Andrew Knox

Studies in the Novel – Huck vs. Bone Essay

June 10, 2010

Huck and Bone against the World

The shared ethics of Rule of the Bone and Huckleberry Finn

Chapman “Bone” Dorset1 and Huckleberry Finn are pretty much the same character placed in
two separate time periods. They both hold nearly identical philosophies and ethical codes. They both
place greater importance on strong friendship over obeying societies' regulations. They are disdainful
of civilization and the behavior patterns expected by the civilized. Contempt is the name of their game,
the jurisdiction of their parents be damned. Bone and Huck both lead lives of self-determination,
independence and reliance on their closest friends only. Although the ordeals Bone goes through are
more severe and graphic in detail compared to Huck's, this is merely an adaption of the content to our
modern expectations of wanton obscenity and depravity in our entertainment. Huck and Bone are
essentially the same person, and their attitudes towards society are identical.
Both characters value their friends above the law, and trust very few people they don't know.
They hold a permanent stance of defiance against conforming to behavioral norms. While they pursue
lifestyles and habits that give them the appearances of vagrant immoral outlaws, they both have ethical
standards that uphold classically positive ethics, especially with loyalty to friends and caring for the
young and the sick. Throughout Rule of the Bone, Bone is searching for purpose and a code to live his
life by. Near the end, he discovers a huge moral distinction that helps him resolve his guilt over I-
Man's death; he realizes the difference between crimes and sins:
“Stealing is only a crime but betrayal of a friend is a sin. It's like a crime is an act
that when you've committed one the act is over and you haven't changed inside. But when
you commit a sin it's like you create a condition that you have to live in. People don't live
in crime, they live in sin.2”
Bone then does the symbolic, if completely unnecessary and stupid, gesture of duplicating I-
Man's “crime” of having sex with his father's girlfriend and thus exposing himself to the same potential
risk and punishment. In a sense, he seeks to absolve himself of sin by implicating himself as an
accomplice in I-Man's crime. At the end of Huckleberry Finn, Huck also realizes his responsibility to

1 Banks 280
2 Banks 366

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Andrew Knox
Studies in the Novel – Huck vs. Bone Essay
June 10, 2010

do right by his black mentor, in this case, rescue Jim from captivity once and for all. Huck and Tom
Sawyer team together to concoct an escape plan that would “make Jim as free a man as [any other,] and
maybe get us all killed besides.3” This quote summarizes the relationship that Huck and Jim have built
up through the novel, Huck is so committed to rescuing Jim that he is willing to risk his life.
Their otherwise admirably strong relationships are complicated by the race factor. In both
books, the young white boy befriends the older black man. In Huck's time, black slaves are not
acknowledged as fully human, and are disenfranchised from citizenship, education and respect by law.
Huck could be charged with aiding and abetting an escaped slave, facing both incarceration and
excommunication4. One hundred years later, race relations have softened somewhat, and Bone's
relationship with I-Man is less controversial in terms of race, but more for I-Man's fringe religion, the
drug dealing and drug use.
While searching for purpose and adventure, both protagonists search for their ideal of home.
This desire for stability and domestic serenity manifests itself in their frequent acts of running away
from home. Bone runs away from his parent's home, then from the bikers, then from the Ridgeways,
then he went to I-Man for the first time and eventually tried to move back in with his parents. When
that failed, he and I-Man ran away from America and fled to Jamaica. Bone changes to several
different residences in his time in Jamaica, until he is too fed up with it, and he runs back to America.
Huck starts out the novel sneaking out of the Widow Douglas' Mansion every night to hang out with
Tom Sawyer. When his abusive father returns from nowhere and starts dominating his life, Huck
builds up the courage and supply cache to escape. Joining up with the runaway slave, Jim, Huck rafts
down the Mississippi, passing through various locales and rest stops on the way down south. When the
Duke and the King join them, they are incapable of finding a permanent settlement due to the
scammers abusing the local's trust and getting run out of town. The only time Huck is made to feel
comfortable and at home is when he has to impersonate Tom Sawyer. At the very end, the cycle begins
again when Aunt Sally vows to adopt and “sivilize” him5.
There is also a cycle in each of the protagonists reconnecting with their best friends from the
beginning of the story and realizing that they no longer have much in common. Huck and Tom and the
3 Twain 239
4 Twain 231
5 Twain 298

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Andrew Knox
Studies in the Novel – Huck vs. Bone Essay
June 10, 2010

