The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been a controversial book since it was first published in 1885 in America. It has constantly been on library and school banning lists, and every year when the ACLU releases its reports on banned books, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn makes the list. What is most ironic about the banning of the book is that what made the book so controversial in 1885 is one of the things that makes Twain a kind of hero to literary critics and historians today, while what gets the book banned today was fully acceptable back in the days right after the Civil War. The issue, of course, is the relationship between the white character Huckleberry Finn and the African-American character, Jim, who is an enslaved person, and the language Twain’s characters use to describe Jim, especially the “n word”. In the period when The Advntures of Huckleberry Fin was published, the positive relationship between Huck and Jim, and the very humanistic depiction of Jim made the book controversial (Kaplan 267-269). Many readers of that period, especially Southen readers, found the friendly father to son like relationship of Jim and Huck either very offensive or very dangerous, and attempted to ban the book. In our period, it is Twain’s realistic depiction of the historic language used to describe African Americans that makes the book controversial, and even makes readers wonder if Twain was a racist, or if he even supported Slavery. Twain would be confused by a modern reader thinking he supported slavery. As Twain scholar Hoffman wrote in Inventing Mark Twain, “Twain thought he had made his progressive agenda on race and slavery unmistakable in the novel’s moral hierarchy” (Hoffman 316). Twain, however, felt the novel made his condemnation of slavery and racism as clear as possible.
The historical and biographical record is rather clear. Twain was against the institution of slavery, and was not a systematic or ideological racist. In fact, as biographers and scholars of Twain have found, an as Twain wrote himself, Twain did not only hold a negative view of slavery, but his negative feelings about slavery led him to have a strong hatred for the South. He felt the south was poverty stricken, barbaric and contributed nothing to American culture except slavery, murder and brutality (Kaplan 243). Clemens had to grow into this posion, as he was born into a slave holding community in the new border state of Missouri, and his father owned one slave for a short period of time (Hoffman 5-6). At first, he simply accepted what everyone around him said about slavery. However, as Twain travelled throughout the country, and was exposed to other points of view, his ideas began to change. As Justin Kaplan, a leading Twain scholar wrote, “Twain grew up to be the most de-southernized of Southerners,” and noted that Twain described the novel as a clash between a deformed conscience which defends slavery and a sound heart that knows that slavery is wrong, and that the heart wins (Kaplam198). As he matured, and as he became a famous and successful novelist, his ideas about slavery and the south changed.
This is the most likely source of the change in Huckleberry Finn’s perception and views of Jim in the novel. At the beginning of the novel, Huck is completely a southerner, and believes everything that southerners do about slavery and African-Americans. He sees Jim as a slave and as a source of humor and not a human being. However, when Huck runs away, he discovers hat Jim has joined him, except that Jim’s running away is a literal attempt to escape from slavery. Over the course of the narrative, as Jim and Huck adventure down the river together, Huck’s attitude and conscious about Jim begins to change. At first, he thinks it is his duty to turn in Jin for running away; however, by the climactic scene of the novel, Huck rejects slavery and refuses to turn Jim in, even if it means that he must go to hell for all eternity for helping a slave escape. Huck, much like the real Twain, learns that Jim is a real human being, fully deserving of all human rights and human dignity, including freedom for himself and his family.
In Shelly Fisher Fishkin’s famous study of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Fisher Fishkin painstakingly demonstrates with a close reading of the novel combined with biographical research about Twain, that Twain was very much against slavery, and wrote Huckleberry Finn to argue that the Civil War was worth the cost, because enslaved people were human beings (Fisher-Fishin 3-6). That is the central point of the novel which Huck, and the reader, learn during the voyage on the river with Jim. Fisher-Fishken also addresses the issue which makes modern audiences erroneously assume that Twain was a racist or supporter of slavery: the language that he uses. First, Twains use of the “N-word” was historically accurate and realistic, and although Twain has a well-deserved reputation as a humorist, he is considered a part of the 19th century American Realist movement. Second, many of the character’s in the novel are racist southern characters(who are usually presented as buffoons in the text), and Twain was depicting how they talked, and felt, about African Americans. At the start of the novel, Huck is a part of this community. However, as he learns about Jim as a person, his perception of Jim changes. Jim is presented as a very smart person, and Huck looks up to Jim for his knowledge. Jim is loyal, and also very courageous, and protects Huck at several points in the novel. Jim also demonstrates an affection which grows into a love for Huck, another way that Twain presents Jim as possessing the full range of human emotions.
As Huck learns the truth about Jim, he stops seeing Jim as a slave, and start seeing him as a human, and a friend, and eventually as a stand in for his father. As this happens, Huck stops using the negative language to describe Jim. Modern readers need to look past the historic language used by the characers, and instead focus on Twain’s presentation of Jim as the hero of the novel, and, more importantly, as a full developed human being who is already equal with other human beings, and deserves the rights promised to all men in the Declaration of Independence. Twain may have used the “n-word” in his book, but he also created one of the most powerful African American characters in American Literature.
Works Cited
Fisher-Fiskin, Shelly. Was Huck Back: Mark Twain and African American Voices New York:
Oxford UP 1993.
Hoffman, Andrew. Inventing Mark Twain. New York: William and Morrow, 1997.
Kaplan, Justin. Mr. Clemens and Mr. Twain. New York: Touchstone, 1966
Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Edited by Gerald Graff and James Phelan.
New York: MacMillian, 1995.
