Slavery in Mark Twain's the Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn
Abstract
The American literary Realism is a time during which Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was produced. It is declared by the vast majority of critics as a true representative of the White-supremacist American society, because Twain was successfully able to describe the undergoing of the American society during the Pre-Civil War era. Yet, the description was not the main point behind the writing of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain meant criticizing the racist mindsets of the white Americans and the hypocrite political systems of the country. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain propagates the idea of slavery as the most dominant theme running through the novel. Therefore, this New Historicist extended essay is intended to the aspects of the institution of slavery in settings, characters after providing a brief view over both slavery in America and the Civil- War as a historical and social background.
Historical and Literary Background
General Introduction
Mark Twain wrote his novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn two decades after the Emancipation Proclamation which means the end of slavery in the United States of America and after the Civil War in the Southern states. People in the South did not understand that Negroes or slaves, their former property, should have the same rights as they have. Slaves in the United States suffered from the mistreatment of the White People as they were stripped of their names and dehumanized in many ways, they did not have the right to make contracts or to own properties. Slaves' suffering has been the object of slave narratives such as the slave narrative of Frederick Douglass and Olaudah Equiano. On the other hand many white novelists dealt with slavery in their works, for example Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mark Twain. Through the twentieth century Twain’s novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has become famous not only as the peak precious and grand work of one of America’s greatest writers but also as a subject of controversy. It has been banned and reworked with replacement of certain words and many critics have argued about the meaning of its legacy. Others have dismissed Huckleberry Finn as vulgar or racist because it uses more than two hundred times “nigger” a term which clearly points to the issue of slavery as the novel’s most prominent concern.
Introduction
It is necessary to shed enough light on the issue of slavery in America. It has characterized its history since its discovery and is based on white superiority and black inferiority. Slavery found its way in American literature, mainly in the narratives of former slaves. However, many white novelists of the nineteenth century cared about black people’s suffering and focused on the issue of slavery such as Harriet Beecher Stowe in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), and Mark Twain in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885).
Slavery in America
The issue of slavery left a scar in the heart of American history. Its effects lasted even after its abolition by the Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation (1863)1 and the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. African slavery dates back to the first European settlement and was practiced in all colonial territories of America. It started when the first African slaves were brought to the North American territory of Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. The discovery of the Americas in 1492 led to a great demand for free labour to work in plantations to increase crops production in the territory. Britain was one of the leading slave-trading powers in Europe as well as France, Holland, Portugal and Spain. This process was also called “The Triangular Trade” wherein British ships carried European manufactured goods to Africa and exchanged them for slaves, who were then taken across the Atlantic to the Americas, where they were traded for sugar, cotton, rum and other goods.
Slavery in American Literature
Slavery has been a major concept in the American society since its very first times in the United States. But it was not a theme in literature until literary Realism was in its zenith. Realist writers aimed at treating the material of slavery in a realistic fashion. The literatures tackling slavery consist of a sympathetic description of the enslaved and the brutality they endure. Slave narratives, however, were much more insightful when it comes to slavery as a theme. The topic of slavery in literature, in most of the cases, is found in the writings of literate slaves or former slaves. Non-slave blacks of the Free Sates and white writers who were filled with abolitionist qualities as well made of slavery a major theme in their works. These works address vehemently or sometimes diplomatically the injustices towards slaves by their owners specifically and the white supremacist society generally (Andrews).
Slave Narratives
The period between the mid-eighteenth until the late-nineteenth century witnessed a birth and then rise of a new genre. This genre was innovative because it is a production of the African slave community, namely, “slave narratives”. It was the first black literary non-fiction prose. The narratives, as apparent from the term per se, feature the hardships of the African-Americans under slavery, but not after freedom. It might seem quite ironic that African slaves can write. Slave narratives are written by either the slaves themselves, or dictated to literate persons. The clearest examples of slave narratives in America are Olaudah Equiano‟s Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself, Frederick Douglass‟s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave and most significantly Harriet Jacobs‟ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. In these works, one cannot argue that there is any theme as central as that of slavery; the three authors placed an emphatic stress on the issue of slavery. Olaudah Equiano was the first African-American.
White Novelists
Slavery was also found in the writings of some white abolitionist novelists. Due to her most popular fictitious novel; Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly, Harriet Beecher Stowe won the epithet of the first abolitionist writer. She was sharply criticized by pro-slave community. The book per se was written as a direct response to the Fugitive Slave Act to urge sympathy and feelings for slaves who endured all sorts of inhuman treatment. Harriet Beecher Stowe took slavery from very sensitive levels; political, religious and social. Politically speaking, she described slavery as a contradiction in
The United States of America as she described it as the nation that purportedly embodied democracy and equality for all men (Vanspanckeren44). Yet its dominant whites practiced slavery and abused the blacks who served them. Second, Stowe herself was surrounded with religious members including her father, brother and later her husband who were well-educated Protestant clergymen and effective reformers.
Mark Twain’s Biography and Works
Mark Twain is the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens who was born in the Hamlet of Florida, Missouri, on November 30, 1835, the sixth child of John and Jane Clemens. He spent his childhood in Hannibal which served as a model to many towns in his books. It is a must to be aware about Mark Twain’s family, hometown, opinions and his life because all these aspects had an immense influence on his literary work. When he was four years old, Sam and his family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, a town on the bank of the Mississippi river. His father John Marshall Clemens worked in a general store (Sweets 01). Twain spent his young life in a prosperous family that owned a number of household slaves, yet the death of Clemens’s father left the family in financial troubles. Twain left school at the age of 12 after his father’s death, and he became a printer apprentice at the Hannibal Courier. In 1851 he got a job in his brother Orion’s journal Hannibal Western Union. This foreshadowed his future job as he became in touch with all the events that happened in the town, and it provided him with experiences and materials for his writings. Then in 1857 he began learning the art of piloting a steamboat on the Mississippi. Mark Twain worked as a river boat- pilot. He loved his job; it was exciting, and well paying. However by the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 he lost his job because traffic on the Mississippi river was shut off. Life on the river can be seen throughout many works such as the scenes of Huckleberry Finn.
