IDYLL:  a simple descriptive work in prose or poetry that deals with rustic life or pastoral scenes or which suggests a mood of peace and contentment.  

One of the things going on in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, perhaps the main thing, has to do with the essential decency and indecency of human beings. Huck himself is an innocent, accepting the bigotry of his time because he assumes his “betters” are actually better. Even so, he will risk his soul for Jim. And the grown man and father, Jim risks his freedom and life to safeguard the life of a child, which makes him the most moral person in the novel.

Okay, set that aside. (You might not even agree with me.) It is a (failed) Hero’s Journey and safety is generally found only when Jim and Huck travel, danger in staying in one place and with other people. The most peaceful passage in the entire mad run is Jim and Huck drifting south together on the river.

Connection to landscape often provides a vivid sensation of peace and contentment. Twain’s Huck Finn finds easy living and contentment on the Mississippi. Huck’s idyllic description of life on the river begins with the final three sentences of Chapter 18 and continues through the first few pages of Chapter 19 (below). Notice how he continues his conversational style, and utilizes description which includes all his senses—touch, taste, smell, sound, and sight. Twain gives the reader a specific event—the sunrise—and makes this experience live, a written “picture postcard” of a happy place and time.

This was an experience Samuel Clemens knew well personally. He worked the river—it was his childhood ideal, an adult accomplishment, and the source of his pen name: mark twain=safe water. I like to think he carried that memory of life on the river with him throughout his life and travels. If you can visualize a peaceful place, it is yours to visit whenever you have need.

The assignment: Describe such a peaceful vision from your own life—make your vision draw the reader into your experience. Use informal language but no use of 2nd person/direct address!  Search your memory for a complete picture, gather it up, using all of your senses. Make this place breathe using a specific time or event. There is no plot, no cause/effect relationship, no character development; this is not a true story, but is a true description of an experience.

Spend some quiet time thinking.  Choose a real place which was peaceful for you—on the ocean, in the woods, up a tree, hiking in the hills, or walking on the beach. I have also read wonderful “idyllic” papers which bent the rules a bit to talk about personally moving places—the locker room after a football game, scouting hunting trails, shopping with an aunt, on stage waiting for the curtain to open (my personal nightmare), an entire day up in a treehouse, driving to visit grandparents, surfing. List some features, details, and then ponder. Give this idyllic vision a chance to grow in your head before trying to get it all down on paper. The idyll is a personal description rather than a narrative or academic essay.

I have written about waiting for my sons to fall asleep before filling their Christmas stocking (they were in college at the time), hitting the magical three and a half miles and felling runner’s high, walking the beach, and weaving shawls.

This is a “SHOW,” not a “TELL” paper, but showing with all your senses. It is important that your description demonstrate the sensory experience of your idyll. Don’t tell the reader how happy and peaceful it is—detail the sounds, tastes, smells, sights, and textures that cradle those feelings.

DIRECTIONS:  This is a descriptive paper with a very personal slant, as if speaking to someone you want to be there with you. No character development or plot, but your description may move through space, sensation, emotion. This is about a PLACE, not a person or event!  Personally meaningful setting, no significant dialogue (except perhaps to get you there), full and complete description. As always, write long and carve back. Revise it to a standstill.

NOTE: a weird revision strategy will follow later this week. Really it will.

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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

the end of Chapter 18 and the beginning of Chapter 19

We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.

