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Example research essay topic: Racism In The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn - 2,806 words

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Racism in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is not a racist novel, nor is Mark Twain a racist author. The novel was a satire on slavery and racism that, as well as raising social awareness, was also one of the best American novels of all time. Since it was first published, Huck Finn has caused much controversy for mixed reasons, which recently included the use of racial slurs and accusations that the author himself was racist. The idea that someone like Twain, a white person that grew up in the south, being a racist would not be entirely surprising at all. However, accusation that Mark Twain was a racist is not consistent with any of his personal history and actions. Twain loosely based Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn on his experiences growing up as a boy.

He had befriended slaves like Huck, and was affected by the sale and mistreatment of slaves. He remarked after seeing slaves chained together for sale that they had some of the saddest faces he had ever seen. These sentiments were expressed in numerous essays and articles that he wrote, and he did believe in slavery or racism himself. Most of this controversy stems from Twain's frequent use of the word nigger when referring to black slaves, including one of the main characters, Jim. Today, that term is considered a seriously offensive racial slur.

However, in the setting of the novel, and during that period, this is the term most frequently used to describe African Americans. Since Huck Finn was set in the south before the civil war among slave owning whites, it would have been completely inaccurate to use terms, which are now considered politically correct. The use of the term nigger was also used for effect. One of the devices Twain applied to call attention to the immorality of slavery was the use of an innocent child to narrate the novel. Especially today, hearing such words come from a child is distressing enough to drive home the point that racism and slavery should have never occurred and should continue to be prevented. The book contains the word nigger more than two hundred times throughout the novel.

As recently as a year ago, the Pennsylvania branch of the NAACP led a charge against Huck Finn to have it removed from required and optional school reading lists. However, when considering the issues involved, one must keep in mind that this book was written in a different time from that which we live in today. There was no such thing as politically correct. Nevertheless, since the action of the book takes place in the south twenty years before the Civil War, it would be amazing if they did not use that word. So, how can we hold a book written over a hundred years ago to the literary standards of today?

Through the course of the novel, Huck gains increasingly more respect for Jim, but still shows some racist attitudes occasionally. After the disagreement with Jim over the biblical story of ole King Sollermum, Huck remarks, you cant learn a nigger to argue, thus implying Jim's stupidity (Clemens 65 and 66). Throughout the book, Huck plays tricks on Jim, which are also meant to make Jim feel stupid. His practical jokes cause Jim emotional pain and even physical pain. On Jackson's Island, Huck kills a rattlesnake and places it in front of Jim's blanket to scare him. The rattlesnake's mate comes and bites Jim on the foot.

Jim is sick for four days and four nights subsequently (Clemens 46). By the end of the novel, Huck vows not to play tricks on Jim and he acquiesces to humble himself to a nigger (Clemens 72). He gains respect for Jim to the point where Huck will sacrifice his soul and go to Hell for Jim. Huck contemplates telling Miss Watson about Jim, but Huck decides he would rather go to hell than betray his friendship with Jim (Clemens 169). Huck's willingness to lie to protect Jim definitely shows that Huck sees Jim on a higher level than his status was in nineteenth century America. During the push for school desegregation in the 1950 s, however, many parents raised serious objections to the teaching of this text.

These objections centered around Twain's negative characterization of Jim and his extensive use of the term nigger throughout the text. Many people felt this characterization, along with the most powerful racial epithet in the English language, were insensitive to African American heritage and personally offensive in racially mixed classrooms. Within the context of this historical period, Twain penned Jim, stereotyping him in the minstrel tradition, with slave dialect and a mind filled with superstition (Ellison 422). In defense of Twain's characterization of Jim, however, Daniel Hoffman writes, The minstrel stereotype... was the only possible starting-point for a [Southern-born] white author attempting to deal with Negro character a century ago (Hoffman 435). Twain's stereotypical depiction of Jim originates from traditions of his time, Writing at a time when the black faced minstrel was still popular, and shortly after a war which left even the abolitionists weary of those problems associated with the Negro, Twain fitted Jim into the outlines of the minstrel tradition (Ellison 421 - 22).

Minstrel shows, first appearing in the 1840 s, were theatrical productions typically performed by white actors who blackened their faces with greasepaint and wore white gloves to render comic burlesques of African American speech and manners (Carey-Webb 24). The function of the minstrel mask, the black-faced figure of white fun, was to veil the humanity of Negroes thus reduced to a sign, and to repress the white audiences awareness of its moral identification with its own acts and with the human ambiguities pushed behind the mask. (Elision 421). Twain completed Huckleberry Finn in 1884, at a time when black identity in American society was undefined. Even though blacks had been granted citizenship in 1870 by the 15 th Amendment to the Constitution, Southern white society still looked upon them as sub-human creatures without souls or feelings. Post-Civil War Federal Reconstruction programs had failed miserably in their goal to re-unite a divided nation and to give economic and legal assistance to blacks struggling to find their place in white mainstream society.