Slavery in the Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn
Introduction
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel that speaks about an important period in the American history. Mark Twain in his novel focuses on the ignorance of southern society and southern people in their support to slavery. He uses characters to embody real issues that blacks suffered from. Mark Twain as one of the great American novelists of the nineteenth century gives us a glimpse on life in the 1840s‟ in America.
Synopsis
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a satirical novel. The novel starts when Tom Sawyer and Huck have each come into a considerable amount of money as a result of their earlier adventures (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer). Both novels are set in the town of St. Petersburg, Missouri which lies on the Mississippi river. At the end of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Huckleberry Finn a very poor boy and Tom Sawyer a middle-class boy with a big imagination that he used for his own good, found a bag of gold that belongs to some robbers. As a result, Huck gained a big amount of money which the bank held for him (Spark notes. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn).
Huck, a young boy about thirteen years old, has been placed under the
guardianship of the Widow Douglas, who, together with her sister, Miss Watson, is trying to civilize him with proper dress, manners and religious piety. Huck appreciates their effort but he found civilized life as imprisoning, confining and false and he would rather live free and wild. The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would civilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways. But Huck could not stay in that house; with the help of Tom Sawyer he could run away one night past Miss Watson’s slave Jim, to meet up with his band members. They both played tricks on the slave Jim, the first trick is when Tom suggests to attach Jim to a tree after he sleeps just for fun, as if Twain is trying to show us how black slaves suffered from white mistreatment and how they were not considered to be human but only as objects or tools to have fun “When we was ten foot off Tom whispered to me, and wanted to tie Jim to the tree for fun”. Also they make another trick on Jim when Tom and Huck climb into the house and steal three candles for which Tom laid five cents on the table for pay. Then Tom quietly makes his way to Jim, takes off Jim‟s hat and places it on a limb above Jim’s head. After Jim wakes up he believes he has been bewitched. According to Huck Jim tells all the other slaves that he had been ridden around the state by some witches, and hung his hat on a limb to show who done it: “Jim said the witches bewitched him and put him in a trance, and rode him all over the State, and then set him under the trees again” (Twain 6). Huck‟s life changed after the sudden reappearance of his lazy, drunken, abusive father “pap” in the story. His father was looking for the six thousand dollars, when he appears in the town he starts asking for Huck‟s money. “I‟ve been in town two days, and I hain‟t heard nothing but about you bein‟ rich. I heard about it away down the river, too. That‟s why I come” (Twain 22). The local Judge, Judge Thatcher and the widow try to get legal custody yet another Judge in the town believes in the natural right of Huck‟s natural father and even tries to reform him, but pap soon returns to his bad habits, he walks around the town harassing his son.
Meanwhile, Huck gives all his money to Judge Thatcher to keep it away from his father “I hain‟t got no money, I tell you. You ask Judge Thatcher; he‟ll tell you the same”.
Pap kidnaps him and locks him in an old cabin near the river, but Huck refuses to live in such a miserable situation, he finds out a solution. During the absence of his father he fakes his own murder and sets off down the Mississippi River. Huck encounters Miss Watson‟s slave Jim on an island called Jackson‟s Island. Jim has run away when he knew that Miss Watson was planning to sell him down the Mississippi river “I hear old missus tell de widder she gwyne to sell me down to Orleans, but she didn‟ want to, but she could git eight hund‟d dollars for me, en it „uz sich a big stack o‟ money she couldn‟ resis‟” (Twain 45) so he ran away to Jackson‟s island and his goal is to reach the free states.
Huck Finn
Huck is the protagonist and the narrator of the novel. From the beginnings Mark Twain makes it clear that Huck is a boy who comes from the lowest levels of white society and he therefore owns no slaves himself. In fact while we follow Huck in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn it appears that this young boy and thanks to his distance from normal society is cynical of the world around him and the ideas passed on to him particularly after he travels down the river. His experiences with Miss Watson‟s slave Jim force him to question the things society has taught him. Huck owns no slaves and this pushes him to help the slave Jim to reach his own freedom because he did not have that harsh attitude towards blacks and he discovers that blacks are humans just like white people. This is can be seen in chapter sixteen when Jim told Huck his plan to buy his family freedom “he would buy his wife, which was owned on a farm close to where Miss Watson lived; and then they would both work to buy the two children, and if their master wouldn‟t
sell them, they’d get an Abolitionist to go and steal them”. Huck is a thirteen-year old boy, the son of the drunken man from St Petersburg, Missouri, a town on the bank of the Mississippi river. Huck shares his
society’s view of slavery which can be seen in chapter sixteen when Jim speaks about his freedom as they came near free states. Huck starts to have some doubts about guiding Jim towards his freedom “But you know he was running for his freedom, and you could a paddled ashore and told somebody”. The idea of Jim’s freedom starts to trouble him, and he could not accept it because of what people and society will say about him and the fact he saves a slave. That act was not accepted at that time “I begun to get it through my head that he was most free—and who was to blame for it? Why, me. I couldn’t get that out of my conscience, no how nor no way. It got to troubling me so I couldn’t rest; I couldn’t stay still in one place. Then he tries to write a letter to Tom and tell him to tell Miss Watson where he was (Jim) but he gives up the idea for two reasons. The first one is that Miss Watson would sell Jim down the river and people will make Jim feel ungrateful for the rest of his life because he ran away from his master and the second reason is that people would say that Huck helps a nigger to get his freedom: “Huck Finn helped a nigger to get his freedom; and if I was ever to see anybody from that town again I’d be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame. In this part of the novel Twain shows us to what extent society can shape people’s mind and actions.
