Mark Twain

Racism in HUCKLEBERRY FINN.

            Apart from being a landmark of American literature, Samuel Langhorne Clemens’ classic tale, ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN, is a mirror of the deeply embedded racist attitudes of the Deep South in the 1880’s. The author uses his realistic fiction to expose the squalid and cruel conditions in the South during a brutal and unforgiving period in American history. The novel exposes a southern society filled with self-doubt and lingering racial tension. Despite the end of the Civil War in 1865, it was a tumultuous time for America. Southern Reconstruction had not produced the kind of results that might be expected, and a new form of racism replaced slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery but did little to abolish segregation. Jim Crow laws were enacted at State and local levels in the United States to oppress Blacks, thus creating a new set of social and moral issues that divided a nation. However, in the midst of this chaos and social upheaval was born a book that captures the heart of the reader in its brilliance and innocence. In the character of Huck Finn, the author creates an original voice. ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN is a coming of age story about the loyalty, sacrifice, and the struggles of an American hero, and his Black companion, Jim. Together they journey down the Mississippi river in search of freedom. The novel’s satirical depiction of racism and other bigotries has always made the book a hot topic in American schools. On this, the one hundred and thirtieth anniversary of its first publication, this essay will attempt to revisit the subject of Mark Twain and further evaluate the novel’s cleverly crafted anti-racist message.

            First, there is liberal use of derogatory language throughout the novel. Mark Twain uses the word “nigger” often, both as a reference to the slave Jim and any Afro-American that Huck comes across, and as the epitome of insult and inferiority. However, the reader must recognize that this style of racism, this malicious insult to African-Americans, this degrading attitude towards them is a reflection of the pre-Civil war tradition. The book was written when cruel and unjust treatment of Blacks was commonplace and the use of such a word didn’t get so much as a second thought. Racism is only mentioned in the novel as an object of ordinary thinking. The book depicts a time when Blacks were not treated as people but as things without emotions or personalities --- as mere property. For instances, Jim is initially known only as property belonging to Miss Watson. He escapes being treated as chattel, only to be sold later in the novel to a family that would most likely treat him in an even less dignified manner. Twain drives home a distinct point about the White Southerner attitude with regard to the Black man, when Huck talks to Aunt Sally about a supposed steamboat explosion:

            Now I struck an idea, and fetched it out: “It warn’t the grounding—That didn’t

             keep us back but a little. We blowed out a cylinder-head.”

            “Good gracious! Anyone hurt?”

            “No’m. Killed a nigger.”

            “Well it’s lucky: because sometimes people do get hurt.” (Adventures of Huck Finn, p.24)

This quote defines how Black people are viewed at the time: that they are “nobody,” less than human, with lives that are of little or no value to anyone other than the value they provide to their masters.

            Apart from Miss Watson, other characters in Twain’s novel profit from slavery. Some characters profit indirectly, although they are not slave owners themselves. For example, the Duke and the King hand Jim over to the Phelp’s family in exchange for a $40.00 cash reward. While others, like the slave hunters in chapter 16, earn a handsome living by searching for runaways.

            Throughout the story Blacks are often accused of, and associated with, immorality and criminal behavior. Huck’s father comments on Blacks as a “thieving” race is one of many examples of parallels drawn between Blacks and immoral actions. At the beginning of the novel when Huck disappears and is assumed dead, it is the escaped slave Jim that is immediately assumed to be Huck’s murderer. In chapter 26, when Huck is spying on the Duke and the King in an effort to ascertain the whereabouts of their stolen money, the two con men demonstrate the same kind of racial prejudice as Huck’s father. They have decided to change the location of the stolen money because they feel it is not safe anymore and there is considerable risk it might be taken by the slave who cleans the room. This assumption appears to be based solely on racial profiling. Their only concern is “do you think a nigger can run across money and not borrow some of it.” (Adventures of Huck Finn, p.191) thus, reinforcing the notion that Afro-Americans cannot be trusted to behave as responsible members of the community.

