“Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and the Kingship of Humanity

As Huck says, kings don't do much but just sit around. An illustration from the 1885 edition of "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." Public Domain

NOTICE

Persons attempting to find a motive in the narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR

This warning famously graces the opening page of Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” setting readers up for a narrative of gritty humor and grinning irony. Since Mr. Twain did not order readers away from attempting to find a theme, we propose that though this American epic is full of pariahs, vagabonds, and rapscallions, it is also a story about kings.

In the whole catalog of conjured heroes from Homer to Hemingway, not one is quite as kingly as Huckleberry Finn. And there never was such a king, either. Huck has royal poise, a regal demeanor, as he presides in straightforward fashion over his empire of mud and water.