Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg
Lehrstuhl für Anglistik

HS: Mark Twain - WS 2004 / 2005

“Po’ niggers can’t have no luck” –
The Treatment of the Race Issue in
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Moritz Oehl

Studiengang: M.A. Anglistik (HF), Kommunikationswissenschaften und BWL (NF)

Semesterzahl: 07

Contents

1. INTRODUCTION: THE CONTROVERSY ON ONE OF THE NATION’S FINEST NOVELS 3

2. INFLUENCES ON THE AUTHOR AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE NOVEL   4

3. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HUCK AND JIM IN SELECTED SCENES   7
3.1 “THEY’RE AFTER US” – THE FIRST CONTACT OF THE POOR WHITE BOY AND THE RUNAWAY SLAVE  7

3.2 “POOTY SOON I’LL BE A-SHOUT’N FOR JOY” – HUCK AND JIM GET TO KNOW AND RESPECT EACH OTHER AND EXPERIENCE THE RIVER SOCIETY  10

3.3 “I’LL HELP YOU STEAL HIM!” – THE ELABORATE FREEING OF JIM AS A COMMENT ON POST-RECONSTRUCTION TIMES  14

4. SUMMARY: WHY HUCKLEBERRY FINN IS NOT A RACIST NOVEL  18

BIBLIOGRAPHY  20

1. Introduction: The controversy on one of the nation’s finest novels

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is probably the first great American piece of literature. For generations, writers all over the young nation had waited for a novel that would not only duplicate literary traditions from Europe but instead define what American Literature stood for. Published by Mark Twain in 1885, it is today by many regarded as “a novel that anybody with a pretence to full literacy ought to know”¹. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a must-read for both school children and college students in the United States as well as in many parts of the world. Dozens of scholars have also commented on the novel, one half praising it, the other half disagreeing, at least partly, with it. The story of a young white boy, Huck, and a runaway slave named Jim and their journey on a raft down the Mississippi has been a cause for discussion ever since it was published. Especially Twain’s treatment of the sensitive issues of slavery and racism in Huckleberry Finn divides critical opinions.

Written in a time when slavery had been officially abolished, Twain created a relationship between Huck and the runaway slave Jim and thereby made substantial comments on race relations between black and white. Important in this respect is the fact that Twain, after having completed about half of the novel, put aside his work during the summer of 1876². He had obviously realized that the novel was about to be dealing with far more serious matters than simply being a boy’s adventure story – such as Tom Sawyer had been. Fishkin comments on the author’s artistic break:

In July 1876, Twain began what he probably believed at first was a sequel to Tom Sawyer, another nostalgic boys’ book. But the narrative was soon hijacked by a black man and a white boy on a quest for freedom. Shortly thereafter, Twain temporarily scuttled that quest by having Huck and Jim miss Cairo in the fog. Then Twain abandoned it – not casually or passively, but violently: he ‘smashed all to flinders’ the raft that was to carry Huck and Jim to freedom.³

When he had finally finished and published the novel in 1885, especially the controversies regarding the latter part of the book began and they have lasted until today. The simple idea of a runaway slave going even further into the slaveholding South after he has missed his initial goal, namely the town of Cairo in the free state Illinois, has caused many critics to denounce Twain’s work. What critic Forrest G. Robinson aptly entitled “the nation’s favourite book about its most painful and enduring dilemma”⁴ has thus often been regarded as racist writing. John Wallace is another example of critics who opinion “that Jim functions as a minstrel and that the teaching of this novel, with its use of ‘nigger’, does nothing more than to perpetuate the teaching of racism in America’s classroom”⁵.

To fully understand the message about race relations in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn it is therefore important to consider personal influences on the author as well as the historical background of the book. Chapter two of this paper is an attempt to enhance our understanding of these specific circumstances of the novel. In Chapter three, the relationship between Huck and Jim will be explored more closely. By dividing the novel up into three sections and choosing crucial scenes where the white boy and the black runaway slave interact I will focus on the development of their relationship. The first section of that chapter includes their initial encounters with each other, ending with the important “fog scene” in chapter 15. Chapter 3.2 then deals with the development of their liaison while experiencing the wonders of river society. This section includes “the most strongly satiric, the most powerful part of the book, bringing Huck and Jim into contact with the outside world”⁶. The most controversial part of the novel, the last twelve chapters, will be examined in Chapter 3.3. It is this so-called “Phelps’ farm episode” that most critics disagree on.

Only after having looked more closely on the relationship between Huck and Jim will we be able to comprehend Twain’s artistic intentions. “What is the meaning of the journey? With this question all discussion of Huckleberry Finn must begin”⁷ – this remark by Leo Marx in his famous essay “Mr. Eliot, Mr. Trilling, and Huckleberry Finn” will also be addressed here. The purpose of this paper then is to proof that Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is not a racist novel. Instead, it makes wise and critical, though often extremely sarcastic, comments on race relations in the United States of the late 19th century. Though written after the Civil War, it not only presents views on slavery and racism after the slaves’ so-called liberation, but also brings in elements of the Antebellum period as well. Critics who argue that the novel is a celebration of racism have in my opinion missed the most important point of the book. That is, at the time of writing the novel, Mark Twain did not favor racism in any form at all. On the contrary, he had become a supporter of the Black’s cause.

[...]

1 Budd (1985): 1

2 Cf. Fishkin (1993): 70

3 Fishkin (1993): 69f

4 Robinson (1988): 224

5 Chadwick-Joshua (1998): 5

6 Bellamy (1950): 16

7 Marx (1953): 51