[Program: Big River, 1991] Page: 3 of 12
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DIRECTOR'S NOTES
As I have made this amazing journey with Huck, I have learned
much about God's grace and forgiveness, about the worth and
integrity of each man and woman, and the need we have to
realize who we are and to listen to the eternal voice inside us.
Life magazine's bicentennial issue of the Bill of Rights makes
an eloquent statement regarding Huckeberry Finn. I ofter an
excerpt of the article written by Roger Rosenblatt:
As far as anyone knows, Huckleberry Finn never read the First
Amendment, yet he embodied it. That jerry-built, troublesome
afterthought to the Constitution did not merely guarantee a range of
personal freedoms; it said in effect that Americans are free to discover
their moral selves - to say and write whatever we wish, within reason
and thus to realize by the exercise of that freedom who we are and
might become.
All of the first 10 Amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights
protect the people from the government, which is why the framers
tacked it on to the Constitution. But the First Amendment has always
been dearest to our hearts because it allows us to see where our hearts
are located.
That is what Huck did in Mark Twain's novel. He spoke his piece
and discovered who he was.
All that happened in a single famous passage in which Huck, in
anguish because he is harboring the runaway slave Jim, thinks his
problem through. He knows that he is breaking society's rules, and he is
sure that God disapproves. He writes to Miss Watson, Jim's owner, to
turn Jim in, but he cannot bring himself to mail the letter, as he recalls
their adventures on the river and the kindnesses Jim showed him.
Certain he'll be damned forever, he tears up the letter and says to
himself: "All right, then, I'll go hell."
That passage is both a beautiful example of free expression and a
demonstration of why free expression matters. It matters, is invaluable,
because it encourages character to develop. Huck had no idea what he
really thought about human equality until he let his mind travel, as on
a river, into the problem. He learned who he was because he was free
to find out.
Where this journey of self-discovery should lead, if we are doing it
right, is away from self-interest and toward some common benefit. Huck
risks damnation solely because he acknowledges another person's equal
worth. Today, recognizing someone else's worth may entail looking into
the schools, the drug clinics and the city streets - slavery taking
different and more subtle forms in modern America.
But first you have to be free to take the journey. And free means
absolutely free; otherwise all journeys would take the same turns.
The hope is that in the long run, individual freedoms will produce
more decent people than scoundrels.
- Adam Hester
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Abilene Christian College. [Program: Big River, 1991], pamphlet, 1991; Abilene, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth865057/m1/3/: accessed May 31, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Abilene Christian University Library.