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.In asimilar fashion, Hank Morgan serves Arthur, even as the Boss knows that his best interestslie in serving the higher authority of modern U.S.interests both commercial andpolitical.Gordon s disdain for British bureaucracy and his insistence on accomplishingtasks on his own is another quality he shares with Hank (as well as with later figures, likeT.E.Lawrence, who modeled themselves after his overtly anti-imperialistcosmopolitanism).In the final siege of Khartoum, Gordon ordered the cellar of the palaceto be loaded with gunpowder, so that the whole building might, at a moment s notice, beblown in the air, anticipating the Boss s and Clarence s plans to blow up their factoriesshould they fall into the hands of the Church and the Boss s earlier demonstration of hispower by blowing up Merlin s Tower (EV 188).Finally, Gordon s one constant in all hisadventures was a curious sense of missionary zeal, that he was doing God s work.One ofHank Morgan s major projects and differences from Mark Twain is his plan to beginthe Reformation early, substituting the Protestant Church for Catholicism.18.V.I.Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, in Collected Works (London:International, 1964), vol.22, pp.185 91.19.Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur s Court, ed.Allison R.Ensor,Norton Critical Edition (New York: Norton, 1982), p.323.Henceforth citedparenthetically in the text as CY.20.Mark Twain, The New Dynasty (March 22, 1886), in ibid., pp.284 5.21.Henry Nash Smith, Mark Twain s Fable of Progress: Political and Economic Ideas in AConnecticut Yankee (New Brunswick, NJ.: Rutgers University Press, 1964), p.100.22.See Adam Smith, Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776;New York: Random House, 1937), pp.440 65, for the classic discussion of advantages of 218John Carlos Rowefree trade and the division of international labor (book 4, Of Systems of PoliticalEconomy, chap.3).23.Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher, The Imperialism of Free Trade, EconomicHistory Review, 2d ser., 6 (1953): 1 25.See Mommsen s discussion of Robinson andGallagher in Theories of Imperialism, p.87 90.24.Mommsen, Theories of Imperialism, p.88.25.The failure of Hank Morgan s revolution is anticipated in Twain s The GreatRevolution in Pitcairn, which was first published in Atlantic Monthly 43 (1879): 295 302,and included by Ensor in Backgrounds and Sources in his Norton Critical Edition ofConnecticut Yankee.Not only does The Great Revolution in Pitcairn suggest thatAmericans, like Hank Morgan and Butterworth Stavely, are just as prone to imperialpower as the British and Europeans, it also establishes the continuity of Twain s anti-imperialist thinking from the 1870s to the early twentieth century.26.H.N.Smith, Mark Twain s Fable, p.86.27.See my discussion of Twain s critique of American higher education in The GildedAge in Fatal Speculations: Murder, Money, and Manners in Twain s Pudd nhead Wilson, in Mark Twain s Pudd nhead Wilson : Race, Conflict, and Culture, ed.Forrest G.Robinsonand Susan Gillman (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1990), pp.137 46.28.Mommsen, Theories of Imperialism, p.89.29.Bernard Nietschmann, The Third World War, Cultural Survival Quarterly 11(1989) 6.30.In ibid., p.3, Nietschmann provides a helpful definition of Fourth World nationsas the nation peoples and their countries that exist beneath the imposed states.FourthWorld nations may be surrounded, divided or dismembered by one or more internationalstates.The Fourth World encompasses most of the world s distinct peoples, about a thirdof the world s population and approximately So percent of the land area. These nationpeoples are notoriously invisible, because of their relation to one or moreinternational states. 31.John Hay, American Diplomacy, Addresses of John Hay (New York: Century,1907) p.122. J OSEPH L.COULOMBEThe Eco-Criticized Huck Finn:Another Look at Nature in the Works of Mark TwainAmong the many divergent readings of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,Huck himself is often interpreted as an innocent youth more in touch withthe natural world than his nineteenth-century culture.Although taught thebiases of his age, he ultimately rejected its restrictions (the argument goes)by embracing nature and its liberating ethics.His final statement about lighting out for the territory to escape sivilization offered thequintessential formulation of Huck s desire for freedom away from theconstraints and abuses of civilization.The trend is one of the most enduringin Twain criticism and features Huck as the quasi-romantic hero of the realistnovel, a child of nature who found independence on the river and in thewoods.1Although reading Huckleberry Finn as a battle for Huck s soul betweennature and civilization is a compelling approach to the novel, it simplifiesTwain s multiple uses of nature and their implications regarding hischaracters.2 In fact, he did not equate nature exclusively with purity orinnocence.Twain s responses to nature were first documented in his westernletters and in Roughing It, and they resist easy categorization.His treatmentof nature extends well beyond the romantic belief in a benign environmentat odds with a corrupt society.Rather, his characterizations of nature rangewidely from the pristine and playful to the savage and even sinful.TheseFrom Mark Twain and the American West.