Slavery in the Novel
The novel was published in 1885, it aims at reflecting the darker side of the American society and the evil of slavery during the 19th century. The book was set during the 1840‟s where slavery was not abolished, throughout the novel Twain speaks about families that owned slave in America (History.com).
Most of the themes portrayed in the novel are directly related to the issue of slavery such as: prejudice, racism, freedom and hypocrisy. The white people of this period in the south of America have many prejudices towards slaves. In his novel Mark Twain demonstrates to what extent this society is racist. This can be seen through many characters and the way they act towards blacks. The people of the towns are slave owners and they treat them with disrespect and they make them look like fools, for example when Tom and Huck trick the slave Jim and he thinks that he is bewitched. The fact that other slaves come from other part of the country to listen to his story is a kind of making fool of them “Niggers would come miles to hear Jim tell about it, and he was more looked up to than any nigger in that country”. Some characters even believe that the slaves belong to them as if they are a personal property and if they run towards their freedom, slave-owners would hire some people to bring back those slaves. As an example, in the novel, Miss Watson plans to sell Jim down the river “I hear old missus tell de wider she gone to sell me down to Orleans, but she didn’t want to, but she could git eight hundred dollars for me”. This is the main cause why he runs away from her. Pap is also a racist man, when he gets drunk one night he explains how the government is too wonderful as he speaks of a black man who could speaks many languages, the worst thing for Pap is that this person could vote in his town “but when they told me there was a State in this country where they’d let that nigger vote, I drew out. I says I’ll never vote again. Themes the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may rot for all me—”. In this situation Twain shows us to what extent Pap is racist and he refuses voting if the government gives the right of voting to a black man while in reality it is more appropriate for an educated black man to vote than for drunken Pap. Another situation of racism when Aunt Sally asks Huck if anyone get hurts he says “Noom. Killed a nigger”. She replies: “Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt”, as if when someone black dies it means nobody is getting hurt in this case
slaves are not considered to be human. Slavery is the main theme that Mark Twain focuses on in his novel through the character Jim who suffered from mistreatment and slavery. Even though Huck was raised in a society that supports slavery and as the novel progresses, one may notice that Huck‟s feelings towards the slave Jim start to change when he discovers that Jim has a family but due to slavery he is away from his wife and children. At the beginning of the novel Huck has some doubts to save Jim because of what people will say about him and due to what he learns from society about blacks and the prejudices he has about them as inferior. For example, when Huck wrote a letter to Miss Watson Jim‟s owner “I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now”. In this situation Huck is confused between whether to tell Miss Watson about her slave and follow what society tells him to do or to follow his instinct and help Jim. Huck struggles with some prejudices about Blacks that society has ingrained in him and he challenges some traditional notions of the time.
Freedom is another important theme in the novel. It is shown into Jim being freed from slavery and his will to free his family member which is his goal in the novel “Jim won‟t ever forgit you, Huck; you‟s de bes‟ fren‟ Jim‟s ever had; you’s de only fren‟ ole Jim‟s got now” (Twain 92) when Jim sees the light of the free states he starts to thank Jim for helping him and he considers Huck as his best friend. Twain is blaming society for supporting slavery and giving slave owners the right to separate children wives from their families only for the sake of their benefits. Even at the beginning of the novel a Judge of the town gives custody to Huck‟s abusive and drunken father even “it was a new judge that had just come, and he didn‟t know the old man; so, he said courts mustn‟t interfere and separate families if they could help it; said he‟d druther not take a child away from its father”. The fact that the Judge is new in the town he did not know about the bad treatment of Pap towards his son Huck who prefers to live in the woods instead of living with his abusive, drunken father for this reason he gives custody to Pap while the Widow and the Judge Thatcher try to win Huck‟s custody. In this part of the novel Twain tries to make a link between Huck‟s suffering from his abusive father and the slave Jim who suffers from slave hunters and his owner at the same time, therefore Twain attempts to show race relations not just through Jim but even Huck, because his father treats him as if he is his own property and he locks him in the cabin just like they do to slaves for the sake of taking his money “Every little while he locked me in and went down to the store, three miles, to the ferry, and traded fish and game for whisky”( Twain 26). Twain makes the issue of custody looks like an analogy to slaveholding because The Widow and Judge Thatcher try to take Huck away from his father just like Jim who is running away from his master looking for his freedom.
