snakes, and spiders, among other things. If Jim were a white man, I think Tom would have asked him to do the same things. Do you agree?

One last consideration: even if we assume the latter instead--that Tom doesn't take Jim's full humanity seriously--does that necessarily detract from other messages we may take from the story? Does Tom's views have to be in line with Huck's for us to appreciate Huck's journey, both physical and spiritual? As I said above, I'm not sure if the ending ruins the novel for me yet. I need to think about it some more, and I plan to compose another blog post with my final take on the debate on the subject of whether the novel should be banned, which will be based largely on whether I decide the ending ruins the rest of the book. In the meantime, what do you think: does the ending ruin, or at least detract from if ruin's too strong of a word, the rest of the novel, or is it an acceptable or even enjoyable ending?

Finn the follower: Huck's sense of self-worth

With this post, I’d like to focus on Huck’s tendency to follow. At this point in my reading, I’m through chapter XXXVI, so Jim’s rescue hasn’t been completed yet, and I don’t know how it will turn out. But, as I read about Tom’s excessively gaudy and risky plan and Huck’s submissive behavior regarding it, I couldn’t help but revisit the follower-leader dynamic we discussed in class back in the early chapters.

Huck has demonstrated over and over again that he’s a follower—that much isn’t in question—but what I wonder about is why? For the most part, barring a few minor mistakes, Huck’s plans have always worked out well. Whenever he takes the lead, things generally move along without a hitch. For example, consider how successful he was in forming his own escape plan while faking his own death; he was suspected to be alive by no one. And when he and Jim travelled alone—making Huck the leader by default—they certainly had less problems to deal with than when following the lead of the “king” and “duke.” Yet, no matter how successful he may be when he’s in charge, Huck never embraces a leadership role. He compares himself unfavorably to Tom Sawyer many times throughout the novel, indicating that he does aspire to be like Tom, yet he never tries to assert himself as he knows Tom would.

At this point in my reading, Tom’s rescue plan has nearly got them caught twice and left several other opportunities for them to be discovered if Tom’s aunt and uncle weren’t so trusting and maintained better security. The plan that Huck initially suggested could have been implemented with ease and far more quickly, but he still acquiesces to Tom’s demand for greater style. Why won’t Huck trust in himself and assert his opinions more forcefully?

Mostly, it seems Huck has issues with self-worth that keep him from becoming the leader or independent thinker he seems to want to be. The fact that he has poor parentage would, you would think, predispose him to loathe being a follower. People that lack sound parenting—or involved parenting, at least—in their childhood generally become self-reliant; they must become their own leader in the absence of parental figures. Huck, though, somewhat resists this generalization. Interestingly enough, it may be partially for the same reason: Huck’s status as the uneducated son of the town drunk, without a mother, would have barely registered him as human in the eyes of his contemporaries. Nobody besides Jim would follow his lead even if he did try to lead. To do so would be degrading to themselves, or so they would have thought. I can only imagine it would be maddening to be born in such a way that promotes a desire for independent thinking, but also fails to provide appropriate status to be able to express yourself freely and still be taken seriously.

Furthermore, his conflicted feelings about Jim’s slavery also deeply affected his self-worth.  When the point finally comes that Huck commits to rescuing Jim and helping him secure freedom, he also commits himself to Hell—the moral climax of the novel. Huck measures his desire to set Jim free against the teachings society instilled in him, and determined that his actions so opposed those teachings that his fate was Hell. Consequently, his sense of self-worth becomes confused and it’s only natural that he would be hesitant to assert himself. It’s a terribly unfortunate consequence, though, as it need not be felt at all: for while he may consider himself “low-down and ornery” for his desire to help Jim, the truth is that God probably sees great worth in any person who would willingly cast themselves into Hell for the sake of another person, if the situation was as noble as Huck’s simple desire to free a slave.

