Books: High Diddle-Diddling

(3 of 3)

"As [the King and the Duke] vie to establish fictive identities and the manners that should support their roles, they provide a parody of rights and privileges in a democracy, which are gained neither by birth nor strictly by merit but by effective persuasion and show. We never do know who they are. They hint at the underside of the self-made man and self-reliance, the freedom to become whatever others will believe. As they prey on others, they illustrate not what energy and diligence but what spunk and audacity wiE do in a protean society. The jack of all trades becomes the shape-shifting diddler, a reminder of how many occupations can be made to turn on the evasion of work. The cultural promise that one can make a self by shrewdness and diligence has, then, in the world of Huckleberry Finn, soured into a battle of con artists."