Pap prevents Huck from educating himself and he beats him all the time, he even mocks on his son because he learns how to write and speak “ou‟re educated, too, they say—can read and write. You think you‟re better‟n your father, now, don’t you, because he can‟t? i’ll take it out of you” (Twain 21). Twain is giving hints of Huck‟s suffering due to his drunken father who is always beating him for the sake of taking his money from Judge Thatcher in this point Twain is focusing on the cruelty of white people and the way they treat their own sons because they did not beat only their Black slaves, and this can be seen through the character Pap who used to beat his son Huck and locks him inside the cabin in the woods. By the end of the novel Twain does not make Jim run away from slavery and reach the North in defiance of the slave holding society but rather makes him free lawfully by his owner‟s will after her death here Twain is denouncing the fact that he is totally against slavery in the south and his aim is to free the slave Jim in the South as well all the other slaves and to give them their own freedom just like Blacks who lives in the North freely, Twain focuses on the fact that slavery should be outlawed in the South. Twain attacks the hypocrisy of slavery. For example, the Widow Douglass and Miss Watson try to civilize Huck by teaching him Christian values but he knows that these values take more stock in the dead rather than in the living and they make Huck feel lonely, bored and uncomfortable (LitChart, Hypocrisy and Society). The contradiction between religion and slavery is hinted at right in the first pages of the novel when “they fetched the niggers in and had prayers”. Their Christianity does not make them treat slaves as human beings. Indeed, Twain‟s attitude toward slavery is that he is against it. This is can be seen throughout the novel and especially characters‟ reaction towards others who support slavery. For example, the hypocrisy of Miss Watson because she preaches to Huck how she is going to live so as to go to the good place yet she owns slaves. Twain also shows his distaste for slavery by portraying Pap‟s ignorance. Pap, boasting his belief that he is superior to blacks, for example he did not want to vote when he hears about the free “nigger” (mulatto) who has the right to vote, as if he is trying to show his superiority towards blacks.
Conclusion
To conclude what has been studied in this research, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel which had the courage to assail the arrogant belief of white Southerners in their superiority to Negroes. After a deep examination and analysis of the novel, it appears that Mark Twain is totally against slavery and racism through his satirical tone of writing and the different elements of the story such as characters for example when Pap mocks of the black man who had the will to vote, he considered him as inhuman and have no rights to vote like any other white man. Through this character we can see the foolishness and ignorance of Pap and the focus on his racist act. That Twain is not racist can be seen through the character Huck Finn, who in the beginning is like any Southern person who sees Blacks as inferior and not human as they are only slaves and property who have no right to do anything. But when Huck starts his journey down the Mississippi river with the black slave Jim, he realizes that Jim protects him from dangerous situations they encounter. All these aspects indicate that the slave Jim is really human and sensitive person, from here Huck recognizes that Jim has the total right to live freely with his family and he merits respect and admiration. From this point, Huck’s behaviour towards the slave Jim starts to change as it becomes more positive, he starts to believe in his conscience to help Jim to be free despite the fact that he will confront his society rules, showing that Twain is totally against slavery.
It appears through the novel that Twain is completely against slavery and racism when he portrays the character Jim as sensitive, honest and reasonable like loyal friend and real father who cares for his family. On the other hand, Twain makes the white character Pap who mistreats his own son Huck and his bad habits in contrast to Jim. Twain also uses some white characters‟ behaviour’s to criticize the hypocrisy of society and civilization as well as to show to what extent they support slavery. For example, the King and the Duke who are frauds and they trick many innocent people, the Shepherd sons and the Granger fords two feuding families whose main reason is to kill each other with no mercy. Twain wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with a negative view of society to show his real opinion that he is against the thoughts and beliefs of southern people over different issues such as slavery and racism through characters actions and behaviour. Furthermore, he portrays southern society that is filled with ill racist behaviour. The events of the story happened before the Civil War when slavery was still legal and he focuses on slaves suffering through Jim. Twain also criticise the hypocrisy of society through Miss Watson who owned the slave Jim and Aunt Sally who believe that slavery is obligatory for life even though they are ethically correct and religious. They agree to sell Jim down the river and separate him from his family. This creates moral confusion and shows Mark Twain’s view that society is full of evil and corruption. Also, when Jim is captured by the King and the Duke they sell him without hesitation and all what they were looking for is the reward. When Huck sees the acts of the Duke and the King and the way they treat Jim who becomes his loyal friend, he starts to have doubts about what he learns from society. He cannot understand why people treat Blacks in such bad way, then he begins to understand the injustice of society and he decides to run away. Mark Twain denounces the social acts and values of the southern society focussing on the issue of slavery and racism during the pre-civil war era, he believes that there is no reason for the whites, whether devoted Christians or aristocracy to believe they are superior to Blacks. Twain Criticizes Southerners for not being caring and loving persons towards slaves but they are rather spoilt by their chase for money, heaven and lost honour. Unfortunately, this negative racist attitude towards blacks in the United States can still be found even nowadays, two centuries after the publication of Twain‟s novel which proves how far sighted and visionary he was.
THE REFERENCES
Primary Source
• Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. pdf. Web accessed June 12, 2017 http://contentserver.adobe.com/store/books/HuckFinn.pdf
Secondary Sources
• Abramova, S. U. “Ideological, Doctrinal, Philosophical, Religious and Political Aspects of the African Slave Trade”. UNESCO (ed.) The African Slave Trade from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Century. Paris: the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 1979. 16-31.
• Andrews, William L. “Slave Narrative”. Encyclopedia Britannica, web accessed June 6, 2017 https://www.britannica.com/art/slave-narrative
• Baena, Victoria . "The Life of Olaudah Equiano Themes: Freedom and Slavery". LitCharts. LitCharts LLC, 7 Apr 2017. Web. accessed 15 May 2017 http://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-life-of-olaudahequiano/
• themes/freedom-and-slavery Biography. Com Editors. “Harriet Ann Jacobs. Com”. April 2, 2014, Web accessed June 5, 2017 https://www.biography.com/people/harriet-ann-jacobs-9351667 Biography.com editors “Mark twain”.