            One of the important ways Mark Twain satirizes racism is by allowing the most hated character in the book, and the person who has the least right to complain about other people, Huck’s dad, Pap, to make the most ridiculous racist comments. In chapter 6, Pap complains about a free Black man in Ohio who is wealthier and better educated than him. The fact that this Black man can vote is what gets Pap most angry because he believes that because he is White, he should have more rights than any Black man, even if that Black man has proven himself more worthy. Pap rants, “What is this country coming to? It was ‘lection day, and I was just about to go vote, myself, if I warn’t too drunk to get there; but when they told me…they’d let a nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I’ll never vote again.” (Adventures of Huck Finn, p.37) The author satirizes the idea of racism by delivering these comments through the character of an uneducated, low-class hypocrite who is antisocial, and clearly inferior to the well-to-do Black professor. Pap is just one of many White trash characters Twain makes fun of during the river odyssey. The further south the author takes us, the more acerbic the satire becomes.

            The racist attitudes of the South are most evident in the character of Huck Finn himself, and how he relates to the runaway Negro slave, Jim. Huck is a product of his environment and upbringing. “Although he reflects the cruelty and injustice of the South towards Blacks, he is totally unaware that this is the wrong attitude to take.” (Fiskin, 2) So at first, he is unsure how to deal with Jim. He displays attitudes that are a reflection of his times.  Twain in his autobiography describes the same social attitude when he reflects on his own childhood:

            “In my schoolboy days I had no aversion to slavery. I was not aware that there was anything wrong about it. No one arraigned it in my hearing; the local papers said nothing against it, the local pulpit taught us that God approved it, that it was a holy thing, and the doubters need only look in the Bible if he wishes to settle his mind --- and then the texts were read aloud to us to make the matter sure.” (The North American Review, March 1907.)

Mark Twain denounces the slavery of his childhood. He did so not really to condemn a practice already outlawed and rejected by most of society, but rather to condemn the legacy of racism. When Huck plays tricks on Jim and entraps him in dialogue that makes the latter appear especially foolish, the author is reminding the reader of society’s cruel past. The trick that weighed most heavily on both Huck and Jim is when, after having disappeared from the raft, Huck pretends to have been there all along. The worried Jim insists that he believed Huck had drowned, but Huck plays Jim for a fool, tricking him into believing that he had only been dreaming. “Jim, in turn, is made to appear as the Negro stereotype of the times: a backwoods buffoon with his dialect and many superstitions.”  (Gregory 2) “It is only much later in the novel that he takes on a more human face as we discover his admirable character, particularly his fierce loyalty to his friend Huck.” (MacLeod 12)

            Huck also reflects the White South’s belief that Blacks were vastly inferior. In the conversation about King Solomon and the Frenchmen in Chapter 14, Huck ends the conversation by saying to himself: “I see it warn’t no use wasting words – you can’t learn a nigger to argue. So I quit.” (Adventures of Huck Finn, p.92) Seemingly frustrated with the turn of the conversation, Huck ends up being dismissive of the Black man’s intellectual capacity---his ability to learn, see reason or think rationally. Again, this points to the South’s inherent belief that the Black man is inferior. Huck’s growing sympathetic attitude towards Jim throughout the river voyage eventually teaches him to overlook certain stereotypes, such as Black stupidity and apathy. However, early in their relationship, Huck is also prone to saying things that further show how deeply racist attitudes have been ingrained in him. After the trick he plays on Jim, he is reluctant to apologize to someone society deems to be beneath him: “It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself to go and humble myself to a nigger.” (Adventures of Huck Finn, p.98) Jim must also accept the fact that as a Black, he is inferior to Whites in these times. Friendship doesn’t negate this rule of society; even his good friend Huck is far superior to Jim. Even as far into the book as Chapter 31, Huck still holds himself accountable to the strict rules of his community, where empowering a Black man is a “low-down thing”:

            And then think of me! It would get all around that Huck Finn                                               helped a nigger to get his freedom; and if I was ever to see anybody from town again I’d be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame. That’s just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don’t want to take no consequences of it. (Adventures of Huck Finn p.226)

