The Novel the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain - Essay Example

?Huckleberry Finn and the Original Sin of Slavery The novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is a story of a boy who is free of parental constraints and is emblematic of a childhood unencumbered by rules and boundaries as defined by adults. Although social issues are addressed surrounding the circumstances in which he has found himself without guidance, the story evokes the sense of freedom that defines the American spirit. The life that Huck leads, however, is fraught with problems that represent some of the darkest issues within the history of the United States. A poignant problem that is brought to the forefront is that of slavery and the implication of slavery on the culture within the United States. In a discourse that acknowledges, normalizes, and yet comments on the nature of slavery within the Unites States, the novel Huckleberry Finn provides cultural context that mediates the ‘original sin’ of slavery with the history of the United States. Mark Twain wrote with a consciousness of the vernacular, using language that was informal and conversational in order to represent culturally common forms of communication rather than providing formalized and strictly literary forms of writing. He wrote phonetically to embody the accent and mispronunciations of characters who were bogged down by language development that was different than the common and more formal forms of speech. This was strikingly clear with the way in which Twain portrayed the speech patterns of Jim, the runaway slave. He writes sentences like “WELL den! Ain’t dat de beatenes’ notion in de worl?” (Twain 2009, p. 77). This type of speech pattern replication provides a sense of culture and commonness to the writing, creating a character that is beyond the description and his deeds, but who expresses characterization through this type of communication that expresses the way in which he speaks. The story of Huckleberry Finn is based upon a character from Twain’s novel Tom Sawyer, a sequel in which the adventures of a boy of about 13 are related through the cultural and social backdrop of the mid-nineteenth century in the United States. Published during the post United States Civil War era, the novel is ripe with references to the race relations between African Americans and Caucasians, the contentious relationships that had developed during a time when social positions were still raw and hurting over the destruction of a nation. The central topic of that destruction had been based upon slavery, the South having based their economic structure on the use of slaves from Africa, while the North was taking issue with the practice as immoral and unethical (Reis and McNeese 2009, p. 76). Twain believed in abolition and strongly supported that idea that slavery was rightly abolished in the aftermath of the Civil War. The development of the type of writing that Mark Twain accomplished was through the manipulation of language which sparked irony and satire about the state of society. This is established within the discussions between Jim and Huck. Where Huck will say one thing, Twain will be making a very different point, bringing to light ignorance and suggesting that the adult belief systems that supported the points that Huck was trying to make were flawed and inferior to true reason. One of the themes, according to Michael Patrick Hearn’s annotated version of the novel, is that one cannot look at things through superficial perspectives. In order to support this theme, Twain has created a double speak in which the narrative and the dialogue, both, are developed to relate a specific conversation that has a deep seated underlying meaning (Twain and Hearn 2001, p. 143). The relationship between Jim and Huckleberry Finn is based upon the concept of doing and believing what is right, sometimes exemplified by their relationship and other times revealed by the erroneous belief systems portrayed through their relationship. Jim is a runaway slave and Huck is tasked to help him. Jim serves a number of roles, which includes a surrogate father figure, a figure of childlike foolishness, and as weapon of wisdom in which Twain is able to communicate his beliefs through simplistic revelations. According to Leonard, Tenney, and Davis (1992, p. 35), “Most view Twain’s depiction of Jim as an ironic attempt to transcend the vary prejudices that dissidents accuse him of perpetuating”. Through the character of Jim, although depicted on the surface as not having reason or being at the level of humanity as a Caucasian, the truth is revealed through clever twists of language that defy the superficiality commentary within the work. During a discussion of Solomon, sets of meanings are created that provide context for belief systems about ignorance, race, and knowledge. The conversation between Jim and Huck is represented as superficially evaluated by Jim, leaving Huck stymied on how to explain the deeper meaning of the story. Solomon’s verdict was to split the child in half, evoking the mother to give up her rights in order to save the child, thus revealing her as the child’s true mother. Jim takes this literally and finds Solomon to be a fool for thinking that he can split the child. Twain portrays Jim as having no reason with which to understand the deeper meaning of the story and the verdict, thus suggesting that he cannot reason as was the theory about African Americans at the time. Further on in the conversation, however, the topic turns to the concept of languages. Huck informs Jim that the dauphin of France would have a difficulty with language if he moved to the United States. Jim does not have a comprehension of different languages, thus he does not understand why a man would not speak as a man and be understood. Huck argues that a cat and a cow would not understand one another, thus it is between a Frenchman and an American. Jim proves at this point that he knows perfectly well how to reason. He points out that a cow and a cat are different species, where a man is a man no matter where his nation of origin. The deeper point that Twain is making is that Jim can argue and reason, leaving Huck with having lost the argument because of those skills. Huck states at the end of the dialogue “you can’t learn a nigger to argue”, using a racial slur and degrading commentary because he realizes that Jim hasl won the argument. This