Huckleberry Finn
Abstract
The American literary Realism is a time during which Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was produced. It is declared by the vast majority of critics as a true representative of the White-supremacist American society, because Twain was successfully able to describe the undergoing of the American society during the Pre-Civil War era. Yet, the description was not the main point behind the writing of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain meant criticizing the racist mindsets of the white Americans and the hypocrite political systems of the country. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain propagates the idea of slavery as the most dominant theme running through the novel. Therefore, this New Historicist extended essay is intended to the aspects of the institution of slavery in settings, characters after providing a brief view over both slavery in America and the Civil- War as a historical and social background.
Historical and Literary Background
General Introduction
Mark Twain wrote his novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn two decades after the Emancipation Proclamation which means the end of slavery in the United States of America and after the Civil War in the Southern states. People in the South did not understand that Negroes or slaves, their former property, should have the same rights as they have. Slaves in the United States suffered from the mistreatment of the White People as they were stripped of their names and dehumanized in many ways, they did not have the right to make contracts or to own properties. Slaves' suffering has been the object of slave narratives such as the slave narrative of Frederick Douglass and Olaudah Equiano. On the other hand many white novelists dealt with slavery in their works, for example Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mark Twain. Through the twentieth century Twain’s novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has become famous not only as the peak precious and grand work of one of America’s greatest writers but also as a subject of controversy. It has been banned and reworked with replacement of certain words and many critics have argued about the meaning of its legacy. Others have dismissed Huckleberry Finn as vulgar or racist because it uses more than two hundred times “nigger” a term which clearly points to the issue of slavery as the novel’s most prominent concern.
Introduction
It is necessary to shed enough light on the issue of slavery in America. It has characterized its history since its discovery and is based on white superiority and black inferiority. Slavery found its way in American literature, mainly in the narratives of former slaves. However, many white novelists of the nineteenth century cared about black people’s suffering and focused on the issue of slavery such as Harriet Beecher Stowe in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), and Mark Twain in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885).
Slavery in America
The issue of slavery left a scar in the heart of American history. Its effects lasted even after its abolition by the Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation (1863)1 and the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. African slavery dates back to the first European settlement and was practiced in all colonial territories of America. It started when the first African slaves were brought to the North American territory of Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. The discovery of the Americas in 1492 led to a great demand for free labour to work in plantations to increase crops production in the territory. Britain was one of the leading slave-trading powers in Europe as well as France, Holland, Portugal and Spain. This process was also called “The Triangular Trade” wherein British ships carried European manufactured goods to Africa and exchanged them for slaves, who were then taken across the Atlantic to the Americas, where they were traded for sugar, cotton, rum and other goods.
Slavery in American Literature
Slavery has been a major concept in the American society since its very first times in the United States. But it was not a theme in literature until literary Realism was in its zenith. Realist writers aimed at treating the material of slavery in a realistic fashion. The literatures tackling slavery consist of a sympathetic description of the enslaved and the brutality they endure. Slave narratives, however, were much more insightful when it comes to slavery as a theme. The topic of slavery in literature, in most of the cases, is found in the writings of literate slaves or former slaves. Non-slave blacks of the Free Sates and white writers who were filled with abolitionist qualities as well made of slavery a major theme in their works. These works address vehemently or sometimes diplomatically the injustices towards slaves by their owners specifically and the white supremacist society generally (Andrews).
Slave Narratives
The period between the mid-eighteenth until the late-nineteenth century witnessed a birth and then rise of a new genre. This genre was innovative because it is a production of the African slave community, namely, “slave narratives”. It was the first black literary non-fiction prose. The narratives, as apparent from the term per se, feature the hardships of the African-Americans under slavery, but not after freedom. It might seem quite ironic that African slaves can write. Slave narratives are written by either the slaves themselves, or dictated to literate persons. The clearest examples of slave narratives in America are Olaudah Equiano‟s Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself, Frederick Douglass‟s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave and most significantly Harriet Jacobs‟ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. In these works, one cannot argue that there is any theme as central as that of slavery; the three authors placed an emphatic stress on the issue of slavery. Olaudah Equiano was the first African-American.
White Novelists
Slavery was also found in the writings of some white abolitionist novelists. Due to her most popular fictitious novel; Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly, Harriet Beecher Stowe won the epithet of the first abolitionist writer. She was sharply criticized by pro-slave community. The book per se was written as a direct response to the Fugitive Slave Act to urge sympathy and feelings for slaves who endured all sorts of inhuman treatment. Harriet Beecher Stowe took slavery from very sensitive levels; political, religious and social. Politically speaking, she described slavery as a contradiction in
The United States of America as she described it as the nation that purportedly embodied democracy and equality for all men (Vanspanckeren44). Yet its dominant whites practiced slavery and abused the blacks who served them. Second, Stowe herself was surrounded with religious members including her father, brother and later her husband who were well-educated Protestant clergymen and effective reformers.
Mark Twain’s Biography and Works
Mark Twain is the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens who was born in the Hamlet of Florida, Missouri, on November 30, 1835, the sixth child of John and Jane Clemens. He spent his childhood in Hannibal which served as a model to many towns in his books. It is a must to be aware about Mark Twain’s family, hometown, opinions and his life because all these aspects had an immense influence on his literary work. When he was four years old, Sam and his family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, a town on the bank of the Mississippi river. His father John Marshall Clemens worked in a general store (Sweets 01). Twain spent his young life in a prosperous family that owned a number of household slaves, yet the death of Clemens’s father left the family in financial troubles. Twain left school at the age of 12 after his father’s death, and he became a printer apprentice at the Hannibal Courier. In 1851 he got a job in his brother Orion’s journal Hannibal Western Union. This foreshadowed his future job as he became in touch with all the events that happened in the town, and it provided him with experiences and materials for his writings. Then in 1857 he began learning the art of piloting a steamboat on the Mississippi. Mark Twain worked as a river boat- pilot. He loved his job; it was exciting, and well paying. However by the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 he lost his job because traffic on the Mississippi river was shut off. Life on the river can be seen throughout many works such as the scenes of Huckleberry Finn.
