Swept Away: The Meaning of the Lost Raft in "Huckleberry Finn"

Swept Away

In chapter XV of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, we find the scene in which the title character is tying up the raft and the canoe, but the raft breaks loose in the strong river current. Jim, who is on the raft, is swept downriver into the darkness of the gathering fog, and Huck, terrified, sets out blindly after him in the canoe. This is not only an intense moment in the narrative, but essentially sums up in allegory many of the themes present in the novel. First, we may trace in this scene Huck's dread at the aspect of losing his friend Jim. Also we see signs of Huck's own helplessness against the powers that dictate his life. Then there is his willingness to follow, which will prove to be an important nature of self-sacrifice in the character of our hero.

The most literal way of translating this bit of the story would be to say that Jim is lost, Huck is afraid, Huck goes to find Jim. One may use almost exactly the same words to describe what happens shortly afterwards when Huck finds the raft or, as we shall not have time to discuss here, when the king sells Jim for forty dollars. The scene in the fog, however, describes this happening in its most simplistic sense, on a smaller scale than what we will see further on. Let us consider what happens when Huck at last catches up with the raft, and climbs aboard next to the sleeping Jim.

Huck first waits for Jim to awaken, and then proceeds to tell him that the entire incident was nothing more than a dream (159). Jim starts off by falling for the prank, but then, catching on, he becomes suddenly hurt and delivers a moving speech. I have updated the spelling for modern readers, but I stand by the belief that in order to do full justice to Jim and to Mark Twain, the passage should be read in its original format. As corrected, it would run thus:

"When I got all wore out with work, and with calling for you, and went to sleep, my heart was most broke because you was lost, and I didn't care no more what become of me and the raft. And when I wake up and find you back again, all safe and sound, the tears come and I could've got down on my knees and kiss your foot I was so thankful. And all you was thinking about was how you could make a fool of old Jim with a lie" (160).

Jim then stalks away, and Huck has lost his friend for the second time in a matter of pages; this loss being perhaps even more serious than the first. The scene ends in much the same fashion as the other: with Huck setting out after Jim. "It was fifteen minutes," Huck tells us, "before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger'"but I done it, and I warn't ever sorry for it afterwards, neither" (160). The hint of defiance at the end of this line may be imagined, but certainly our hero is unapologetic for his confession of guilt. Whether his affection for Jim is what drove his terror in the previous scene, or, as I find more likely, his recent fears are what enable him to humble himself now, can only be guessed. But in holding the two incidents side by side, we see that Huck's friendship with Jim is of extreme importance to him. The courage to apologize for his joke mirrors his willingness to follow down a dangerous river in the dark; both show a strong compassion for Jim, and this relationship cannot be ignored.

The raft incident is in part a commentary on Huck's own life. He remarks that as he headed into the fog, "[I had] no more idea which way I was going than a dead man" (172). This holds true not only for the moment in question, but for a greater part of the story as a whole. Often throughout the tale we see our young hero influenced and controlled by forces other than himself, the difference being that when that force is a social one, Huck is much less fearful than he is of natural ones. Readers will remember that the novel begins at a point in time when Huck is living with a sweet old widow. Being something of a vagrant, Huck is not used to going to school or being made to act "civilized"; but over time he decides to make the best of things. "The longer I went to school," he writes, "the easier it got to be -- I liked the old ways best, but i was getting so I liked the new ones, too, a little bit" (117). Huckleberry Finn is a master of comfort, making himself at home in any situation, but, in truth, very seldom standing up for himself.

Well known is the portion of the story in which Huck is kidnapped by his father or "pap," and is locked inside a small cabin for days at a time. Even here, though, Huck admits that after some time had passed

I was used to being where I was, and liked it, all but the cowhide part. It was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable all day, smoking and fishing, and no books nor study -- I had stopped cussing, because the widow didn't like it; but now I took to it again because pap hadn't no objections (122).

Huck was not only brought to the cabin by force, and is being held there without his consent, but he shrugs off the beatings his father gives him, and decides that his lot isn't an altogether bad one. Again, the boy's optimism is to be admired; but let us note that as a character he is an extremely passive human being.

In the fog scene, Huck says that he wanted to tie up to land because "it wouldn't do to try to run in a fog" (157), yet this is exactly what he ends up doing in the scene, just as he has done his whole life. From his tag-along adventures with the humorous but undeniably despicable king and duke, to his willingness to allow Tom Sawyer's takeover of Jim's rescue, Huckleberry Finn is a young man who quite rarely acts, and is quite commonly acted upon. In essence he is being washed down a river and has little control over his own movements.

As we have considered the strength of the sweeping river, we should be quite remiss in our duties if we neglected to touch upon the thick fog into which Huck goes as compared to the moral fog in his own head. There are countless examples through the book of Huck taking his morality from those around him: one such moment is seen in chapter XII when Huck puzzles that "Pap always said it warn't no harm to borrow things, if you was meaning to pay them back, sometime; but the widow said it warn't anything but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it" (147). Huck seems never to be quite certain as to whether or not he is doing the right thing. When he is with Jim, they determine to steal their food; when he is with Tom, he agrees not to. When he is with the king and the duke he takes part in their schemes, but after falling in with their victims he sees fit to betray them. Huck is lost in a fog with no moral compass, and it's all overshadowed by the biggest question of them all: that is, Jim's rescue.

It is never clear, of course, until the end of the book, which stance our hero will take on the issue of slavery; yet the passage about the raft lost in the fog, if read carefully, may give readers a preview of the greater theme of the work. Just as Huckleberry Finn was ready to follow his friend down the treacherous river at this moment in the novel, so he is ready to risk his very soul in assisting his friend to the last. "I see the fog closing down," he writes on p.157, "and it made me so sick and scared I couldn't budge for most half a minute it seemed to me." This foreshadows his terror when he loses Jim later on to the king and the duke: "And at last, when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face -- I most dropped in my tracks I was so scared" (245). And yet, even in the face of death and damnation, Huck will not give up on his partner: "As soon as I got started I took out after the raft, right down the towhead -- the minute I flew by the foot of it I shot out into the solid white fog" (157). And later, when confronted with his guilt in helping a runaway slave: "I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: all right, then, I'll go to hell" (246). Just as he cannot leave Jim to fend for himself when swept away by the current, so Huck cannot ignore his friend even when faced with hell; he will follow Jim, even to destruction.

We may see then, through the brief episode of the lost raft, several important themes of Mark Twain's work. The incident allows for closer friendship between the two protagonists, as well as commenting on Huck's near helplessness in a world of troubles, but ultimately proving his belief in friendship over all, helping Jim in spite of society, and even in spite of God Himself.

Works Cited

Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in Misc. Authors. American Literature: The

Norton Anthology. Volume C. 7^th ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc. 2007.