Aylin Oymak

Istanbul University, December 2015

In Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’’ Huck, child narrator who is

from lower class, starts telling his story: ’’You don’t know about me without you have read a

book by the name of “the Adventures of Tom Sawyer’’ but that ain’t no matter.’’ Obviously

he makes use of Skaz-like narration for the reason that he tells the story in colloquial language

(or non-grammatical speech) he is as if he is carrying a conversation with us, indeed, with his

all clumsiness, naïveté, and limited knowledge. Skaz-like narration, thus, allows us to

recognize a young boy’s vision which has a remarkable freshness and honesty when

compared to that of an adult first person narrator. In this regard, Huck’s fresh vision of adult

world, throughout the novel defamiliarizes certain dominant conceptions such as slavery and

racial discrimination, civilization and his narrative causes deadpan humor through

estrangement of biblical allusion of lost lamb, act of saying grace and 19 th century women’s

garments with crinoline. So, in the creation of the defamiliarization of these matters, Skaz-like

narrative technique in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’’ serves as a stylistic (or formal)

device which is the way in which author juxtaposes social and historical voices (namely,

multiple voices) accompanied by conflict of values of characters each, in the novel as Mikhail

Bakhtin advocates. That is why the defamiliarization in the novel arises from the conflict

between characters’ respective voices and the tension between what Huck as a child-narrator

says and what he unintentionally reveals, which results in deadpan humor thanks to the Skaz-

like narrative technique.

Since the Skaz-like narrative technique functions as a stylistic device, the narrative

includes many dialogues in which characters are in conflict and that is what creates the

defamiliarization of the conception of slavery and racial discrimination. Depiction of Jim

dialogues with Huck, though Jim is a fugitive slave, he talks back to Huck, namely the master

in terms of social reality. While discussing about “Solomon the wise’’, for instance, Jim

questions logic of Huck and he insists on supporting his own idea instead of being subjugated

by Huck, the senior. Besides, he surprisingly undermines the dominant white voice of Huck

who supposedly knows the best, while discussing whether the Moon and the stars are made or

only just happened. Interestingly, Jim and Huck are bound, which is improbable in social

reality and on the raft they, somehow are able to communicate in a democratic way. Moreover

he tells his dream to buy his wife and children, in this sense he is transformed into a subject

from an object. But on the other hand, there is a conflict on matter of racial discrimination for

Huck calls him “this nigger which I had’’ upon the invasion of the raft by the Duke and the

Dauphin, in a sense he regards him as an object. Thus all these aspects of Jim, depicted

through the dialogues, departs him from image of stereotypical slave and at the same time

Huck and Jim’s conflicting voices on the matter of racial discrimination (slave as an object or

as a subject) fulfills the function of the Skaz-like narrative technique as a stylistic device,

which also makes the reader engaged in the matter and question the race issue with awareness

gained through the defamiliarization of slavery and racial segregation.

Huck, the Skaz-like narrator, achieves defamiliarization through punching the reader

to notice what we ignore about civilization, which is corruption of the civilization, indeed. In

the novel the Skaz-like narrative technique promotes awareness of what the civilization

consists of, through portrayal of different characters from different social classes in hierarchy

such as Pap, Miss Watson, Aunt Sally, the Grangerfords, the Duke and the Dauphin, and

Colonel Sherburn. Pap is a representative of violence and white trash in the eyes of Huck

because he is from lower class and beats him. Miss Watson is one of the affluent whites, slave

owner and adopts Huck. From the child’s perspective she is a representative of authority,

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decency but hypocrisy at the same time since she is a good Christian and Bible condemns

slave owners. Aunt Sally seems good yet she has racist ideology as many people in her

community have. When Huck tells a story about a steamboat accident he says that nobody

was hurt just a nigger died, and then she says: ‘lucky that no one hurt.’ The Grangerfords are

the affluent whites so they stand for integrity, decency yet, on the other hand their feud with

the Shepherdsons for vague reason of family honor-as one critic says-causes bloodshed. The

two aristocrats attend church with their guns while preacher gives a sermon about brotherly

love. The Duke and the Dauphin are con-men and hence the most visible emblem of the

corruption of the civilization, and they can become whatever they get a profitable money so

they retain facet of anonymity. In contrast to what people think, Huck regards human beings

as awful cruel to each other upon learning that they have been tarred and feathered for they

simply trick people. Colonel Sherburn shoots Boggs who is drunk but harmless, just threatens

him in public. Although Colonel Sherburn commits murder, he is not mobbed by the same

society that tars and feathers the Duke and the Dauphin who do not kill anybody, which

shows double standard of the civilization. In this respect, depiction of all these characters is

opposed to the idealize depiction of the civilization in its own moral integrity since they are

respectively hypocritical character. So Huck’s vision of such characters who try to sivilize

him, defamiliarizes our conception of the civilization as one single unified entity because he

shows us that there are different classes among the white (white-trash, affluent trash, etc.) In

this sense Huck’s naïve vision offers a possibility to discuss the dominant white voice in the

civilization thanks to his presentation of heteroglossic language of characters which carries

out the function of the Skaz-like narrative technique as a stylistic device for Huck makes wide

variety of the voices available for the reader.

In the novel, the Skaz-like narrative technique accomplishes not only the

defamiliarization but also deadpan humor, because deadpan humor arises from the conflict

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between what Huck, the adolescent boy says and what he reveals unintentionally. In some

cases, Huck’s limited intellectual knowledge makes us laugh at improbable cases in which his

naïveté fails to understand what a sophisticated one understands. When Widow Douglas calls

him ‘poor lost lamb,’ Huck’s logic simply works like ‘she never ment no harm by it,’ so his

ignorance about this biblical allusion makes us smile. He also fails to recognize Widow

Douglas’ saying grace before meal and this act of saying grace done by her, in his vision, is

regarded as grumbling. Furthermore, in the Grangerfords’ estate he sees deceased Emmeline

Grangerfords’ paintings, which are for higher aristocratic taste actually, she paints one of the

weepy maidens who are in Huck’s vision, seems like a cabbage because of their garments.

With this aspect, the skaz-like narrative results in the defamiliarization of the act of saying

grace, the specific biblical allusion of ‘the lost lamb’ and 19th century women’s garments with

crinoline, and deadpan humor, as well.

“The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’’ reveals Mark Twain’s unique style, which as

Bakhtin describes, is the way the author juxtaposes social an historical voices, that is to say,

multiple voices. In the novel Huck’s himself discloses the Skaz-like narrative’s role as a

stylistic device and hence we are able to see multiple voices of the characters, such as Jim,

Pap, Miss Watson, Widow Douglas, Aunt Sally, the Duke and the Dauphin, the Grangerfords

and Colonel Sherburn, who respectively have different social classes, values, opinions and –as

a matter of course- clashing voices, out of which Twain creates humor and the

defamiliarization as well. Therefore, the usage of the Skaz-like narrative technique, so as to

create humor, by Mark Twain and the depiction of the multiplicity of the social voices in

which we see a set of conflicts between respective opinions of the characters in the novel,

conspire to convince us that the Skaz-like narrative serves as a stylistic device in the creation

of the defamiliarization in the novel.