Slavery in the Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn
Introduction
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel that speaks about an important period in the American history. Mark Twain in his novel focuses on the ignorance of southern society and southern people in their support to slavery. He uses characters to embody real issues that blacks suffered from. Mark Twain as one of the great American novelists of the nineteenth century gives us a glimpse on life in the 1840s‟ in America.
Synopsis
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a satirical novel. The novel starts when Tom Sawyer and Huck have each come into a considerable amount of money as a result of their earlier adventures (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer). Both novels are set in the town of St. Petersburg, Missouri which lies on the Mississippi river. At the end of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Huckleberry Finn a very poor boy and Tom Sawyer a middle-class boy with a big imagination that he used for his own good, found a bag of gold that belongs to some robbers. As a result, Huck gained a big amount of money which the bank held for him (Spark notes. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn).
Huck, a young boy about thirteen years old, has been placed under the
guardianship of the Widow Douglas, who, together with her sister, Miss Watson, is trying to civilize him with proper dress, manners and religious piety. Huck appreciates their effort but he found civilized life as imprisoning, confining and false and he would rather live free and wild. The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would civilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways. But Huck could not stay in that house; with the help of Tom Sawyer he could run away one night past Miss Watson’s slave Jim, to meet up with his band members. They both played tricks on the slave Jim, the first trick is when Tom suggests to attach Jim to a tree after he sleeps just for fun, as if Twain is trying to show us how black slaves suffered from white mistreatment and how they were not considered to be human but only as objects or tools to have fun “When we was ten foot off Tom whispered to me, and wanted to tie Jim to the tree for fun”. Also they make another trick on Jim when Tom and Huck climb into the house and steal three candles for which Tom laid five cents on the table for pay. Then Tom quietly makes his way to Jim, takes off Jim‟s hat and places it on a limb above Jim’s head. After Jim wakes up he believes he has been bewitched. According to Huck Jim tells all the other slaves that he had been ridden around the state by some witches, and hung his hat on a limb to show who done it: “Jim said the witches bewitched him and put him in a trance, and rode him all over the State, and then set him under the trees again” (Twain 6). Huck‟s life changed after the sudden reappearance of his lazy, drunken, abusive father “pap” in the story. His father was looking for the six thousand dollars, when he appears in the town he starts asking for Huck‟s money. “I‟ve been in town two days, and I hain‟t heard nothing but about you bein‟ rich. I heard about it away down the river, too. That‟s why I come” (Twain 22). The local Judge, Judge Thatcher and the widow try to get legal custody yet another Judge in the town believes in the natural right of Huck‟s natural father and even tries to reform him, but pap soon returns to his bad habits, he walks around the town harassing his son.
Meanwhile, Huck gives all his money to Judge Thatcher to keep it away from his father “I hain‟t got no money, I tell you. You ask Judge Thatcher; he‟ll tell you the same”.
Pap kidnaps him and locks him in an old cabin near the river, but Huck refuses to live in such a miserable situation, he finds out a solution. During the absence of his father he fakes his own murder and sets off down the Mississippi River. Huck encounters Miss Watson‟s slave Jim on an island called Jackson‟s Island. Jim has run away when he knew that Miss Watson was planning to sell him down the Mississippi river “I hear old missus tell de widder she gwyne to sell me down to Orleans, but she didn‟ want to, but she could git eight hund‟d dollars for me, en it „uz sich a big stack o‟ money she couldn‟ resis‟” (Twain 45) so he ran away to Jackson‟s island and his goal is to reach the free states.
Huck Finn
Huck is the protagonist and the narrator of the novel. From the beginnings Mark Twain makes it clear that Huck is a boy who comes from the lowest levels of white society and he therefore owns no slaves himself. In fact while we follow Huck in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn it appears that this young boy and thanks to his distance from normal society is cynical of the world around him and the ideas passed on to him particularly after he travels down the river. His experiences with Miss Watson‟s slave Jim force him to question the things society has taught him. Huck owns no slaves and this pushes him to help the slave Jim to reach his own freedom because he did not have that harsh attitude towards blacks and he discovers that blacks are humans just like white people. This is can be seen in chapter sixteen when Jim told Huck his plan to buy his family freedom “he would buy his wife, which was owned on a farm close to where Miss Watson lived; and then they would both work to buy the two children, and if their master wouldn‟t
sell them, they’d get an Abolitionist to go and steal them”. Huck is a thirteen-year old boy, the son of the drunken man from St Petersburg, Missouri, a town on the bank of the Mississippi river. Huck shares his
society’s view of slavery which can be seen in chapter sixteen when Jim speaks about his freedom as they came near free states. Huck starts to have some doubts about guiding Jim towards his freedom “But you know he was running for his freedom, and you could a paddled ashore and told somebody”. The idea of Jim’s freedom starts to trouble him, and he could not accept it because of what people and society will say about him and the fact he saves a slave. That act was not accepted at that time “I begun to get it through my head that he was most free—and who was to blame for it? Why, me. I couldn’t get that out of my conscience, no how nor no way. It got to troubling me so I couldn’t rest; I couldn’t stay still in one place. Then he tries to write a letter to Tom and tell him to tell Miss Watson where he was (Jim) but he gives up the idea for two reasons. The first one is that Miss Watson would sell Jim down the river and people will make Jim feel ungrateful for the rest of his life because he ran away from his master and the second reason is that people would say that Huck helps a nigger to get his freedom: “Huck Finn helped a nigger to get his freedom; and if I was ever to see anybody from that town again I’d be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame. In this part of the novel Twain shows us to what extent society can shape people’s mind and actions.