            However, over the course of the novel, Huck’s attitude towards his Black companion begins to shift. This is a struggle for him at first, and the reader gets a definite impression Huck is grappling with how society has always influenced his thinking. For example, although he is reluctant to apologize to Jim for his trick, he really does feel like the “trash” Jim likens him to.  Not only does he get over his reluctance and apologize to Jim, but he makes a firm pledge to himself not to “do him no more mean tricks: and I wouldn’t done that one if I’d knowed I would make him feel that way.” (Adventures of Huck Finn, p. 98) From this point, the multidimensionality of Jim’s personality erodes Huck’s socialized attitudes about Blacks. During the night, thinking the young boy is asleep, Jim vents the adult frustrations he does not expect Huck to understand or alleviate; he laments having to abandon his wife and two children:“Po little Lizbeth! Po’ little Johnny! It’s might hard; I spec’ I ain’t ever gwyne to see you no mo; nomo.”(Adventures of Huck Finn, p.167)  Berating himself for having struck his four year old daughter Elizabeth in for what he thought was blatant disobedience, Jim tells Huck of his remorse after discovering that the toddler had gone deaf without his knowledge. Through such poignant moments Huck learns to his surprise that Jim “cared just as much for his people as white folks does for their’n. It don’t seem natural, but I reckon it’s so.” (Adventures of Huck Finn, p.167)

            The abolitionists argued that slavery was a sin, that it contradicted the Bible, which claims that all men are equal and that there is only one type of human being. In Acts 17:26 Saint Paul in the Bible tells that “God hath made from one blood all nations which dwell upon the earth.” However, the Southern Christians of the time saw themselves as modern men who embraced science. Many of the leaders of Southern Christianity accepted “that a limited as opposed to a universal flood did not undermine Christian faith” (Polygenesis and the Defense of slavery, p.390) In many instances the Southern clergymen displayed unrecorded flexibility and tolerance in their acceptance of different scientific discoveries. They made sure, however, to criticise anything that strayed too far from their interpretation of The Bible. Ethnology also gave antebellum apologetics a powerful argument against one of the abolitionists’ favorite “that slavery destroyed Black families” (Polygenesis and the Defense of slavery, p.390). A number of antebellum Christians used ethnology to claim that Blacks had different “moral natures” than White people, and that this led to a lack of capacity to “emotionally bond.” This alleged flaw would cause Black families to not feel the same amount of misery over the separation from a family member as a White family. Hence, Jim’s sadness of being separated from his family takes on even greater importance as one of the story’s central themes. Throughout the novel Jim’s “persistent devotion to his lost wife and children” (Twain and the Endangered Family, p.391) and his determination to reunite with them is what drives the story forward down the Mississippi river. Jim’s passion to rebuild his lost family is also the basis for Huck’s growing respect for him and his transformation throughout the novel. (Twain and the Endangered Family, p.391) In the novel, Twain puts Jim’s desire for family harmony in contrast with White people’s lack of the same. The most obvious example of this being Huck’s desire to escape his father and his adopted family, and Jim’s longing for his wife and children.

            Just as slavery is an important theme in the novel, so is the journey to freedom. Huck and Jim both yearn for freedom at any cost. The companions are like brothers, each searching for his own kind of freedom. They risk their lives on the treacherous Mississippi river, for the most part, travelling at night to guard against being spotted as runaways. Huck leaves behind the petty manners and societal values of small town Missouri. He wants to be free from an abusive father and the cabin Pap uses to imprison him. Jim longs to be free of bondage so that he can return to his wife and children. “Jim said it made him all over trembly and feverish to be so close to freedom. Well, I can tell you it made me all over trembly and feverish, to hear him…” (Adventures of Huck Finn, p.100) The Mississippi is the best example of symbolism in the novel. The river is an unstoppable force through the unforgiving wilderness of early America. The untamed current is where Huck Finn and Jim take refuge on their journey to the Promised Land. Their raft is a kind of model society in which they can enjoy freedom unlike the society on shore. “We… let her (the raft) float wherever the current wanted her to; then we lit the pipes, and dangled our legs in the water, and talked about all kinds of things.” (Adventures of Huck Finn, p.130) Huck says that his happiest days are spent on the raft with Jim. Though the raft imposes new constraints and dangers, the travelling companions feel most comfortable and at ease travelling on the river’s steady current. “…warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.” (Adventures of Huck Finn, p.128)

