Why Teaching Art Is Teaching Ethics by John Rethorst

Author:John Rethorst
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783031195112
Publisher: Springer Nature Switzerland

Dewey agrees with this caution about custom, writing that a moral function of art “is to remove prejudice, do away with the scales that keep the eye from seeing, tear away the veils due to wont and custom, perfect the power to perceive.”402

The point Trilling makes here suggests an answer to an often-posed question about the novel: what went wrong with the ending? While most of the book flows as inexorably as the great river upon which it takes place, the last fifth of the text largely concerns Tom Sawyer’s demands that Jim’s rescue proceed according to established standards and customs for a rescue, including tropes that Huck and Jim quite properly find ridiculous. Their pleas for common sense are rebuffed by Tom, not coincidentally a representative of a more established segment of society, who requires that certain criteria—Twain even calls them principles—be met. The tedious quantity of Sawyer’s specifications and the by turns grudging and panicked acquiescence to them by Huck and Jim are often considered a mistake on Twain’s part. I think it likely, though, that Twain wrote the ending with the same precision as the rest of the book, the tiresomeness of the ending reflecting his rage that so much of society places so much value on established norms and values that impede rather than serve human happiness. Twain’s book has the power it does in part because of its stance against hypocrisy. Jim has to be chained to a millstone since that’s the “right” way to do it, although greatly increasing the risk of capture, so the two boys and man have to dig a hole under the wall of the hut where Jim is held captive that is large enough to get the millstone in, and so on ad infinitum and, many critics and readers think, ad nauseam.

But I think Twain had an important point. His other writings suggest so much contempt for the hypocrisy inherent in much established society that it’s reasonable to think that the burden of reading the last fifth of the book was one the author wished to impose, representing the burden he felt when, like Jim and Huck, he felt constrained by precepts he found preposterous. Huck even says of Tom during this episode, “He was always just that particular [i.e. exacting]. Full of principle.”403 At one point, Tom makes a concession and does not require the prescribed nonsense, cautioning “It ain’t right and it ain’t moral, and I wouldn’t like it to get out.” Twain’s mentions of “principle,” “right,” and “moral” make it clear how little he thinks of customary use of the terms.

His point needs the qualification well expressed by Bennett in his evaluation of ethical principles as good guidelines as long as they are checked in the light of sympathy. I see no evidence that Twain would disagree with Bennett: the novel is consistent with the views of several people discussed here that principles can be good and important guidelines but must not be treated as more than that: as ideals or absolutes.

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