Slavery in the Novel
The novel was published in 1885, it aims at reflecting the darker side of the American society and the evil of slavery during the 19th century. The book was set during the 1840‟s where slavery was not abolished, throughout the novel Twain speaks about families that owned slave in America (History.com).
Most of the themes portrayed in the novel are directly related to the issue of slavery such as: prejudice, racism, freedom and hypocrisy. The white people of this period in the south of America have many prejudices towards slaves. In his novel Mark Twain demonstrates to what extent this society is racist. This can be seen through many characters and the way they act towards blacks. The people of the towns are slave owners and they treat them with disrespect and they make them look like fools, for example when Tom and Huck trick the slave Jim and he thinks that he is bewitched. The fact that other slaves come from other part of the country to listen to his story is a kind of making fool of them “Niggers would come miles to hear Jim tell about it, and he was more looked up to than any nigger in that country”. Some characters even believe that the slaves belong to them as if they are a personal property and if they run towards their freedom, slave-owners would hire some people to bring back those slaves. As an example, in the novel, Miss Watson plans to sell Jim down the river “I hear old missus tell de wider she gone to sell me down to Orleans, but she didn’t want to, but she could git eight hundred dollars for me”. This is the main cause why he runs away from her. Pap is also a racist man, when he gets drunk one night he explains how the government is too wonderful as he speaks of a black man who could speaks many languages, the worst thing for Pap is that this person could vote in his town “but when they told me there was a State in this country where they’d let that nigger vote, I drew out. I says I’ll never vote again. Themes the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may rot for all me—”. In this situation Twain shows us to what extent Pap is racist and he refuses voting if the government gives the right of voting to a black man while in reality it is more appropriate for an educated black man to vote than for drunken Pap. Another situation of racism when Aunt Sally asks Huck if anyone get hurts he says “Noom. Killed a nigger”. She replies: “Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt”, as if when someone black dies it means nobody is getting hurt in this case
slaves are not considered to be human. Slavery is the main theme that Mark Twain focuses on in his novel through the character Jim who suffered from mistreatment and slavery. Even though Huck was raised in a society that supports slavery and as the novel progresses, one may notice that Huck‟s feelings towards the slave Jim start to change when he discovers that Jim has a family but due to slavery he is away from his wife and children. At the beginning of the novel Huck has some doubts to save Jim because of what people will say about him and due to what he learns from society about blacks and the prejudices he has about them as inferior. For example, when Huck wrote a letter to Miss Watson Jim‟s owner “I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now”. In this situation Huck is confused between whether to tell Miss Watson about her slave and follow what society tells him to do or to follow his instinct and help Jim. Huck struggles with some prejudices about Blacks that society has ingrained in him and he challenges some traditional notions of the time.
Freedom is another important theme in the novel. It is shown into Jim being freed from slavery and his will to free his family member which is his goal in the novel “Jim won‟t ever forgit you, Huck; you‟s de bes‟ fren‟ Jim‟s ever had; you’s de only fren‟ ole Jim‟s got now” (Twain 92) when Jim sees the light of the free states he starts to thank Jim for helping him and he considers Huck as his best friend. Twain is blaming society for supporting slavery and giving slave owners the right to separate children wives from their families only for the sake of their benefits. Even at the beginning of the novel a Judge of the town gives custody to Huck‟s abusive and drunken father even “it was a new judge that had just come, and he didn‟t know the old man; so, he said courts mustn‟t interfere and separate families if they could help it; said he‟d druther not take a child away from its father”. The fact that the Judge is new in the town he did not know about the bad treatment of Pap towards his son Huck who prefers to live in the woods instead of living with his abusive, drunken father for this reason he gives custody to Pap while the Widow and the Judge Thatcher try to win Huck‟s custody. In this part of the novel Twain tries to make a link between Huck‟s suffering from his abusive father and the slave Jim who suffers from slave hunters and his owner at the same time, therefore Twain attempts to show race relations not just through Jim but even Huck, because his father treats him as if he is his own property and he locks him in the cabin just like they do to slaves for the sake of taking his money “Every little while he locked me in and went down to the store, three miles, to the ferry, and traded fish and game for whisky”( Twain 26). Twain makes the issue of custody looks like an analogy to slaveholding because The Widow and Judge Thatcher try to take Huck away from his father just like Jim who is running away from his master looking for his freedom.