            The portrayal of religious hypocrisy in the novel constitutes Twain’s greatest indictment of American society with regard to racism. The 1830’s was a time which for Twain was shrouded in a veil of self-deception and where its practitioners preached hypocritical and absurd religious values. These traits, which are exemplified in characters such as the Widow Douglas, Miss Watson and Silas Phelps, are satirically exposed throughout the novel. These people are all well-intentioned Christians, but their religion has deceived them into thinking that slavery is perfectly acceptable, and that slaves are something less than people. According to Christopher Luse (2007), Miss Watson’s evening prayers with the slaves was not just a philanthropic act but a means of controlling the summoned. “By-and-by they fetched the niggers in and had prayers.” (Adventures of Huck Finn, p.11)  The Book of Titus is especially relevant:

            “Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please                                  them, not to talk back to them, and not to steal from them, but to show that  they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God and savior attractive.”(Titus 2:9-10)

                        In chapter 16, Huck is confronted by slave hunters searching for runaways. He struggles with the moral dilemma of turning Jim in or saving himself. When he is unable to bring himself to betraying Jim; he instead rescues his friend by fooling the slave hunters into believing that by boarding his vessel they might contract small-pox. As the men rush to escape the deadly disease one of them calls out, “my Kingdom!” (Adventures of Hick Finn, p.103) before leaving Huck with two twenty-dollar gold pieces. The slave traders symbolize the members of the church who try to earn salvation by donating money. In reality, they are not actually solving anything and only deceiving themselves by buying their way out of a difficult situation. The slave traders are more than happy to recommend Huck find help in the next town along the river. However, like true hypocrites they suggest, “Don’t be a fool again, and let people guess what is the matter.” (Adventures of Huck Finn, p.103)   Thus, they expose their betrayal of true religious and humanitarian virtues. Another example, in chapter 18, Twain uses the family feud between the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons to demonstrate the absurdity of the local congregation. The two families are locked in a deadly feud which has claimed many lives on both sides. However, when the two families attend Sunday service and hear a sermon about brotherly love, Huck observes that “the men took their guns along and kept them between their knees.” (Adventures of Huck Finn p.121)  The irony of these two families bringing weapons to a sermon about brotherly love demonstrates the absurdity of teaching the gospel to a hypocritical congregation. Huck observes later on when he returns to the church that some farm animals are more devoted to the faith than humans: “…there warn’t anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn’t any lock on the door, and the hogs likes a puncheon floor in the summer-time because it’s cool. If you notice, most folks don’t go to church only when they’ve got to; but a hog is different.” (Adventures of Huck Finn, p.122) 

            Simplicity was one of the greatest strengths for those that sympathized with slavery. With the aid of a biblical passages, it was easy to find support for slavery. This support, though, was, at best, shallow since it often only was found in the literal meaning of the biblical verses. The Bible is filled with metaphors, poetry, figures of speech, parables, similes, proverbs, and visions making such a “plain” interpretation impossible. These simplified verses were an integral part of Sunday school literature as a means to give moral instructions. They helped, along with Sunday school literature, to foster children, such as Huck’s and Tom Sawyer’s religious and racial hypocrisies and their own idealizations. In chapter 31, Huck hints at what kind of values were fostered in Sunday school:    

            “There was the Sunday-school, you could a gone to it; and if you’done                                       it they’d a learnt you, there, that people that acts as I’d been acting about that goes to everlasting fire.” (Adventures of Huck Finn, p.226)

                        The relationship between slave and owner was, according to Nudelman (2004), often portrayed by southern Christians as “humane, normal” and most importantly “divinely sanctioned.” The enslavement of Black people was by many owners considered a humanitarian act done not for their own benefit but for the well-being of the slaves themselves. Tennessee Methodist Holand M’Tyeire noted that if not for the institution of slavery polygenesis could lead to black’s being reduced to slave animals. However, there was a myriad of abuses of this so-called “humane” relationship in both real life and in the ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN. At the end of the novel, after Jim has been recaptured, he is both abused and close to being hanged. It isn’t until Tom Sawyer confesses that Miss Watson has been dead for two months and she freed Jim that justice is done and Jim is affirmed as a decent human being.

