Pynchons Problem

[alice wellintown]

> But Huck isn't free--or he is and isn't free--from those conventions, particularly the ones related to slavery. He may not follow them but thinks he is wrong not to. At one point, he accepts that he's going to go to hell for helping Jim but helps him anyway. He may not be doing what he's been taught is right but he accepts that he's in the wrong. And when Tom agrees to help free Jim, Huck loses considerable respect for him. Of course, the reader should see that Huck is right when he does wrongs, but Huck doesn't see that.

There are so many brilliant scenes that are driven by the irony
described. One is the scene when Huck, dressed as a girl, fails to
fool a woman with his disguise; she figures he is in drag because he
is a run-away-apprentice. Huck can never get over the idea that he has
another person's property in his company and that the legal and moral
thing to do is to return Jim to Watson. His experiences with Jim do
not change his view on slavery. Experience won't change a boy's mind.
Reading, even Romances, as Tom Sawyer does, seems to only matters
worse, and Twain's famous warning shot at the front of the book argues
that reading Realism or Naturalism or Twainism or whatever, won't do a
damn thing neither.