Pap prevents Huck from educating himself and he beats him all the time, he even mocks on his son because he learns how to write and speak “ou‟re educated, too, they say—can read and write. You think you‟re better‟n your father, now, don’t you, because he can‟t? i’ll take it out of you” (Twain 21). Twain is giving hints of Huck‟s suffering due to his drunken father who is always beating him for the sake of taking his money from Judge Thatcher in this point Twain is focusing on the cruelty of white people and the way they treat their own sons because they did not beat only their Black slaves, and this can be seen through the character Pap who used to beat his son Huck and locks him inside the cabin in the woods. By the end of the novel Twain does not make Jim run away from slavery and reach the North in defiance of the slave holding society but rather makes him free lawfully by his owner‟s will after her death here Twain is denouncing the fact that he is totally against slavery in the south and his aim is to free the slave Jim in the South as well all the other slaves and to give them their own freedom just like Blacks who lives in the North freely, Twain focuses on the fact that slavery should be outlawed in the South. Twain attacks the hypocrisy of slavery. For example, the Widow Douglass and Miss Watson try to civilize Huck by teaching him Christian values but he knows that these values take more stock in the dead rather than in the living and they make Huck feel lonely, bored and uncomfortable (LitChart, Hypocrisy and Society). The contradiction between religion and slavery is hinted at right in the first pages of the novel when “they fetched the niggers in and had prayers”. Their Christianity does not make them treat slaves as human beings. Indeed, Twain‟s attitude toward slavery is that he is against it. This is can be seen throughout the novel and especially characters‟ reaction towards others who support slavery. For example, the hypocrisy of Miss Watson because she preaches to Huck how she is going to live so as to go to the good place yet she owns slaves. Twain also shows his distaste for slavery by portraying Pap‟s ignorance. Pap, boasting his belief that he is superior to blacks, for example he did not want to vote when he hears about the free “nigger” (mulatto) who has the right to vote, as if he is trying to show his superiority towards blacks.
Conclusion
To conclude what has been studied in this research, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel which had the courage to assail the arrogant belief of white Southerners in their superiority to Negroes. After a deep examination and analysis of the novel, it appears that Mark Twain is totally against slavery and racism through his satirical tone of writing and the different elements of the story such as characters for example when Pap mocks of the black man who had the will to vote, he considered him as inhuman and have no rights to vote like any other white man. Through this character we can see the foolishness and ignorance of Pap and the focus on his racist act. That Twain is not racist can be seen through the character Huck Finn, who in the beginning is like any Southern person who sees Blacks as inferior and not human as they are only slaves and property who have no right to do anything. But when Huck starts his journey down the Mississippi river with the black slave Jim, he realizes that Jim protects him from dangerous situations they encounter. All these aspects indicate that the slave Jim is really human and sensitive person, from here Huck recognizes that Jim has the total right to live freely with his family and he merits respect and admiration. From this point, Huck’s behaviour towards the slave Jim starts to change as it becomes more positive, he starts to believe in his conscience to help Jim to be free despite the fact that he will confront his society rules, showing that Twain is totally against slavery.
It appears through the novel that Twain is completely against slavery and racism when he portrays the character Jim as sensitive, honest and reasonable like loyal friend and real father who cares for his family. On the other hand, Twain makes the white character Pap who mistreats his own son Huck and his bad habits in contrast to Jim. Twain also uses some white characters‟ behaviour’s to criticize the hypocrisy of society and civilization as well as to show to what extent they support slavery. For example, the King and the Duke who are frauds and they trick many innocent people, the Shepherd sons and the Granger fords two feuding families whose main reason is to kill each other with no mercy. Twain wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with a negative view of society to show his real opinion that he is against the thoughts and beliefs of southern people over different issues such as slavery and racism through characters actions and behaviour. Furthermore, he portrays southern society that is filled with ill racist behaviour. The events of the story happened before the Civil War when slavery was still legal and he focuses on slaves suffering through Jim. Twain also criticise the hypocrisy of society through Miss Watson who owned the slave Jim and Aunt Sally who believe that slavery is obligatory for life even though they are ethically correct and religious. They agree to sell Jim down the river and separate him from his family. This creates moral confusion and shows Mark Twain’s view that society is full of evil and corruption. Also, when Jim is captured by the King and the Duke they sell him without hesitation and all what they were looking for is the reward. When Huck sees the acts of the Duke and the King and the way they treat Jim who becomes his loyal friend, he starts to have doubts about what he learns from society. He cannot understand why people treat Blacks in such bad way, then he begins to understand the injustice of society and he decides to run away. Mark Twain denounces the social acts and values of the southern society focussing on the issue of slavery and racism during the pre-civil war era, he believes that there is no reason for the whites, whether devoted Christians or aristocracy to believe they are superior to Blacks. Twain Criticizes Southerners for not being caring and loving persons towards slaves but they are rather spoilt by their chase for money, heaven and lost honour. Unfortunately, this negative racist attitude towards blacks in the United States can still be found even nowadays, two centuries after the publication of Twain‟s novel which proves how far sighted and visionary he was.
THE REFERENCES
Primary Source
• Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. pdf. Web accessed June 12, 2017 http://contentserver.adobe.com/store/books/HuckFinn.pdf
Secondary Sources
• Abramova, S. U. “Ideological, Doctrinal, Philosophical, Religious and Political Aspects of the African Slave Trade”. UNESCO (ed.) The African Slave Trade from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Century. Paris: the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 1979. 16-31.
• Andrews, William L. “Slave Narrative”. Encyclopedia Britannica, web accessed June 6, 2017 https://www.britannica.com/art/slave-narrative
• Baena, Victoria . "The Life of Olaudah Equiano Themes: Freedom and Slavery". LitCharts. LitCharts LLC, 7 Apr 2017. Web. accessed 15 May 2017 http://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-life-of-olaudahequiano/
• themes/freedom-and-slavery Biography. Com Editors. “Harriet Ann Jacobs. Com”. April 2, 2014, Web accessed June 5, 2017 https://www.biography.com/people/harriet-ann-jacobs-9351667 Biography.com editors “Mark twain”.
By a Student : Sanjit Debnath
Department of English.
Maharaja Bir Bikram University
Agartala,Tripura.
799004.
Department of English.
Maharaja Bir Bikram University
Agartala,Tripura.
799004.
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