Freed a second time

If Charles Dickens’ Bleak House mocked the do-gooder British woman who wanted to save the poor and downtrodden, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn shows the complicated sad consequences of this fixation. Huck with Jim we see as smart and sensible but less so when near Tom Sawyer. To hold in the highest standing the marks of high culture or to escape the “sivilizing” – this tension animates the book.