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SUMMARY
As Huck hopes for help, a man calls from inside the house. Huck tells him that he has fallen from the steamboat and has nowhere to go. He tells the man that his name is George Jackson. The men wants to be sure that he is "not a Shepherdson". When he asserts that he doesn't have a companion, the men of the family, armed with guns, allow him to enter their house. He squeezes in through the door. After confirming Huck's claim, that he is not a Shepherdson, they ease up with him and assure him of their help. They make sure that he gets some dry clothes and food.
During dinner, Huck tells them a fictitious story about his reasonably large family, out of which he is the only surviving member. He says that, after his father's death, he had had to leave the farm at "Arkanshaw" because it didn't belong to them. He cooks up a story of how he had fallen off a steamboat and landed with them. He obtains their compassion and becomes friendly with the youngest son, Buck.
He is introduced to the remaining family members. The family had daughter named Emmeline, who is dead. She had painted many pictures, which are extremely cheerless and gloomy. She had also written poetry as tributes to people who had passed away.
Taking a look around the house, Huck concludes that the family is quite affluent. They have a fairly good collection of books on Classical Literature, Medicine and a plethora of other subjects.
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| The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Chapter 17 |
CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Various scholars have commented, "Twain's literary opinions have been tied to realism because they seem to be based on an ingrained hostility toward Romantic Literature". He viewed sentiment as a fixation that takes a man further away from the truth. Twain's rejection of the sentimental new judge who tries to reform Pap in Chapter 5 and that of Emmeline Grangerford, who'd rather weep than live her life, presents the rationalist that Twain was. Twain abhorred the slow and syrupy lingo of the earlier writers and regarded it as having a corrupting influence on the sensibility of minds. According to Twain, who wrote later in the century, a Victorian inclination for romantic imagination is one of the "perversions" which must be "unmasked."
In this chapter, Twain possibly exploits the 'Emmeline Grangerford' episode to voice his disapproval of such a sentimental literature. Her bleak pictures and weepy obituaries are cliches of nineteenth century sensibility - lending an aura of gentility that Twain rejects. As readers, we should not overlook the fact that, behind the mask of this "gentility", there is latent "hostility" and violence. This violence becomes more evident as the story progresses.