RACISM IN HUCK FINN--

Mark Twain's epic novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been the subject of much literary debate over the years. Some people have criticized the novel for being racist and in some extreme cases have even banned the book from public school systems or censored it in public libraries. The basis for the dispute over whether or not the book is racist is the depiction of Jim, a runaway black slave. Many people believe Twain characterizes Jim in a racist manner. However, what these people do not realize is that Mark Twain's opinions differ greatly from those of his characters. Twain was clearly not a supporter of slavery at all from what one of his many aphorisms tells us: "Nearly all black and brown skins are beautiful, but a beautiful white skin is rare." In order to understand why Huck Finn is not a racist book, we must look at how Twain characterizes Jim and how people treat Jim and other blacks.

The first time we meet Jim, we are given an extremely racist description of him. We are told that he is not very bright, that he is very superstitious, and that he is illiterate. Nevertheless, Huck is the person who is telling us about Jim, and we must understand that Huck has been raised his whole life thus far to believe that blacks are inferior. Also, in the novel, the word "nigger" is used to describe Jim (and other black slaves) several times. Today that word is indeed a racist term, but back then the word "nigger" was just another name for black people. Though Twain himself would never have said such a word, we must remember that he is trying to depict society as it was back then. To realistically portray society in the South and not use the word "nigger" once would be meaningless. The reader would completely miss the point of the book if the word "nigger" was changed to something less offensive like African-American. Interestingly enough, Jim is the only character who never does anything wrong in the novel. We see him feel remorse for when he hit his deaf daughter: "'Oh, de po' little thing! De Lord God Almighty fogive po' ole Jim, kaze he never gwyne to fogive hisself as long's he live!' Oh, she was plumb deef en dumb-en I'd been a treat'n her so!" (151), but we never see Pap, Huck's drunk, abusive father, feel sorry for how many times he has abused Huck. We can also see how faithful Jim is to other people regardless of how they have treated him, as in the incident where Tom Sawyer assembles a highly complicated plan to set Jim free that involves several asinine things (such as writing letters in blood on a T-shirt and sleeping with snakes, spiders and rats). Jim never complains to Tom once because he believes in Tom's ability to free him from slavery. One need only look at all the aforementioned reasons to see that Twain is in fact not portraying Jim in a racist light at all.

In analyzing how others treat Jim, we see how harsh others are to him. The king and the duke paint Jim blue so he will not be thought as a runaway slave and instead as a "Sick Arab" who is "harmless when not out of his head" (152). Jim is even tied to the raft all day while the king and the duke are gone so people will think he has already been captured as a runaway slave. We can also observe how Jim (and other blacks) are treated by whites. For instance, when Huck is telling Aunt Sally how he came to their plantation, he tells her that the steamboat he was on was involved in an accident. Aunt Sally asks, "Good gracious! Anybody hurt?" to which Huck replies, "No'm. Killed a nigger" (213). We must bear in mind that Huck has taken on the role of Tom Sawyer in this episode, and that to not look suspicious he must retain the racist views that many Southerners hold. We can also see how blacks were not even seen as people in this scene, because, apparently a black man's death means nothing at all to a white woman. By looking at all of the above, we can see how horribly Jim is treated by other people. However, we can see that Huck establishes a friendship with Jim as the novel progresses, and at a critical point in the novel even decides not to put Jim back into slavery. He decides "All right, then, I'll go to hell" (206) and tears up the letter which would give Jim back to Miss Watson, his owner. So we see few (but very few) people being kind to Jim.

In conclusion, we can see that Mark Twain's novel is clearly not a racist one. Jim is obviously the only moral character in the book, and we can understand from the way Twain portrays society that he was merely attempting to recreate Southern life as it was, not provide a racist view of blacks. From this reasoning, we can conclude that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is by no means a racist novel-quite the opposite.

back