            Racism is painfully intertwined in our past and present, and it all comes together in HUCK FINN. The problem of racism is endemic in our society. A book like HUCK FINN, which brings the problem of racial intolerance to the surface can explode like a hand grenade when the villains of modern day racism are unmasked. The tenuous status of race relations is made even more complicated by the insensitive racial comments made by rich White (plantation owners disguised as) professional sports franchise owners like the NBA Clippers, Donald Sterling. One has only to run a mental scan across the nation’s news headlines to glean a portrait of the present state of America and the rest of the world for that matter. When European soccer fans throw bananas onto the playing field during a match to protest the presence of a Black player, it doesn’t seem like much has changed since Huck and Jim tried to escape the brutality of their White supremacist society. Such a glimpse betrays the ambivalence present in the status of Blacks and Whites; as well as the emerging problematic Asian monocultures. What Mark Twain was able to convey through the innocent narrative of young Huck’s river adventure is not only a portrait of early America and its struggles towards a national identity during the late nineteenth century. His satire exposes the flaws of an uneducated and morally corrupt social structure that reaches far beyond the shores of this great nation.

            In the end, after a long and hard struggle, both Jim and Huck achieve a certain degree of freedom. Not just from “sivilization” for Huck and slavery for Jim, but freedom from a rigid mindset of the racist South. Huck learns to look at Jim not merely as a Negro, a piece of property or someone inferior but as a human being and as a friend. The development of Huck from borderline racist to an individual free of self-deception and the influence of society is an ongoing process through the novel. In the final chapter, Huck is still evolving and unable to completely rid himself of society’s hypocritical values. Still, his progress has been significant. The culmination of his transformation takes place when he decides to save Jim and tells his conscience “All right, then, I’ll go to hell” (Adventures of Huck Finn, p.228) There is a certain irony in Huck’s statement. By tearing up the letter to Miss Watson and confessing his loyalty to Jim, he makes perhaps the most Christian gesture in the whole novel.

            Probably the biggest reason the book is not racist is very simple: the author was not a racist. Samuel Langhorne Clemens believed that slavery was a horrendous wrong, and that Americans owed the black community some form of reparation. A convincing example of his attitude can be seen in a letter Twain wrote to the Dean of the Yale Law school in which he explained why he wanted to pay the expenses of a Black student by the name of Warner McGuinn, one of the first Black law students at Yale. “We have ground the manhood out of them,” Clemens wrote Dean Wayland on Christmas Eve, 1885, “and the shame is ours, not theirs, and we should pay for it.” (Scharnhorst)  Clemens’ attempt to expiate his guilt through the fiction of HUCK FINN investigates the ethical and social implications of slavery but does not advocate or endorse the practice. Many of his other works had similar anti-racist themes. In 1870, while living in San Francisco, he wrote an article called “Disgraceful Persecution of a Boy,” about a young boy jailed for stoning a Chinese man. Although he didn’t agree with what the youngster had done, he was outraged that people would punish a child for doing something based on what they themselves, as a society, had taught him. “Ah, there goes a Chinaman! God will not love me if I don’t stone him.”  The satirical message in the quote may as well come straight from the ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN. Even more relevant to the author’s position on the subject is one of his famous quotes: “One of my theories is that the hearts of men are about alike, all over the world, whatever their skin-complexions may be.” (Mark Twain Quotes)

            In conclusion, Mark Twain’s novel has left an indelible mark on America and its views of race, culture and morality. Sometimes the lessons are hard to hear and harder still to teach. The author even scoffs at those who try – writing famously in the book’s introduction that anyone seeking a motive, a moral or a plot in the book would be “prosecuted…, banished” or “shot.” There are glorious lessons in this book even if they ruffle readers or appear overly simplistic in the telling of the unvarnished truth. Twain is skewering hatred and racism, intolerance and religious bigotry. However, some readers are still offended by the novel’s blunt, honest portrayal of cultures, attitudes and prejudices in the rural, pre-Civil War South. Even as far back as its first publication the Concord (Mass.) Public Library banned the book for “being more suited to the slums than respectable people.” Still, Clemens gave us a truthful portrait of the nation he witnessed – with all its dehumanizing flaws and abject injustices. The story is a glorious celebration of friendship and tolerance triumphing over racism and hypocrisy. For that reason it’s a hard book to read – and why a half century after its first publication, the author Ernest Hemingway wrote: “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain call HUCKLEBERRY FINN.”(The Green Hills of Africa, p.22)

Work Cited

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Twain, Mark. “Disgraceful Persecution of a Boy.” The Galaxy Magazine May 1870.

Hemingway, Ernest. “The Green Hills of Africa.” Scribner, New York, NY. 1935.