Mark Twain's Novel Racist?
Uploaded by Boming on Nov 26, 2007
Throughout Mark Twain’s Novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, there have been many examples of Mark Twain being a racist with his constant degrading of Jim’s character and his incessant use of the word “Nigger”. He also illustrates Jim to be very gullible with the way he believes in many superstitions. As the novel progresses however, twain brings the status of Jim’s character higher and closer to the status of whites. In the end of the novel, Twain finally shows that black should be given their freedom thus proving that Twain was not a racist.
In Jim’s first appearance in the beginning of the novel, Huck and Tom snuck out at night and are hiding from the “night watchman,” Jim. Jim asks “who goes there” and falls asleep, thus proving that Jim the “typical nigger” is lazy and is an example of how Twain degraded Jim. Another way Jim was degraded in the beginning of the novel was his language use. Jim uses very poor English, so poor that it is quite difficult to read and comprehend. Jim also tells Huck about the time when he was captured and taken to New Orleans by a bunch of witches. These are examples of the degrading of Jim and showing how ignorant and gullible he is. Right when one thinks that Jim is so ignorant and uneducated Twain introduces a worse character by the name of Pap. Pap is portrayed as a sort of useless character, in the sense that he has no life, no education and is more ignorant than Jim. Pap is also the father of Huck which means he is white. When the one reads about the character of Pap, one realizes that that’s how educated people were at the time. As a result, Jim’s status as a character, a black man, is raised higher than Pap, a white man.
When Huck and Jim decide they must leave Miss Watson and Pap and runaway, Twain writes about how Jim has a dream on how to save his family. He thinks that if he reaches the free side of the Ohio River, than he will work for enough money to free his wife. After...