English 104 - Introduction to Narrative
Identity Theft: A Search for Self and Family
Identity Theft: A Search for Self and Family
Category: 2 Essay: Carroll, Twain, Faulkner, Sebold | Meredeth Lammert
Identity – one’s being, one’s character, one’s image – becomes blurred for both Huckleberry Finn and Lindsey Salmon after a horrific murder separates both of them from their parents and parental figures ultimately leaving them to search for a replacement of authority and responsibility in themselves as well as in others. The traditional adult/child power dynamic, more specifically how parent figures provide support and express authority over children, is challenged in these novels by the failure of those figures to uphold that role. Behind the two very different settings of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, lie two children deeply connected by their atypical relationship with their unstable fathers and inadequate maternal figures. The reader recognizes that both are able to rely on male yet mother-like figures, Jim and Hal Heckler, for some protection and support; yet these individuals are inadequate as authority figures. Due to the unreliability of Pap and Mr. Salmon as responsible father figures and the absence of supportive mother figures, both Huck and Lindsey adapt as responsible figures who can master their father’s faults so they can take care of themselves and in Lindsey’s case, her family. Thus, because of two different murder scenes, one authentic and one produced, both Huck and Lindsey are forced into multiple crises of identity, ultimately becoming successful versions of their fathers, in order to protect themselves as well as those around them from the harm or complications their true identity brings.
The instability in Huck’s home environment breeds Huck’s identity issues, especially between a civilized young man and an adventurous boy. This led him to reject committing to either image through the staging of his own murder in order to escape into an unknown world on the Mississippi where he could become anyone he desired.
The widow and Ms. Watson tried to civilize Huck into a well dressed, educated, and polite young man, an identity that Huck accepted but knew was not entirely right for him, having little desire to be like either of them. His dissatisfaction with this lifestyle is expressed through Huck’s many adventures with Tom Sawyer’s Gang. This allows him to escape the confines of the widow’s world and explore his desire for adventure. When he escapes he is allowed to become a different person by dressing in the ratty clothes, swearing, and breaking the rules much like the lifestyle his father leads. Huck always returns to the widow and Ms. Watson because he does not wish to entirely reject their lifestyle or fully embrace that of his fathers. While with his father, he is forced to be the rational adult in the relationship due to his father’s drunkenness and lack of civilization. When he finds that neither lifestyle can satisfy him, he is forced to forfeit his identity completely by staging his own murder and escape to the Mississippi River in search of the equilibrium between civilization and adventure. Huck adopts an identity much like that of his Pap’s; he becomes a con artist and a scavenger. Yet what distinguishes him from his father is that he is able to be successful in this role, applying the intelligence and rationality that the widow and Ms. Watson tried to instill in him. This desire to mimic, yet improve, his father’s life hints to Huck’s desire become independent and in control of his own life, as he believes a parent or adult should be. Though Huck is neither completely responsible nor rational in the way that most adults are, he has matured to a level above his fathers, therefore switching the power dynamic between himself and his father. By restricting Huck’s independence through Jim, the King and the Duke, as well as others, we get a sense that Twain does not desire Huck to become his own authority figure but remain a child. Huck rebels against these authorities through his scams and adventures by using intelligence, bravery, as well as fraudulence. This is why Huck is able to return home at the end of the novel as not an adult, but a matured child who is able to balance being civilized and being adventurous.
Lindsey’s story is somewhat different; her identity crisis, though facilitated by murder and an instable parental structure, is developed in a different way than Huck’s. Unlike Huck, Lindsey Salmon has a pretty “normal” life, with seemingly normal and adequately stable parents, up until her sister Susie is brutally raped and murdered. The absence of Susie’s body, evidence, and a police suspect, splinter Lindsey’s family apart; driving her mother into hiding and eventual rejection of the family, while driving her father to obsession with keeping Susie and her case alive, abandoning any responsible role as a father. These factors, along with Lindsey’s unfortunate ability to remind everyone including herself of her missing sister, cause Lindsey not only protect herself as well as others from her own reflection, but avoid her own identity completely. Susie’s acknowledgement that, “She wanted to be more than a girl,” (p.207) not only stated the obvious that Lindsey wanted to grow up and become an adult, but also can somewhat be felt as her desire to be more than the little girl who was missing, her sister Susie. Lindsey approaches these changes by first of all using makeup in an attempt to disguise any resemblance of Susie, but also as a means of maturation that would foster her attempt to become a responsible and independent adult. Lindsey’s desire to grow up is an attempt to reconnect her family through the adoption of her father’s authoritative role, thus providing some parent figure to her splintered family and help them cope with Susie’s murder. Susie describes her as, “becoming everything all at once… The Ostracized: One Man Alone,” (p. 176) meaning Lindsey was not only changing herself completely to accommodate to her needs as well as her families needs to cope with the tragedy, but also that she was the soul person in the family doing so. Lucky for Lindsey, we see that she is not completely devoid of support; Hal Heckler is constantly there for Lindsey to protect her from harmful realities as well as support her family in minor ways by playing with Buckley, aiding Grandma Lynn, and even providing rides for Lindsey in times of need. With some aid from Hal, Lindsey is able to switch roles with her father in the power dynamic. This enables her to support her family in a way her father no longer could, as well as take the initiative to find some evidence to solve her sister’s case, in an attempt help herself and her family members move on from Susie’s death and reconnect as a family.
