A Foucaultian Reading Of Mark Twain's Two Adventures

A great American realist writer in the 19th century, Mark Twain is considered the father of modern American literature. Among all his works, his two Adventures—The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—stand out as the most striking. Previous studies on the two novels are mainly from the perspective of the boy-protagonist, the structure, or the language techniques. Given the intricate relationships that Twain depicts in the two Adventures, a new approach—Michel Foucault's theory of power—could be fruitfully used to interpret the two books.According to the French philosopher Michel Foucault, power means relationships in which the participants seek to govern or manage the behavior of others. With multiple flowing paths, power exercises through what Foucault calls "disciplinary power" or "disciplines". By the mechanism of "surveillance (hierarchical observation)", "normalization" and "examination", disciplinary power aims to turn out "docile bodies". As Foucault holds, power is productive and one of its products is the "subject". This process of "subjectification" of power could be understood by a combination of individualization and totalization.Drawing upon Foucault's thinking on power, this thesis points out that in Twain's two Adventures the characters are shaped by the norms and restrictions of the disciplinary power. That is to say, disciplines affect the conduct of every person: Tom becomes the ultimate "docile body" by surveillance and normalization, Huck partly accepts the "docility" while also actively resists against the disciplinary examination, and Jim searches his "self" as he is totalized into a collective symbol of the society. The difference of the individualization of Tom and Huck lies greatly in the knowledge created in execution of disciplinary power and the resisting elements within them. And for Jim, who is the supposed "receiving end of power", he searches the "self" through his striving for the "whiteness". Thus, by the dynamic power relations Twain presents a disciplinary society and shows his concern on human life.