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Pap's Racism Exposed In Huck Finn

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The Southern United States remained virtually unchanged socially after the Civil War and Reconstruction. Former slaves were employed by previous owners with low-paying sharecropping, and freedmen could not vote. Jim Crow laws soon placed newly freed slaves back into a pseudo-slavery, keeping many in the south with mandatory Apprenticeship Laws. Mark Twain subtly comments on these issues in the American society, largely using satire as a way to display the failure of Reconstruction in the South. Society in Huck Finn displays racism towards Jim, with many characters’ actions and attitudes demonstrating overt racism. Twain’s portrayal of Americans--including common townspeople and Huck’s father--combine with Jim’s ironic false enslavement to shed …show more content…

American society hardly changed socially after the Civil War, with the majority of the U.S. population holding incredibly racist views on black Americans, not specifically limited to the South. Pap’s racism in Huck Finn is insight into the creation of racists across generations, from parent to child. Racism hardly changed after the Civil War, especially in southern states. This racism had begun generations earlier, taught from parent to child over the decades. Racism could not be completely eradicated in the States with ease due to a large older population raising children to hold prejudice views. Twain features this unfortunate cycle in Huck Finn: Pap rambles on about racist topics right in front of his son. Pap describes how he is disappointed in his country for allowing black people to vote, among other …show more content…

Jim is held behind the Phelps’ house in a shack, and is set to be freed by Tom and Huck. Huck wants to free Jim as soon as possible, while Tom believes that Huck’s plan is “Too blame’ simple” and “There ain’t nothing to it. What’s the good of a plan that ain’t no more trouble than that?” (235) The reader does not yet know that Jim is a free man due to his owner’s death, but Tom is well aware. Tom’s refusal to tell Huck the truth at this point is misleading to Huck and Jim, and the only person benefitting is Tom: thirsty for a fantastic escape story. On the surface, this part of the novel is only a display of a child--Tom--wanting to have some dumb fun with a person he doesn’t perceive as human. This section is much deeper than an average reader may realize, however. Tom represents an American participating in the establishment of pseudo-slavery. With the banning of slavery in the United States, many Americans aided the passing of laws placing freedmen in a slavery-like place in society. These laws allowed businesses to dock the pay of black workers under 18 years of age, and kept black workers in contracts, forcing them to work at that job they could not legally leave. Americans were not holding freedmen down with a force as tight as slavery, but attempting to strengthen their grip on the black population once more. Tom is keeping Jim enslaved by not telling him of his dead owner,

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In Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck and Jim bond closely to one another, regardless of the fact that they belong to different ethnic groups. Huck, a coming-of-age teenage boy, lives in the Southern antebellum society which favors slavery. At the beginning of the book, Twain claims that “Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; and persons attempting to find a plot will be shot” (Twain 2). Ironically, through his experiences with Jim, the uncivilized Huck gradually establishes his own moral beliefs, although sometimes struggling against the influence of society.

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When Tom hears of this he became very excited and told Huck that he is going to help him break Jim out. Huck is very startled that Tom of all people would help a runaway slave, but was glad for the help. Both Tom and Huck come up with plans for freeing Jim. Huck, knowing that he does not have much say in the matter, says that “I went to think out a plan, but only just to be doing something; I knowed very well where the right plan was going to come from” (pg 232). Tom then declares a plan that involves a lot of sneaking around and makes Jim’s life miserable.

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Rosa Parks once said, “Racism is still with us. But it is up to us to prepare our children for what they have to meet, and, hopefully, we shall overcome.” She describes that the future of our world has to be aware of things that have happened in the past, such as racism. The NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, is a civil rights organization that displayed their position on this certain situation. The NAACP position is correct in that Mark Twain’s un-sanitized version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn should be taught because the book describes the important awareness of the historical oppression of people, it provides a value of morality from that time period that students should learn, and gives an important lesson about race that should be taught to students.

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In the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, racism is one of the main topics that the story is based around. The story’s protagonist Huck, has grown up around slaves and even has a father who would rather never vote again than to see an African American vote freely. “When they told me there was a State in this country where they’d let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I’ll never vote again…I says to the people, why ain’t this nigger put up at auction and sold?”. (Twain 24).

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Huck thinks about Miss Watson and how he is betraying her by helping Jim escape. Huck encounters slave catchers and he is internally whether to tell about Jim but decides not to and says, “They went and I got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low, because I knowed very well I had done wrong, and I see it warn’t no use for me to try to learn to do right; a body that don’t get started right when he’s little ain’t got no show -- when the pinch comes there ain’t nothing to back him up and keep him to his work, and so he gets beat” (Twain 102). Then later in the novel Jim is sold by some con men for $40 which upsets Huck and causes him to realize he cares about Jim and says, “All right, then I’ll GO to hell” (Twain 225). Huck is defying society’s laws by deciding to help captured Jim. Huck is maturing significantly because his perception of Jim has changed.

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Specifically, through the controversy of slavery at the time, Huck learns how to listen to his intuition and conscience. His slight hesitation escaping with Jim makes him question the authenticity of his morality. He says, “I begun to get it through my head that he was most free--and who was to blame for it? Why, me … But you knowed he was running for his freedom, and you could ‘a’ paddled ashore and told somebody”

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The adventure of Huckleberry Finn is a novel set before the Civil war, when slavery was legal and seen as the social norm, but written during post civil war. This novel demonstrates all the aspects or traditional America, as far from what it is today. Mark twain illustrates a lifetime were slavery and racism were seen as a natural part of life. Through incidents, comments by the characters and statements by the narrator 's Twain illustrates a satirical atmosphere on slavery and racism.

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In the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain gives us an implied theme to ponder about. Three themes stand out farther than the rest – racism, money, and freedom. In the South, racism was extremely prominent as well as enslaving blacks. With the view of the setting and how it is portrayed, Twain makes this clear. The fact that Jim was enslaved and Huck and Tom had to rescue him proves this.

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Another example of the reflection of the theme racism in Huckleberry Finn is in chapter forty-four. In chapter forty-two Jim was on the verge of being hanged by the Phelps family after he had escaped from their farm with the help of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Suddenly, Tom says to Huck, Mr. and Mrs. Phelps, and Jim:“Old Miss Watson died two months ago and she was ashamed she ever was going to sell him down the river so Watson set Jim free in her will. ”(Tom, 273). Tom had known this information for two months but decided not to tell anyone even Huck Finn which was a childish thing to do.

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