Huck suffered has from the loss of his mother, the embarrassment and trauma of an abusive alcoholic father, and an exhaustive attempt to civilization from two women who don’t understand or appreciate his needs as a young and adventurous boy. Miss Watson and the widow could never be maternal figures to Huck because they always antagonized him, trying to make him someone he didn’t feel comfortable being, and scolding him when he rebelled. Huck resented Miss Watson because she was always yelling at him and preaching to him while the widow only looked at him with disappointment and made him feel guilty. Yet despite their failure to satisfy a parental role in Huck’s life, their influence over him is felt through the intelligent planning of all his scams as well as his development of a moral conscience that causes him to sympathize with, and often help, the people he is conning or exposing as frauds.
When Pap comes to get Huck’s money, he is threatened by Huck’s new lifestyle, mocking his clothes and his new home. He doesn’t want Huck to go to school and learn how to read and write or even become religious, threatening Huck with violence if he continues to go to school. Pap says:
I’ll learn people to bring up a boy to put on airs over his own father and let on to be better’n what he is…Non of the family couldn’t [read or write], before they died . I can’t; and here you’re a-swelling yourself like this. I ain’t the man to stand it – you hear?...I’ll lay for you, my smarty; and if I catch you about that school I’ll tan you good. (p32)
In most parental relationships, the parents desire for their children to have a better life then their own, especially if they had a particularly rough life like Pap.
Pap is truly a bad influence on Huck: He denounces religion and education; he spends all his money on alcohol, getting visibly drunk to his son and to the public; and his soul method of survival is to attempt to con people, usually unsuccessfully, to get what he wants. “There’s a hand that was the hand of a hog; but it ain’t so no more; it’s the hand of a man that’s started in on a new life, and’ll die before he’ll go back…and in the night sometime he go powerful thirsty and clumb out onto the porch-roof and slid down a stanchion and traded his new coat for a jug of forty-rod.” (p. 34) Huck recognizes his failure as a parent and as a con artist as product of Pap’s weakness for alcohol as well as his lack of education. Thus, when Huck is forced to essentially become his own parent, he mimics his father as a con artist, but makes sure he is successful through his use of intelligence and avoiding destructions like alcohol.
As earlier pointed out, unlike Huck’s family, Lindsey’s family was stable and fairly normal before the tragedy. It becomes apparent through the progression of the novel that Lindsey’s mother shut herself off emotionally from the family soon after Buckley was conceived because of the direct relationship it had to the abandonment of her dream to be a teacher. From that point on, Lindsey’s mother shut off her intellectual side to the family and became immersed in her role as a home maker and ideal wife. After Susie’s death, Lindsey’s mother completely discredited herself as a parental figure by completely cut herself off from the family; immersing her pain with an inappropriate affair with the policeman, Len Fenerman, who was in charge of Lindsey’s case; and finally abandoning the family because she, “want[ed] to be more than a mother.” (p.207) Thus, Lindsey was left without a mother figure to help her through adolescence, ultimately increasing her desire to skip them all together and become an adult.
