Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2002. Vol. 8. Eger Journal of American Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 28)

Studies - Gabriella Varró: The Adventures of the Minstrel Sign in Mark Twain 's Huckleberry Finn

and at times we even have the feeling that he is showing off his knowledge. Still, as can also be witnessed in the minstrel dialogues, Jim, with his twisted logic, often gets the better of the "Interlocutor," i.e. Huck. Running short of counter-arguments the white boy has no choice but to retreat at the end of the verbal duel quoted above. As the end-man has the last words in the conversation, the "battle" is clearly decided in his favor. Similarly to the minstrel show audiences, who depending on their class affiliations

—the lower classes taking the part of the weaker characters

—frequently changed loyalties, shifting from one to the other side in the respective debates, the reader's sympathies also tend to change. At times we feel for Jim, because we see that he is defenseless against Huck's pretentious intellectual superiority, and at other times we feel Huck's pseudo-scientific, yet, often selfcontradictory and entangled arguments, providing a mixture of facts and details to be close to us. The same double-edged parody was also the source of the minstrel show's great popularity, where upper classes could freely laugh together with the Interlocutor (here impersonated by Huck) at the clumsiness of the Darkies, while the' lower classes (especially the northern working class members of the audience) could delight themselves at their will at the expense of the occasional mistakes, or enforced rationalism of Mr. Interlocutor, who always failed in opposition to the resourceful folk wisdom of the Darkies." As Berret puts it, "Like the best comic dialogues of the minstrel shows" t^e dialogues between Huck and Jim simultaneously parody and celebrate "a display of social superiority" (40). Thus Twain pillories the contradictory notions of his middle-class audience as well, who demanded "social equality and upward mobility" (Berret 40) under the same breath.

4 It is very important that Huck is able to play the upper hand only with respect to Jim, whereas in his other relationships he is degraded to the level of the Darkies. This strikingly illustrates the contingency of social positions, as well as the fact that these social layers are by themselves meaningless without the support of true ethical contents. 1 An additional note that should be included here is that while Twain was on a lecture tour of the country in 1882 in the company of George Washington Cable, Joel Chandler Harris, and other established writers, he got the idea to give appearances in a minstrel style. At these occasions Twain played the end-man, and 270