ABSTRACT
Ōe once tutored a bright junior high school student, a son of a high-ranking government official, whom he assigned to read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The boy told Ōe curtly: “Huckleberry Finn is a real good-for-nothing [goku tsubushi], he doesn't accomplish anything. He cooperated with Tom Sawyer to free the black Jim, but Jim was already free in Miss Watson's will, so it was just wasted effort. Once Huckleberry Finn returns home, he immediately starts thinking about lighting out for the Territory. Doesn't he think about his future at all? He's a real good-for-nothing.” 1 In the life of the bright Japanese boy there was no room for Huck Finn, and the selection of the book cost Ōe the tutorship. This particular episode, with which Ōe opens an essay, “Huckleberry Finn and the Problem of the Hero,” reveals how the “good-for-nothing” hero has persisted in his imagination. Huck Finn, Ōe continues, has his descendants in Norman Mailer's Sergius O'Shaughnessy (The Deer Park, 1955) and Saul Bellows’ Augie March (The Adventures of Augie March, 1949).