Instead of improving the status of blacks and establishing in practice those rights to which they were constitutionally entitled, the programs only succeeded in generating the alienation of an already demoralized white South and escalating racial tensions. Although Twain may have used a negative stereotype in his creation of Jim, throughout the novel he provides his audience with a clear view of Jims humanity behind the minstrel mask. This contradiction reflects the confused view that many held of African Americans in Twain's time, which considered blacks as subhuman with no feelings and emotions even while this view began to be challenged. Black novelist Booker T.

Washington noted how Twain "succeeded in making his readers feel a genuine respect for Jim, and pointed out that Twain, in creating Jim's character, had exhibited his sympathy and interest in the masses of the negro people. In order to undermine Huck's misconception of nigger Jim, Twain first exposes Jims humanity when the two are separated from each other on the river during a dense fog. Huck, alone in a canoe, searches for Jim, who is alone on the raft. When Huck finally catches up with the raft, he finds Jim asleep, apparently exhausted from the terrifying ordeal.

Instead of waking Jim and celebrating their reunion, Huck decides to play a trick on him. Lying down beside Jim, Huck awakens him and says, Hello, Jim, have I been asleep? Why didnt you stir me up? (285) Jim is overjoyed to see his friend alive and tells him so. Huck, however, acts as if he had never left the raft and convinces Jim that he has dreamed the entire episode. Confused and intimidated by Huck's foolery, Jim acquiesces to the lie and thus his own sense of inferiority. Jim reverts to the only means he knows to help him rationalize his bewilderment superstition.

He redefines his real experience with a fictitious interpolation painted up considerable with supernatural warnings and signs (287). However, when Huck mockingly points to the leaves and rubbish on the raft, and the smashed oar and asks, what does these things stand for? Jim realizes that Huck has played a mean trick on him. (287) Jim is deeply hurt by Huck's cruelty and exposes the depth of his feelings by telling Huck, What do dey stan for? Is gone to tell you.

When I got all wore out wid work, en wid de callin for you, en went to sleep, my heart wuz mos broke bekase you wuz los, en I didn key no mo what become er me en de raf. En when I wake up en fine you back agin, all safe en soun, de tears come en I could a got down on my knees en kiss you foot Is so thankful. En all you wuz thinking bout wuz how you could make a fool uv ole Jim wid a lie. (287) Jim chastises Huck telling him he is no better than the pile of trash on the raft: trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de head or dey fren's en makes em ashamed (287). Huck is surprised at Jims capacity to possess such strong, human feelings.

His perception of Jim is so subverted that he, despite some reluctance -- It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself to go and humble myself to a nigger -- acknowledges Jims feelings and his humanity by apologizing to him. Huck decides that he wouldnt do him no more mean tricks; and I wouldnt done that one if Id know it would make him feel that way. (287) Another example of Jims humanity comes at the end of the text. Jim is a prisoner on the Phelps Farm awaiting his return to slavery. Huck has discovered where Jim is being held and has decided to help him escape.

Then Tom arrives on the farm, and they both begin to plan the escape. Huck went to thinking out a plan, but he soon defers to Toms elaborate but ludicrous plan: I see in a minute it was worth fifteen of mine, for style, and would make Jim just as free a man as mine would... (384). Jim has little choice but to bow to Toms dehumanizing, manipulative plan, hiding behind the protective minstrel mask of humility, ignorance, emotional deadpan, deference and placatory compliance that all slaves were forced to wear in order to survive under white supremacy and hostility (MacLeod 12). Despite literary criticism to the contrary, however, Jim does not relinquish his humanity.

What Twain shows us, rather, is that Jim is and continues to be a man -- but a man under the ugly compulsion to enact a demeaning stereotype, as defensive mask against those who would deny his humanity (MacLeod 12). Nowhere in the novel is Jims humanity more apparent than when he offers the ultimate sacrifice -- his freedom -- to save Toms life. Huck and Tom help Jim escape from the Phelps Farm, and in the process, Tom is wounded. It soon becomes apparent that his injuries are serious.

