The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain - Sanford Pinsker (essay date autumn 2001)
Sanford Pinsker (essay date autumn 2001)
SOURCE: Pinsker, Sanford. “Huckleberry Finn and the Problem of Freedom.” Virginia Quarterly Review 7, no. 4 (autumn 2001): 642-49.
[In the following essay, Pinsker argues that Huckleberry Finn is a subversive book concerning the impossibility of true freedom for either of the main characters.]
“… he ain't no slave; he's as free as any cretur that walks this earth.”
—Tom Sawyer spilling the beans about Jim
“We're free … We're free …”
Linda Loman at Willy's graveside
Freedom is America's abiding subject, as well as its deepest problem. I realize full well that I am hardly the first person to ruminate about the yawning gap between our country's large promises and, its less-than-perfect practice, much less the first to comment on the ways in which 19th-century America struggled with...
[The entire page is 3093 words long]
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