Derek Lee Schoenfeld PD 2
Huck Finn Final Essay
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is considered an American classic because of the controversy surrounding the book and the issues it addresses in the story. Many consider Twain a racist because of the use of the derogatory term nigger and the half-witted nature he gives to Huck Finn’s sidekick, Jim. Countless times in the story, Twain includes scenes where Jim asks the most simple and obvious questions. However, this only adds to the facade of stupidity Twain gives Jim which was Twain’s true intentions. Twain is an anti-racist, and rather than creating a story that explicitly criticizes the evils of slavery and racism, he portrays Jim as stupid to leave more of a subtle and lasting impression.
Twain places scenes where Jim asks obvious questions. One instance was when Jim asks Huck about King Solomon: “How much do a king git?” and “AIN’ dat gay? En what dey got to do, Huck?” (pg 88). The questions Jim asks are simple questions that only little children are expected to wonder about. The fact that Jim, who is a grown adult, has to ask a boy about half his age a simple question is the quintessence of racial stereotyping of blacks shown in Twain’s book. In actuality, Twain’s true intention for this is to use Jim’s stupidity as a mask to hide Jim’s humanity
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Controversy still surrounds this book to this day. Mark Twain seems to be an anti-racist genius in Huck Finn as he leaves bread crumbs for readers to find his true intentions of writing the story. Twain uses Jim’s stupidity to make his use of satire and irony in the story less obvious for readers. Ultimately, he shows Jim in a negative light at first, but it goes to show how even a slave who is supposed to be inferior to whites, in society’s beliefs can still have more humanity than and logic than the white townspeople in the