© 2003 the Curators of the University of Missouri.219 220Joseph L.Coulombedepictions are relevant to his literary characters, particularly those linked tothe natural world.This chapter will map the relationship of Twain s naturalworld to his enigmatic title characters in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer andHuckleberry Finn.By taking an ecocritical approach to Twain beginning withhis time in the West we can further appreciate the ethical complexity of hisbest-known characters.3Writing for a popular audience, Twain was not averse to making use ofconventional tropes, and he capitalized often upon the notion of nature as aregion of childlike innocence.It began much earlier than Huckleberry Finn,however.In Roughing It, for example, Twain described his decision to headwest in terms that envisioned the land as a fun-filled playground foradventurous men.His initial perspective emphasized the commonly heldview of the frontier as a natural escape from the workaday world of the East.Twain wrote, There was a freshness and breeziness, too, and an exhilaratingsense of emancipation from all sorts of cares and responsibilities, that almostmade us feel that the years we had spent in the close, hot city, toiling andslaving, had been wasted and thrown away (RI, 6).In the early chapters ofRoughing It, the open western land was contrasted to the confining city.Thepassage anticipated Huck s discomfort with the starchy clothes and regulatedthoughts imposed upon him by the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson.He,too, ached for and gloried in the freedom of life away from suchseemingly unnatural forces.On the surface, the city offered monotonous conformity, the countryunbounded liberty.Such characterizations show Twain shrewdly tapping intothe popular nineteenth-century myth of frontier freedom celebrated bydiverse writers, poets, pundits, and politicians.According to this perspective,common people were granted a sort of limited nobility if they fullyrecognized the natural beauty of the unbridled land.Many writers workedwithin this romantic tradition and glorified nature as a place of spiritual andphysical rejuvenation [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]
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.In asimilar fashion, Hank Morgan serves Arthur, even as the Boss knows that his best interestslie in serving the higher authority of modern U.S.interests both commercial andpolitical.Gordon s disdain for British bureaucracy and his insistence on accomplishingtasks on his own is another quality he shares with Hank (as well as with later figures, likeT.E.Lawrence, who modeled themselves after his overtly anti-imperialistcosmopolitanism).In the final siege of Khartoum, Gordon ordered the cellar of the palaceto be loaded with gunpowder, so that the whole building might, at a moment s notice, beblown in the air, anticipating the Boss s and Clarence s plans to blow up their factoriesshould they fall into the hands of the Church and the Boss s earlier demonstration of hispower by blowing up Merlin s Tower (EV 188).Finally, Gordon s one constant in all hisadventures was a curious sense of missionary zeal, that he was doing God s work.One ofHank Morgan s major projects and differences from Mark Twain is his plan to beginthe Reformation early, substituting the Protestant Church for Catholicism.18.V.I.Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, in Collected Works (London:International, 1964), vol.22, pp.185 91.19.Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur s Court, ed.Allison R.Ensor,Norton Critical Edition (New York: Norton, 1982), p.323.Henceforth citedparenthetically in the text as CY.20.Mark Twain, The New Dynasty (March 22, 1886), in ibid., pp.284 5.21.Henry Nash Smith, Mark Twain s Fable of Progress: Political and Economic Ideas in AConnecticut Yankee (New Brunswick, NJ.: Rutgers University Press, 1964), p.100.22.See Adam Smith, Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776;New York: Random House, 1937), pp.440 65, for the classic discussion of advantages of 218John Carlos Rowefree trade and the division of international labor (book 4, Of Systems of PoliticalEconomy, chap.3).23.Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher, The Imperialism of Free Trade, EconomicHistory Review, 2d ser., 6 (1953): 1 25.See Mommsen s discussion of Robinson andGallagher in Theories of Imperialism, p.87 90.24.Mommsen, Theories of Imperialism, p.88.25.The failure of Hank Morgan s revolution is anticipated in Twain s The GreatRevolution in Pitcairn, which was first published in Atlantic Monthly 43 (1879): 295 302,and included by Ensor in Backgrounds and Sources in his Norton Critical Edition ofConnecticut Yankee.Not only does The Great Revolution in Pitcairn suggest thatAmericans, like Hank Morgan and Butterworth Stavely, are just as prone to imperialpower as the British and Europeans, it also establishes the continuity of Twain s anti-imperialist thinking from the 1870s to the early twentieth century.26.H.N.Smith, Mark Twain s Fable, p.86.27.See my discussion of Twain s critique of American higher education in The GildedAge in Fatal Speculations: Murder, Money, and Manners in Twain s Pudd nhead Wilson, in Mark Twain s Pudd nhead Wilson : Race, Conflict, and Culture, ed.Forrest G.Robinsonand Susan Gillman (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1990), pp.137 46.28.Mommsen, Theories of Imperialism, p.89.29.Bernard Nietschmann, The Third World War, Cultural Survival Quarterly 11(1989) 6.30.In ibid., p.3, Nietschmann provides a helpful definition of Fourth World nationsas the nation peoples and their countries that exist beneath the imposed states.FourthWorld nations may be surrounded, divided or dismembered by one or more internationalstates.The Fourth World encompasses most of the world s distinct peoples, about a thirdof the world s population and approximately So percent of the land area. These nationpeoples are notoriously invisible, because of their relation to one or moreinternational states. 31.John Hay, American Diplomacy, Addresses of John Hay (New York: Century,1907) p.122. J OSEPH L.COULOMBEThe Eco-Criticized Huck Finn:Another Look at Nature in the Works of Mark TwainAmong the many divergent readings of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,Huck himself is often interpreted as an innocent youth more in touch withthe natural world than his nineteenth-century culture.Although taught thebiases of his age, he ultimately rejected its restrictions (the argument goes)by embracing nature and its liberating ethics.His final statement about lighting out for the territory to escape sivilization offered thequintessential formulation of Huck s desire for freedom away from theconstraints and abuses of civilization.The trend is one of the most enduringin Twain criticism and features Huck as the quasi-romantic hero of the realistnovel, a child of nature who found independence on the river and in thewoods.1Although reading Huckleberry Finn as a battle for Huck s soul betweennature and civilization is a compelling approach to the novel, it simplifiesTwain s multiple uses of nature and their implications regarding hischaracters.2 In fact, he did not equate nature exclusively with purity orinnocence.Twain s responses to nature were first documented in his westernletters and in Roughing It, and they resist easy categorization.His treatmentof nature extends well beyond the romantic belief in a benign environmentat odds with a corrupt society.Rather, his characterizations of nature rangewidely from the pristine and playful to the savage and even sinful.TheseFrom Mark Twain and the American West.© 2003 the Curators of the University of Missouri.219 220Joseph L.Coulombedepictions are relevant to his literary characters, particularly those linked tothe natural world.This chapter will map the relationship of Twain s naturalworld to his enigmatic title characters in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer andHuckleberry Finn.By taking an ecocritical approach to Twain beginning withhis time in the West we can further appreciate the ethical complexity of hisbest-known characters.3Writing for a popular audience, Twain was not averse to making use ofconventional tropes, and he capitalized often upon the notion of nature as aregion of childlike innocence.It began much earlier than Huckleberry Finn,however.In Roughing It, for example, Twain described his decision to headwest in terms that envisioned the land as a fun-filled playground foradventurous men.His initial perspective emphasized the commonly heldview of the frontier as a natural escape from the workaday world of the East.Twain wrote, There was a freshness and breeziness, too, and an exhilaratingsense of emancipation from all sorts of cares and responsibilities, that almostmade us feel that the years we had spent in the close, hot city, toiling andslaving, had been wasted and thrown away (RI, 6).In the early chapters ofRoughing It, the open western land was contrasted to the confining city.Thepassage anticipated Huck s discomfort with the starchy clothes and regulatedthoughts imposed upon him by the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson.He,too, ached for and gloried in the freedom of life away from suchseemingly unnatural forces.On the surface, the city offered monotonous conformity, the countryunbounded liberty.Such characterizations show Twain shrewdly tapping intothe popular nineteenth-century myth of frontier freedom celebrated bydiverse writers, poets, pundits, and politicians.According to this perspective,common people were granted a sort of limited nobility if they fullyrecognized the natural beauty of the unbridled land.Many writers workedwithin this romantic tradition and glorified nature as a place of spiritual andphysical rejuvenation [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]