can be further examined in the conversation about the cat and the cow. Despite the racially insulting language that is used throughout the book, this conversation can be seen as reflective of the ignorance with which the 19th century beliefs framed the species of human kind. A pervasive belief existed that suggested that darker skinned individuals belonged to an inferior sub-species of human kind (Reis and McNeese 2009, p. 79). If one examines this dialogue for its philosophical content, it is stating clearly that a man is a man and that no cultural or ethnic division can change that fact. Twain is declaring that the belief that human beings could be divided by species was ludicrous, thus making a powerful social statement cloaked behind colloquial beliefs of the time period. Much of the character of Jim can be seen as a caricature, but the development of the relationship between Huck and Jim can be seen for taking a belief system about African Americans and seeing it overcome through the emerging humanity that is revealed through the character. Although originally portrayed through the ‘minstrel’ traditions that were constructed about the nature of ‘blackness’, the character becomes developed with a sense of his humanity. The black-faced minstrel was a character in a show in which he or she was accented by black paint on his or her face with very white lips, his human features exaggerated and dehumanized so that he or she embodied the subspecies characteristics of the belief systems of the period (Ray 2009, p. 110). The book represents an evolution of the beliefs about the stereotypes of African Americans towards the revelation of Jim’s humanity, the black paint wiped away and a person revealed. When Tom is shot during an elaborate escape plot that has been constructed for Jim, instead of seeking his freedom Jim stays with the boy until help comes. The end also reveals that the dead man that was found by Huck and Jim in a floating house on the Mississippi River had been Huck’s father. During the event of finding the man, Jim had refused to let Huck see the face of the man, further showing Jim’s conscious efforts at doing what is right. The humanity that is revealed in Jim is superior to that of any other character within the story, his ability to set aside his own safety and security for the needs of the boys with whom he has cultivated a relationship revealing his capacity for truly human behaviour. When read with an understanding of Mark Twain’s progressive beliefs on slavery and the nature of human existence as it is defined on ethnographic terms, the novel can be seen as reflecting a culture that had a specific, if ignorant, set of beliefs as they are reflected through a more enlightened discourse on the subject. Twain takes the opportunity to attack a great number of the social policies of his time, including imperialism through the scams and cons of the King and the Duke, blatantly referring to aristocracy and the folly of European sovereignty policies. However, the greatest amount of time is spent on the discussion of slavery and the intersection of beliefs and knowledge as one contradicts the other. The discourse of the novel works as a link between the culture of the United States before the Civil War and that which existed after its end when race relations had changed dramatically. The novel reminisces about Twain’s childhood when he grew up in the atmosphere that is portrayed, but it reveals his own enlightenment away from fraudulent values and belief systems that were born out of the atmosphere of slavery. The novel provides contemporary audiences with an understanding of the concept of the ‘original sin’ of slavery in which cultural belief systems have remained intact, threads shedding from those beliefs rather than eradicating the entire system as it took a hundred years for African Americans to gain full rights within the American culture, and even longer towards fully eradicating the belief that there is an inferiority issue. The perspective of the novel, through its vernacular style and the manipulation of language that Twain uses to provide his context for social discourse, allows the reader to come to an understanding of the folly of the problems that have erupted from the belief systems associated with slavery. In ancient cultures where slavery was liberal, generally a person was inferior because they were a slave, not because of ethnic markers of distinction. The sin of slavery in the United States was in trying to justify equal rights for all men with taking the freedom of individuals through force by suggesting that it was plausible because they existed in an inferior state of human existence as a subspecies (Montoya 2011, p. 48). Slavery has not been the sin of the past that still plagues the culture within the United States, but a belief system that has denied an entire social group of its dignity and humanity. Through the nature of the relationship between Huck and Jim within the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain reveals the fallacies of a belief system that has marked the culture of the United States with a continued prejudicial system that is still trying to recover from its sinful past. In discussing the humanity of Jim through conversations that both satirized beliefs and revealed his capacity for reason, Twain initiated a turn of understanding about the nature of Jim. Through revealing the sense of right and decency through his actions, Twain takes a stereotype and turns it into a revelation about the humanity of his character. Bibliography Leonard, J. S., Thomas Asa Tenney, and Thadious M. Davis. 1992. Satire or evasion? Black perspectives on Huckleberry Finn. Durham: Duke University Press. Lowry, Richard S. 1996. "Littery man": Mark Twain and modern authorship. New York: Oxford University Press. Montoya, Arthur L. 2011. America’s original sin: Absolute and penance. New York: Xlibris Corporation. Ray, George B. 2009. Language and interracial communication in the United States: speaking in black and white. New York: Peter Lang. Reis, Ronald A. and Tim McNeese. 2009. African Americans and the Civil War. New York: Chelsea House Publishers. Twain, Mark. 2009. Huckleberry Finn. New York: Plain Label Books. Twain, Mark, and Michael Patrick Hearn. 2001. The annotated Huckleberry Finn: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer's comrade). 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