Rhetorical Listening, Silence, and Cultural (Dis)identifications in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Revisiting the “Raft Episode” Again, Ugh!

Abstract:This article offers a new interpretation of the thirteen-page “raft episode,” originally intended as part of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn yet never appearing in any edition during Twain’s lifetime. The episode has been problematic for both editors and readers, to say the least. Editors must decide whether to include it or not, and readers must decide how to interpret it if it is included. This article focuses on the episode as the longest stretch of Huck’s silence in the book and argues that it models the kind of work silence performs in achieving a basic coherence for the narrative. More broadly, it shows how Twain imbues the book with silences wherein the trope of rhetorical listening, as witnessed through and practiced by Huck, enacts a stance of openness for Huck and engenders that stance for the reader in order to encounter and make sense of the cross-cultural exchanges that occur in Huck’s silent dialectics. The argument briefly contextualizes the editorial problem and the episode’s rhetorical exigence for both Life on the Mississippi and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It then clarifies the theoretical uses of silence, rhetorical listening, and identification. And, finally, it analyzes how silence and rhetorical listening function before, during, and after the raft episode.