Lindsey’s father also played a key role in her rush to adulthood. Unlike Pap, Lindsey’s father was never a bad person. The death of his first born daughter, the child with who he was most connected through the shared passion of making ships in a bottle, unhinged Lindsey’s father because of guilt as well as an obsession to solve her murder. Avoiding work, keeping himself busy in Susie’s case; and therefore ultimately making it impossible for anyone to move on and put Susie to rest made him into an unreliable father figure. Not only was he neglecting his family through his failure to be a father figure, but he also failed at finding any concrete evidence to finger Mr. Harvey as Susie’s murderer. These factors seemed to splinter the family even more than the initial shock of Susie’s murder. Therefore, Lindsey took it upon herself, being glad to get rid of her identity as Lindsey Salmon, sister of Susie Salmon, to become the overseer and protector of the family. As Susie points out, “She was suddenly the wife to our father, as well as the oldest and most responsible child.” (p. 134)
Jim was the first parental figure Twain sends to protect Huck, knowing that Huck is not fully capable handling himself. Jim finds Huck almost immediately after Huck runs away from his father and instantly become his protector. His relationship to Huck is more nurturing as opposed to authoritative, making him inadequate as a paternal figure. As a nurturer, Jim protects Huck almost like a mother; he allows Huck extra sleep on the raft by taking over his shifts; he shields Huck from the sight and knowledge of Pap’s death; and he even calls him “honey” (p. 134) and constantly worries about him when they are separated. What detracts from him as an authority figure is his status as a slave; his obsessive belief in superstitions; his gullibility; as well as his willingness to follow Huck deeper into the South and play along Tom Sawyer’s ridiculous escape plan from the Phelps’s farm. Despite this, Jim’s position as a protector over Huck, even it only slightly impedes on Huck’s independence, shows the reader that Huck may not be entirely ready to grow up and take care of himself.
For Lindsey, Hal Heckler, her boyfriend’s older brother, becomes her protector from harmful truths as well as total responsibility over the family. Much like Jim, Hal is able to take care of Lindsey in a mother like way, but also is inadequate as a true parental figure because of his lack of authority as well as his age and status in society. Hal is only a few years older than Lindsey and although he is a very nice and reliable young man, his lack of education as well as his lifestyle diminish from his ability to represent an authoritative male figure in Lindsey’s life. He is able to protect her like a mother, by hiding from Lindsey her own mother’s infidelities by warning Abby in the hospital that Lindsey was already there, “She caught herself then, shook herself back to where she was, never guessing for a second that that had been Hal’s purpose in greeting her.” (p 154) There are other services he is able to provide for her that is typical of a mother or even father figure; he is able to come pick her up at a minutes notice, always being there when Lindsey needs him He also plays with Buckley and entertains Grandma Lynn so that Lindsey isn’t overwhelmed by all the responsibilities of adulthood. But, ultimately, Hal is unable to provide an authoritative and completely available parental figure that Lindsey deems as her own responsibility to her family.
It is these unstable parental relationships, as well as the helpful, but inadequate role the protective figure plays for these children, that create the need for an identity shift from both Huck and Lindsey. Huck was forced to give up his already somewhat dualistic identity of “Huck Finn” the son of a drunken good-for-nothing and the salvation project of and old widow and hypocritical teacher in order to escape from the unstable environment both bring. Although Huck’s identification with his father and subsequent attempt to develop into an independent and authoritative figure becomes Huck’s main assumed identity, he still feels the need to experiment with many other identities to see what works best for him and for others. One unsettling commonality between the majority of Huck’s assumed identities is that they either lack any stable parent figures or are practically orphans, having lost the majority of their immediate families from tragic diseases or accidents much like Huck himself. The most unsuccessful identity shift for Huck is his attempt to become Sarah Williams, a girl who sole parental figure, her mother, is sick and out of money. He is exposed almost immediately as a fraud because of his inability to assimilate a feminine identity. His next identity shift comes immediately after, “I told her my father and mother was dead, and the law had bound me out to a mean old farmer in the country…and he treated me so bad I couldn’t stand it no longer… and cleared out.” (p. 70-71) This character is strangely similar to Huck, who was bound to his father by law, but was treated poorly, thus becoming fed up and running away. When disease has taken over his entire family, leaving him with only his sick father, Huck saves Jim from being recaptured. Huck becomes an orphan after great tragedy splits up his family, many of who die, when he arrives at the Grangerfords. There are many other similar situations in which Huck finds himself lying and creating false identities, to gain knowledge and power over his audience as a means of expressing his power and authority.
These false identities show Huck’s desire to control the adults and authority figures around him, ultimately leaving him with a feeling of control, independence, and authority over himself as well as others. The main authority Huck desired to rebel against were the King and the Duke. He knew they would be harder to con being frauds themselves, and because they commanded a strong authority over Huck from the beginning through their own false identities. Therefore Huck knew he would have to deceive them and escape in a slow, calculated, and secret way before they were able to expose Huck as a fraud. His first attempt to con them was to identify himself as an orphan and Jim as his slave, “My folks was living…they all died off but me…warn’t nothing left but sixteen dollars and our nigger, Jim.” (p. 143) He was able to convince them of his story, and even come up with a reason why he and Jim traveled at night. At first, Huck didn’t mind the King and the Duke, admiring their ability to easily con almost anyone with any sort of scam. But when he felt they began scamming the wrong sort of people, innocent people, Huck decided they had gone too far. Huck attempted many times to secretly deceive them so their plans would fail, or even give them the slip so that he and Jim could escape, desperately trying to maintain his control over himself as well as his authority over them. But, this time, each attempt failed, allowing the King and the Duke to get the best of Huck, and therefore shattering Huck’s identity as independent and in control. This was sign from Twain that Huck was not meant to be in control, and therefore needs an authority figure to protect Huck from harm.
