SOURCE: Pinsker, Sanford. “Huckleberry Finn and the Problem of Freedom.” Virginia Quarterly Review 7, no. 4 (autumn 2001): 642-49.

In the following essay, Pinsker argues that Huckleberry Finn is a subversive book concerning the impossibility of true freedom for either of the main characters.

“… he ain't no slave; he's as free as any cretur that walks this earth.”

—Tom Sawyer spilling the beans about Jim

“We're free … We're free …”

Linda Loman at Willy's graveside

Freedom is America's abiding subject, as well as its deepest problem. I realize full well that I am hardly the first person to ruminate about the yawning gap between our country's large promises and, its less-than-perfect practice, much less the first to comment on the ways in which 19th-century America struggled with the “peculiar institution” known as slavery. But I am convinced that the way these large topics find a local habitation in the pages of Adventures...