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Reflection for May 22, 2005

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In an explanatory note prior to the opening of his story about Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain writes: " In this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods . . . dialect; the ordinary 'Pike Country' dialect; and four modified varieties of this last . . . . I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding."

We get a wonderful display of a couple of these dialects as spoken by Huck and his runaway slave companion Jim. Low as Huckleberry is on the totem pole of white society, he's still white and so presumes to educate Jim about the wisdom of the biblical King Solomon. First he informs Jim about Solomon's harem, describing it as the place where Solomon kept his wives. "Solomon . . . had about a million wives." Jim then muses, "Mos' likely dey has rackety times in de nussery. En I r eck'n de wives quarrels considerable; en dat 'crease de racket. Yit de say Sollermun de wises' man data ever live'. I doan' take no stock in dat."

Well, Huck has to defend his biblical heritage and so insists, " . . . but he was the wisest man, anyway; because the widow she told me so!" So Jim counters by bringing up the story where Solomon would solve the issue of which woman was the mother of a child by commanding the child to be cut in half and so fairly divided between them (you know the story - of how the true mother was willing to give the child to the other to save it). But Jim is not impressed by such so-called wisdom. "I reck'n I know sense when I sees it; en dey ain' no sense in sich doin's as dat. De 'spute warn't 'bout a half a chile, de 'spute was 'bout a whole chile; en de man dat think he kin settle a 'spute 'bout a whole chile wid a half a child, doan' know enough to come in out'n de rain. Doan' talk to me
'bout Sollermun, Huck, I knows him by de back."

Frustrated, all Huck can say is, " . . . you don't get the point." And Jim comes right back at him. "Blame de pint . . . de real pint is down furder - it's down deeper. It lays in de way Sollermun was raised. You take a man dat's got on'y one or two chillen; is dat man gwyne to be waseful o' chillen? No, he ain't . . . He know how to value 'em. But you take a man dat's got 'bout five million chillen runnin' roun' de house, en it's diffunt. He as soon chop a chile in two as a cat, Dey's plenty mo'. A chile er two, mo'er less, warn't no consekens to Sollermun, dad fetch him!" The argument went on until Huckleberry caved in, "I see it warn't no use wasting words . . . So I quit."

The higher and mightier the leadership of this world gets, says Mark Twain in this parable, the less wise and sensitive it may become. It loses touch with the grass roots, the realm of personal feelings, of family love, of the preciousness of an individual life to a parent and friends. It begins to make decisions in a vacuum, bereft of heart, coldly, "logically", "strategically", while the ultimate impact of a consequent funeral service falls upon a rural or ghetto cemetery and the relatives and friends who have to bear the anguish of such remote logic.

The Trinity we honor today set an example of true leadership. In the person of the Son it descended from the apex of the universe to be born among us, to know the smell of a stable, to see and touch individuals for the persons they are; to suffer, to be crucified along with so many others by the Scribes and Herods and Pilates of this world and so to become a Lord who knows how to be a forever compassionate Servant and Friend of us all. And where would we be without "them"?

-- Geoff Wood