Much like Huck, Lindsey desired to shed her identity as a Salmon girl. She couldn’t handle what that last name meant: murdered sister, crazed father. “Lindsey had avoided putting her last nametag, choosing to draw a fish instead. She wasn’t exactly lying that way, but she hoped to meet a few kids from the surrounding schools who didn’t know the story of my death or at least wouldn’t connect her to it.” (p 115) Thus, her own last name creates a crisis of identity for Lindsey, not only because she is no longer simply Lindsey Salmon, but because she now has become the sister of the murdered girl to everyone around her. For this very reason she is constantly reminded of her sister’s horrible death and thus desires to detach herself from that label by changing her own identity. Lindsey’s face also personifies her identity crisis as Susie Salmon’s sister. Like many sisters, Lindsey looks similar to Susie; her face especially reminds everyone, including herself, of Susie. Susie points out, “When people looked at Lindsey, even my father and mother, they saw me. Even Lindsey was not immune. She avoided mirrors. She now took her showers in the dark.” (p. 59) Lindsey’s only tool to combat this is makeup; through the use of makeup, Lindsey is able to not only hide her likeness to Susie and protect those around her from the memory of her death, but the makeup also fuels her desire to grow up and become an adult. When she first used the makeup she was relieved for the change, “In the mirror she saw something different and so did I: an adult who could take care of herself. Under the makeup was the face she’d always known as her own, until very recently, when it had become the face that reminded people of me.” (p. 103) Lindsey realized that if Grandma Lynn was able to help everyone forget Susie for a moment with makeup, then maybe she could continue that healing process with her own use of makeup. Even Grandma Lynn’s use of makeup seems to symbolize strength for Lindsey; underneath all the makeup, Lindsey can see an aging old woman, but in her use of makeup, Grandma Lynn is a strong character, able to cope, and help others cope, with Susie’s death. Lindsey also noticed her own mother’s use of makeup that without any on, she was a stranger. Thus through the use of makeup, many characters are able to hide their face as well as their identity.
As earlier pointed out, Lindsey’s use of makeup also fosters her desire to become an adult. This desire started to take direction in a form of adopting a role as a parent as Susie’s murder became more of a definite fact in her parents mind. The key moment that started Lindsey’s transition into her adult world as a parent was the discovery of Susie’s hat and it’s involvement in her murder. Because her parents were so incapacitated by this discovery, Lindsey took over role of the protector. She hid her identical jingle hat from her mother so she wouldn’t hear the bells and think of Susie. This example reinforces Lindsey’s effort to save her parents from damaging reminders of Susie, and her subsequent desire to help them to move on. After this day, Lindsey’s mother and father lost their status as parents to their children; they wouldn’t move on for their children so it was up to Lindsey to do it for them, creating the final development in her identity change. As Susie exclaims, “My sister was growing up before my eyes.” (p. 144) Lindsey took on the role of parent in an attempt to keep her already splintered family together; because her father was the most available to her, she adopted his role in the family, becoming the father figure to the family.