The Grangerford-Sheperdson feud

There were a few interesting topics meriting discussion through chapters 18-22 of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but the one weighing most heavily on my mind is Twain's depiction of the Grangerford-Sheperdson feud. It's interesting in itself, but the reason I was particularly intrigued by it is because I saw the History channel's Hatfields and McCoys miniseries last year.

I did a little quick research to verify that Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was originally published during the Hatfield-McCoy feud, and since it's well known that Twain wrote the novel over the course of several years, he would have been writing during the height of the feud. It's probably safe to assume he was aware of the feud, and given the uncanny similarity between the Hatfield-McCoy feud and Twain's Grangerford-Sheperdson feud, it may be fair to guess that the parallels are deliberate.

Hatfields and McCoys was one of the most emotionally-moving experiences I've had, because of the sheer senselessness of the violence, and it certainly made Twain's depictions more vivid in my mind. It also made me try harder to find some sense in the feud--to this end, I was unsuccessful, and I'm doubtful that anyone could.

By bringing religion into the equation, Twain makes the senselessness of family feuds apparent in a way that the secular Hatfields and McCoys miniseries chose not to. Starting on page 171 and continuing onto page 172, Huck recounts his experience attending church with the Grangerfords. He notes that all the men brought guns with them and kept them within reach as they listened to the sermon about brotherly love, painting a ludicrous picture that tells us one of two things about the Grangerfords and Sheperdsons. They are either incredibly hipocritical and unapologetic liars, as they listen to and regurgitate biblical messages without really comprehending or believing them, or the feud had become so ingrained in their lives that they truly couldn't even see what's wrong with it. Considering members of both sides were unrepetant about hunting young children (by our standards, if not their contemporaries') it seems more likely that it's the latter. And when a gunfight in a church starts to sound like a viable option, there's something fundamentally wrong taking place. How does discontentment with the result of a lawsuit lead to such an outcome?

More on this later, perhaps.

Superstition in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Let my first remark upon creating this blog be a complaint: I'm mildly annoyed I can't italicize or underline parts of the post title. Now somebody might think I just have a superstitious friend named Huckleberry Finn who goes on a lot of adventures!

Thus far in my reading of Huckleberry Finn--I haven't read the novel previously--the one dynamic I find most intriguing is the convoluted relationship between Huck and superstition. Generally, in my own informal observations at least, people tend to perceive superstition from one end of the pendulum or the other. Either you pass under a ladder on your way to replace the broken mirror your black cat broke on Friday the 13th, or the mere thought of doing any of the above makes you queasy. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,  some of the characters' understanding of superstition is considerably more complex. Huckleberry Finn himself seems to fall somewhere in the middle ground.

While characters like Jim believe in every superstition you can think of and several others that don't have much of a following today, Huck determines on a case-by-case basis whether he believes in a particular superstition. In fact, I've dedicated my first blog post to this topic largely so that I will remember to think about the things Huck does or does not choose to believe, and consider what that might reveal about his character.

Thus far, it's been apparent that neither Jim nor Huck hold much stock in religious concepts. Jim dismisses everything Huck tells him about religious stories as many of us would superstitions today, which is even more intriguing when we consider that Jim wholeheartedly believes in worldly superstitions. Huck treats some religious concepts similarly to Jim--his thoughts on spiritual gifts demonstrate this--but he hasn't necessarily dismissed religion in the manner Jim seems to.

The complex nature of Huck's (and also Jim's) understanding of superstition has revealed itself in small glimpses, but there's a long ways to go in putting together this particular puzzle. For example, Huck accepts the myth that looking at the new moon over your right shoulder brings bad luck as absolute fact, but he is skeptical about the benefits of prayer, Jim's snakeskin superstition, and Tom's genie superstition. Huck treats elements of superstition differently than most, and once we can figure out why he dismisses the concepts he dismisses and accepts the ones he accepts, we'll have gained a great deal of insight into the workings of Huck's character.