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"These Leather-Face People": Huck and the Moral Art of Lying

In contrast to Mary Jane, Huck is "one of these leather-face people," and judging from the number of times he lies successfully, he is one of the most "leather-face people" who ever lived. Huckleberry Finn is full of other "leather-face people," but the other liars in the book get caught at it and are punished, either by members of their society or by some sort of "divine retribution." The King and the Duke are tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail; Tom Sawyer takes a rifle ball in the leg; Pap is murdered or drowns; the thieves on the Walter Scott drown in the broken-up wreck; even Jim, a relatively innocent liar, is bound, chained, and almost lynched. Huck's only punishment comes from Aunt Sally, whippings which he says "didn't amount to nothing," and her promise to "sivilize" him, which, as distasteful as it is to Huck, does not match the punishments meted out to the other "leather-face people." Huck's lies are so pervasive that, taken as a body, they form a thematic and structural unity that helps tie the novel together. By examining Huck's lies closely, one can see not only his highly ingenious method, and the progression of his lies as they get bigger and bigger, but also the moral framework that underpins the lying and provides part of the foundation of the novel. Indeed, Huck's lies also form an important part of the structure for the celebrated crisis of conscience in Chapter XXXI, the central moral passage of the novel. Probably no reader comes away from Huckleberry Finn without a great respect for Huck's ability to improvise complex lies to get out of tight situations. In an early review of the novel, Thomas Sergeant Perry notes Huck's "undying fertility of invention."2 According to Lionel Trill-