Two or three days and nights went by; I reckon I might say they swum by, they slid along so quiet and smooth and lovely. Here is the way we put in the time. It was a monstrous big river down there— sometimes a mile and a half wide; we run nights, and laid up and hid daytimes; soon as night was most gone we stopped navigating and tied up—nearly always in the dead water under a towhead; and then cut young cottonwoods and willows, and hid the raft with them. Then we set out the lines. Next we slid into the river and had a swim, so as to freshen up and cool off; then we set down on the sandy bot- tom where the water was about knee deep, and watched the day-light come. Not a sound anywheres—perfectly still—just like the whole world was asleep, only sometimes the bullfrogs a-cluttering, maybe. The first thing to see, looking away over the water, was a kind of dull line—that was the woods on t’other side; you couldn’t make nothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more paleness spreading around; then the river softened up away off, and warn’t black any more, but gray; you could see little dark spots drifting along ever so far away—trading scows, and such things; and long black streaks— rafts; sometimes you could hear a sweep screaking; or jumbled up voices, it was so still, and sounds come so far; and by and by you could see a streak on the water which you know by the look of the streak that there’s a snag there in a swift current which breaks on it and makes that streak look that way; and you see the mist curl up off of the water, and the east reddens up, and the river, and you make out a log-cabin in the edge of the woods, away on the bank on t’other side of the river, being a woodyard, likely, and piled by them cheats so you can throw a dog through it anywheres; then the nice breeze springs up, and comes fanning you from over there, so cool and fresh and sweet to smell on account of the woods and the flow- ers; but sometimes not that way, because they’ve left dead fish laying around, gars and such, and they do get pretty rank; and next you’ve got the full day, and everything smiling in the sun, and the song- birds just going it!

A little smoke couldn’t be noticed now, so we would take some fish off of the lines and cook up a hot breakfast. And afterwards we would watch the lonesomeness of the river, and kind of lazy along, and by and by lazy off to sleep. Wake up by and by, and look to see what done it, and maybe see a steamboat coughing along up-stream, so far off towards the other side you couldn’t tell nothing about her only whether she was a stern-wheel or side-wheel; then for about an hour there wouldn’t be nothing to hear nor nothing to see—just solid lone- someness. Next you’d see a raft sliding by, away off yonder, and maybe a galoot on it chopping, because they’re most always doing it on a raft; you’d see the axe flash and come down—you don’t hear nothing; you see that axe go up again, and by the time it’s above the man’s head then you hear the k’chunk!—it had took all that time to come over the water. So we would put in the day, lazying around, listening to the stillness. Once there was a thick fog, and the rafts and things that went by was beating tin pans so the steamboats wouldn’t run over them. A scow or a raft went by so close we could hear them talking and cussing and laughing—heard them plain; but we couldn’t see no sign of them; it made you feel crawly; it was like spirits carrying on that way in the air. Jim said he believed it was spirits; but I says:

“No; spirits wouldn’t say, ‘Dern the dern fog.’”

Soon as it was night out we shoved; when we got her out to about the middle we let her alone, and let her float wherever the current wanted her to; then we lit the pipes, and dangled our legs in the water, and talked about all kinds of things—we was always naked, day and night, whenever the mosquitoes would let us—the new clothes Buck’s folks made for me was too good to be comfortable, and besides I didn’t go much on clothes, nohow.

Sometimes we’d have that whole river all to ourselves for the longest time. Yonder was the banks and the islands, across the water; and maybe a spark—which was a candle in a cabin window; and sometimes on the water you could see a spark or two—on a raft or a scow, you know; and maybe you could hear a fiddle or a song com- ing over from one of them crafts. It’s lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened. Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to make so many. Jim said the moon could a laid them; well, that looked kind of reasonable, so I didn’t say nothing against it, because I’ve seen a frog lay most as many, so of course it could be done. We used to watch the stars that fell, too, and see them streak down. Jim allowed they’d got spoiled and was hove out of the nest.

Once or twice of a night we would see a steamboat slipping along in the dark, and now and then she would belch a whole world of sparks up out of her chimbleys, and they would rain down in the river and look awful pretty; then she would turn a corner and her lights would wink out and her powwow shut off and leave the river still again; and by and by her waves would get to us, a long time after she was gone, and joggle the raft a bit, and after that you wouldn’t hear nothing for you couldn’t tell how long, except maybe frogs or something.

After midnight the people on shore went to bed, and then for two or three hours the shores was black—no more sparks in the cabin windows. These sparks was our clock—the first one that showed again meant morning was coming, so we hunted a place to hide and tie up right away.