Jim volunteers to stay with Tom while Huck fetches a doctor, even though he knows that he will probably be captured and returned to slavery. Believing that Tom would do the same for him if their places were reversed, Jim says; Ef it wuz him dat uz bein sot free, en one er de boys wuz to git shot, would he say, Go on en save me, newline bout a doctor fr to save dis one? Is dat like Mars Tom Sawyer? Would he say dat: You bet he wouldnt!

Well, den, is Jim gone to say it? No, sah I doan budge a step on dis place, do a doctor; not if its forty year! (408) Huck acknowledges Jims unselfish act of humanity through the only perspective he knows -- his white consciousness: I know he was white inside, and I reckoned hed say what he did say -- so it was all right, now, and I told Tom I was again for a doctor (408). Huck goes to town, finds the doctor, and sends him to where Tom is lying. Jim hides in the bushes and waits. When the doctor finds Tom and realizes the seriousness of his wounds he says, I got to have help, somehow; and the minute I says it, out crawls this nigger from somewhere's, and says hell help, and he done it too, and done it very well (414). Even though the doctor admits, I never see a nigger that was a better news or faith fuller, and yet he was reading his freedom to do it he does what he considers his rightful duty and has Jim captured. (414) Twain used the minstrel tradition in his creation of Jims character.

However, throughout the novel, he also provided his audience with a clear view of Jims humanity behind the minstrel mask. Twain's comparison of Jim the minstrel and Jim the human being is reflective of the ambiguity of black humanity in the late 1800 s. Perhaps this image was also reflective of Twain's own personal search to identify black humanity. Ralph Ellison writes; it is from behind this stereotype mask that we see Jims dignity and human complexity or Twain's complexity emerge. (Ellison 422) In Was Huck Black? Shelley Fishkin writes; In Huckleberry Finn and throughout his life and work, Mark Twain interrogated his cultures categories and conventions of what it meant to be black or white (Fishkin 79). Fishkin contends that Twain may not have done this consistently or consciously, or that he invariably succeeded in transcending those categories and conventions.

On the contrary, it could be argued that, in a number of key ways, he left them in place (Fishkin 79). However, by giving Jim one of the central voices in the novel and demonstrating Jims capacity to feel deep, human emotions, Twain demonstrates the contradictions of his culture, portraying Jim through the minstrel stereotype meanwhile revealing the fundamental reality of African American humanity. Critics say that Mark Twain's book, enters as a classic only to explode like a hand grenade with all of these combustible issues (Zwick). Huck Finn has managed to remain a piece of classic American literature even in spite of a mountain of unfair criticism. "We must be glad that we have a public commentator like Mark Twain always at hand" (Paine) Society should be glad that they have him at their fingertips, and instead of banning his work, they should pay attention to what he has to say. As T. S.

Eliot proclaimed, Mark Twain wrote a much greater book than he could have known he was writing (Kesterson 68). Not only was Huck Finn not a racist novel, but it was the complete opposite. With use of devices such as satire, symbolism and point of view, it sent a message to many Americans and the rest of the world that slavery should not be continued in the United States. It was also one of the first novels to depict American frontier life, and the often-sacrilegious ideas of a young member of the lower class of society. These factors do not only make clear that it is not written out of racism, but also makes Huck Finn one of the most unique and greatest literary works of all time. Bibliography: Carey-Webb, Allen.

Racism and Huckleberry Finn: Censorship, Dialogue, and Change. English Journal 82 (November 1993): 22 - 34. Clemens, Samuel. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed.

Paul Later, et al. 2 nd ed. Vol. 2. Lexington: Heath, 1994. 236 - 419. Ellison, Ralph. Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

An Authoritative Text Backgrounds and Sources Criticism. Ed. Sculley Bradley, et al. 2 nd Ed. New York: Norton, 1977. 421 - 22. Fishkin, Shelley. Was Huck Black?

Mark Twain and African-American Voices. New York: Oxford UP, 1993. Hoffman, Daniel. Black Magic -- and White -- in Huckleberry Finn. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: An Authoritative Text Backgrounds and Sources Criticism.

Ed. Sculley Bradley, et al. 2 nd ed. New York: Norton, 1977. 423 - 436. Kesterson, David B. Critics on Mark Twain. University of Miami Press, 1973. (From: Eliot, T.

S. New York: Chanticleer, 1950), pp. VII-XVI MacLeod, Christine. Telling the Truth in a Tight Place: Huckleberry Finn and the Reconstruction Era. The Southern Quarterly 34 (Fall 1995): 5 - 16. Sale, Peter.

Is Huck Finn a Racist Book? web 2000 Zwick, Jim. Should Huck Finn Be Banned? web 2000


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