gang play imaginative role playing games in the forests around their community. Bone/Chappie and
Russ hang out and do drugs with a biker gang. Both protagonists initially recognize their best friends
as superior: Russ is older and more experienced, Tom is better educated and read. When the adventures
begin, the best friend is displaced by the older black man and left behind in the hometown. The best
friend only serves as a mannequin for the main character's adolescent ideals. When the best friend
returns near the end of each book, it is obvious that the two have grown apart and now live very
different lives. A fundamental difference between the endings of Rule of the Bone and Huckleberry
Finn is whether the protagonist decides to reconnect with the old best friend and go back to their
original way of life. Huck once again takes a subordinate role to Tom throughout the jailbreak plot and
maintains good relations with him, although he flees from sivilization into the Indian Territory. In
contrast, Bone finds that Russ hasn't grown or matured nearly as much as him; Russ can't wait to come
down to the tourist's perception of Jamaica and dive into the 24-hour drug and sex party scene that
Bone has come to despise. Bone realizes that his spiritual and philosophical growth from I-Man's
Rastafari teachings has changed his perspective so much that him and Russ have nothing in common:
“Listen man, I said, I want to come back. I'm ready to come home now.
He was shocked. Here? Gimme a fucking break, he said, and went on about what
an asshole place Au Sable was and how everything and everyone there sucked the big one.
But I said no, it'd gotten too tense for me here and I needed to come back to the
States and lead a normal life and get my shit together for the future. I was even thinking
about college someday, I said although actually that thought'd never crossed my mind in my
whole life until I said it and I might've been lying. It was a moment of weakness and I was
pretty confused right then...
Now he was really shocked. Stunned. You're shitting me, man! He said. The
fucking Plattsburg mall? And go to school? In Au Sable? When you could be kicking
back in fucking Jamaica drinking excellent rum and cokes and smoking humongous spliffs
of ganja and and screwing Jamaican babes under the tropical moon! I heard Jamaican
babes are the best, man, and they really dig white guys. That true?
Russ, it's not like you think, I said. Nothing is...6
6 Banks 349

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Andrew Knox
Studies in the Novel – Huck vs. Bone Essay
June 10, 2010

I couldn't blame him for not having the equipment to understand. He was who he
was. But if I was sad and lonely when I called him I was sadder and lonelier now.7”
This decision to give up on Russ is reinforced when he sees him newly arrived in Jamaica. Russ
continued down the hardcore punk path that Bone abandoned, ragged clothing, tattoos and Doc
Martens, “he looked really pathetic and I wished we could still be friends but it was definitely too
late.8” He allows Russ to meet and go home with Evening Star, Bone's father's girlfriend, perhaps
dooming him to the same fate as I-Man.
Both protagonists' are initially attracted to their best friend's subversive ideas and actions,
especially smoking. It's not just a pastime, they view smoking tobacco (Huck) or marijuana (Bone) as
giving overbearing paternalism the middle finger. Purposefully ignoring sound wisdom and inhaling
carbon monoxide and chemicals, they must get a certain vicarious thrill from defying convention.
Huck feels that adults who criticize tobacco for being unhealthy and unclean are being close-minded,
“pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But she wouldn't. She said it was a
mean practice and wasn't clean, and I must try to not do it any more. That is just the way with some
people. They get down on a thing when they don't know nothing about it.9” Bone begins the novel
connecting smoking weed with stealing from10 and taking advantage of11 his parents. When he
becomes homeless and independent, he smokes weed to dull and self-medicate his depression. He later
develops a respect for Rastafarianism's view of smoking marijuana as a religious sacrament.
Huck and Bone are also both expert liars. They create fake identities to interact with strangers,
and have varying levels in success. It was often observed in class that Huck is a more convincing liar
when he is on the river as opposed to when he is on land12. He is much smoother and believable when
the stakes are higher. The comparison to this in Rule of the Bone is that Bone lies better on the road as
opposed to when he is in a house13.
Their unique views on morality stem from their dysfunctional childhoods, especially their

7 Banks 351
8 Banks 382
9 Twain 10
10 Banks 9
11 Banks 23
12 Twain 97-99
13 Banks 113-15

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Andrew Knox
Studies in the Novel – Huck vs. Bone Essay
June 10, 2010

abusive fathers. Huck's father is a delusional alcoholic who gets violent and mean when he gets good
and drunk, “pretty soon he was all tired out, and dropped down with his back against the door, and said
he would rest a minute and then kill me. He put his knife under him, and said he would sleep and get
strong, and then he would see who was who.14” Bone has it even worse, not only is his alcoholic step-
father's abuse emotional and physical, but sexual as well. Throughout the novel, Bone makes
progressively less and less vague references to the past abuse, coming to terms with it and becoming
willing to speak openly about it. Eventually he confronts his step-father at gunpoint and makes him
feel guilty15.
So there we have it, Bone and Huck both lived nearly identical lives. They had similar
childhoods that formed in them similar viewpoints and similar structures of personal ethical conduct.
They survived terrible abuse and dangerous scenarios with confirmed lowlifes, and learned who they
really were from hanging out with black people. They both had punk best friends who never really
grew up, and they both entered into situations where they had to place their loyalty on one side or
another with their lives on the line. The only difference between Huck and Bone was the setting. The
setting constructed different circumstances. Huck maintained a relationship with Tom Sawyer till the
end because technology didn't yet allow him the luxury of rapid travel and meeting new people. A
hundred years later, the world has gotten smaller while the population has exploded upwards, and Bone
can move on from Russ and start a new life wherever he chooses to call home. If Huck had the same
opportunities, I believe he would have made the same choice as Bone. To just move on.

14 Twain 37
15 Banks 194-97

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Andrew Knox
Studies in the Novel – Huck vs. Bone Essay
June 10, 2010

Works Cited

• Banks, Russell. Rule of the Bone. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.

• Twain, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York: Signet Classics, 2002.