With Lindsey’s new identity, she began to take charge and watch over the entire family. The person who Lindsey worried over most was her father, and in turn that worry made her personify his identity in herself. Lindsey’s way of comforting her father, and in turn comforting the rest of her family, was to not only to hide painful memories of Susie, but to also take over his inadequate role as a father and make up for any faults or failures he exhibited. Lindsey’s ability to fulfill her father’s role was the greatest comfort to the rest of her family, including herself, and her father. Lindsey’s mother even recognized Susie’s new role as parent and the effect it was having on everyone. When she said, “You are keeping your father alive,” (p 207) Lindsey’s mother not only meant that by taking care of him Lindsey was keeping him physically alive, but that she was also able to keep his identity and presence alive in her adoption of his abandoned role as a father. Thus, by protecting him from Susie as well as from himself, she was protecting the rest of the family, who’s inability to move on was centered around their father’s insistence on keeping Susie alive in his mind. Her first method of doing this was by hiding her likeness to Susie with makeup. But her physical acts were more important; the night she stayed up taking care of her father at the hospital, he realized that it was time for him to take a rest and make an effort to move on from Mr. Harvey as an attempt to help his family. Thus, Lindsey adopted his obsession with Mr. Harvey as an attempt to comfort her father and bring some closure to Susie’s memory. Harvey even noticed this role reversal with Lindsey, observing how she too often ran by the house inspecting it for clues. When inside Harvey’s house, she could feel the flood of memories of Susie and how they had possessed her father. Lindsey’s break in, though dangerous, meant a lot to her father, because she was able to find the proof he had failed to find to prove Harvey’s guilt. Even though Lindsey’s effort failed to catch Mr. Harvey, she was able to make him expose himself as the murderer, even if he would never be caught. Like her father, Lindsey also constantly worries; what is odd about this is she constantly worries about trying not to make her father worry. During the break in, she is really only worried about being back in time not to make her father worry about her; when Samuel proposed to her the whole time she was preoccupied about how her father was probably worrying about her. She was even reluctant to inform her father of her engagement to Samuel and the house they found to live in because she was afraid he would think she was abandoning him. Thus, Lindsey tried to dictate her life around keeping her father comfortable and avoiding any action that might trigger a memory of Susie’s horrible death in her father. As Susie points out, “Lindsey and Buckley had come to live their lives in direct proportion to what effect it would have on a fragile father.” (p.244)
Lindsey’s delicate attention to her father was as strongly present in her attention to her other family members, but she was still able to take over a part of his role in their lives. Although Mr. Salmon was at first able to take care of Buckley, when their mother left, their father was so torn apart that he stopped playing with Buckley. Lindsey was able to replace the nurturing role their father had with Buckley with some help of Grandma Lynn, and the enrollment of Hal and Sam as his playmates. She watched over Buckley, finding him a sitter whenever needed, and like her father used to, she reassured him that, “You are so special… I’ll always be here, no matter what.” (p. 208) When Lindsey’s mother was still with them, Lindsey could recognize her detachment from the family and even her need for escape. She knew something was wrong thus she watched over her like a protective and concerned husband would, “My sister had dutifully hovered for weeks now, paying court to our mother regardless of the signals she gave.” (p.204) Thus, Lindsey did all of these things out of love for her family and love for her father; even though she was unable to prevent her mother from leaving, she was still able to keep the remains of her family together under her rule.
Both characters are tied together by their similar desires to change their identities based on how who they were and who they became affected not only themselves but those around them. Lindsey and Huck’s desire to shed the identity that was given to them because of their actual name was based on the reaction their names would bring in public; both Huck’s full name and Lindsey’s last name were triggers to the horrible unsolved murders that each of them were trying to hide from. Thus, through the many transformations of self and appearance, they were able to find a façade that best fit them through the improvement of their father’s identities. One underlying desire that was traceable but somewhat hidden from everyone, including the reader, was that Lindsey and Huck’s adoption of these roles were only temporary solutions for their parental issues which could be solved by the fulfillment of their desire to have a complete and reliable family. Throughout the novels, both character searched for that link that would connect them to the family they once had (Lindsey) or always secretly yearned for (Huck).
What they didn’t realize was that the materials for their ideal family were always present, but hidden. Only in good time, through the process of maturation, would this link to the family they desired would present itself. For Huck that link was Tom. Tom Sawyer was always someone Huck idealized not only because of his good family life, but also because of his adventurous side and his ability to con people like Pap. Tom’s constant influence over Huck throughout the entire novel, pushing Huck on in his journey, presented the reader with the subconscious understanding that they would one day again be reunited. Huck was able to comfortably fit the role of a Sawyer and enjoyed it considerably pinpointing his desire to be a part of that family, which coincidentally became a reality for him at the end of the novel. Lindsey’s own link was her mother. Despite Lindsey’s efforts to bring the family together by replacing her father, the family was still splintered and incomplete without the presence of a strong stable adult in either one of her parents. What Lindsey didn’t know was that she wasn’t able to truly fulfill that role for her family due to her dependencies as a child. Her father was unable to ever return as a parental figure because he was so completely broken apart by the loss of Susie, the escape of Mr. Harvey, and Abigail’s abandonment of the family. Therefore it was up to Abigail to return and save the family, but as Susie pointed out, “She had needed time to know that this love [for Susie] would not destroy her.” (p. 318) Thus, it wasn’t until Lindsey’s mother finally came back that the family was able to be complete again, allowing Lindsey to return back to her own identity: Lindsey Salmon, daughter to Jack and Abigail Salmon, sister to Buck and Susie Salmon, fiancé to Samuel Heckler, as well as future therapist.
Thus, these identity shifts were ultimately vital for both characters to fulfill the role of an adult or authority in control of their environment as a temporary way of substituting their need and desires for a complete and reliable family.
Posted by mlammert on December 13, 2003 at 10:27 AM