International Journal on Studies in English Language and Literature (IJSELL) Volume 4, Issue 12, December 2016, PP 7-12 ISSN 2347-3126 (Print) & ISSN 2347-3134 (Online) http://dx.doi.org/10.20431/2347-3134.0412002 www.arcjournals.org
Social Criticism in Mark Twain’s the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Dr. Ibrahim Shalabi University of Hail, Department of English, Saudi Arabia Abstract: It is not implied by social criticism that Twain‟s novel is to be read as a sociological treatise or an „‟unedited transcript of reality‟ or even a mere „realistic recital of facts, even though the writer himself called it a „true book‟. The purpose of this article is to show how American life of those days was translated into fiction with its symbolic depth and resonance. It is the latter quality that gives the book the status in literature. In fiction, symbolism is the most important tool for recording the world around us. It must be remembered that a writer is in no way severed from the world and nor is art an abstract skill but as Mathew Arnold says “a criticism of life”.
Keywords: social criticism, symbolism, American Literature, discrimination.
1. INTRODUCTION Life and literature have never been at odds nor ever been thought so since the conception of art for isn‟t literature the mirror or the window to the world? If such a conflict really existed, most black American writers would not have written at all. Ralph Ellison in his work Shadow and Act (1936) for example, recognizes no dichotomy between art and protest and asserts that „social protest is not antithetical to art‟. But there must be a fundamental connection between artistic means, that is technique and discipline, and social and moral conviction. It is only when an aesthete approaches politics as if it were a poem, or when the political activist approaches the poem as it were a leaflet, that the trouble starts. It can be argued that all that is great in American literature comes out of a profound confrontation of social facts. One thinks, for example, Of Moby Dick and Leaves Of Grass in the nineteenth century, similarly, in the twentieth century the plays of Arthur Miller - The Death of a Salesman; All MY Sons and The Price, to name a few, the plays of Edward Albee - The American Dream, Who‟s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and The Delicate Balance, all aim at converting social issues into drama. Even The Zoo Story, which has been placed in the category of absurd drama, is a commentary on social dilemmas.
2. THE AMERICA OF MARK TWINS The reason why there is no confrontation of social facts in Henry James is that he had a great fascination for “the items of high civilization" as they existed in Europe. Henry James came from a different America, the one that was dominated by European culture, as against the America of Mark Twain who identified himself with the culture of the frontier. Besides, Twain's subject was man in society and the alienated man ("social pariah” in Leslie Fiedler's words). James's interest, on the other hand, lay in the inner workings of his characters, what he himself described as the "interest behind the interest." This search into the interest behind the interest made up the drama staged in the consciousness and it became an almost artistic principle with James to present the drama with only the essential clues. There has always been a cultural bias in Mark Twain ever since Van Wyck Brooks (1933) published The Ordeal of Mark Twain. Brooks considered Twain a great artist possessing native gifts but subordinating these gifts to the forces of Puritanism and the frontier. Bernard DeVoto (1942) in his book which was a rejoinder to Brooks' book, identified Mark Twain with the frontier and considered Twain's books as having in them "something eternally true to the core of the nation's life." Even the literary historians considered Mark Twain the epitome of American culture. Vernon Louis Parrington (1972) for example, called Twain "an immensely significant American document ... a mirror ©ARC
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