The Role of Jim in Huckleberry Finn - Essay Example

156042 Jim is the black character of the American white world in Huckleberry Fin of Mark Twain, when blacks were almost invisible. As the story wasset in an earlier decade, when the slavery was still unrepentantly rampant, especially in the South, it was a masterly act of ambition to impress upon America the barbarity of the system in so-called land of liberty and freedom, where one entire race was captured, kidnapped, tortured, killed, separated from homeland to live a life of eternal slavery. Twain also shows the human spirit of goodness, loyalty and generosity in Jim, who, even though was enslaved by white, neither hates Huck nor has any enmity towards any other white person. In the white-dominated literature landscape, Jim comes in as a whiff of fresh air and becomes the starting point from where black faces could be part of English literature. We meet Jim in the second chapter, in a role next to only Huck. He remains throughout a 'noble cause and an ignoble foil' in Twain's masterpiece supposed to be a departure from usual European literary work, which was initially denounced for the irrepressible need of better treatment to slaves. It used frontier humor, vernacular speech and according to Ernest Hemingway, is the novel from which "all modern American literature comes. There has been nothing as good since." http://www.enotes.com/twentieth-century-criticism/adventures-huckleberry-finn-mark-twain Ralph Ellison defends Twain's presentation of Jim as ""not only a slave but a human being, a man who in some ways have to be enviedJim is drawn in all his ignorance, and superstition, with his good traits, and bad. He like all men, is ambiguous, limited in circumstances, but not in possibility," Callahan (1995, p.88). Twain presents natural justice and raises the characters above the prevailing selfishness of society and racism. While doing so, he introduces perhaps one of the most endearing characters to literary world rivaled only by his protagonists, Huck and Tom for reader's affection. "The test and proof of natural goodness, which raises Jim and Huck above religious hypocrisy and selfish romanticism, is its transforming power upon him. The fear-ridden slave becomes in the end a source of moral energy. The shifting of Jim's shape is reversed at the end, as he sinks back from his heroism to become the bewildered freed darky of reconstruction days, grateful to the young white boss for that guilt-payment of forty dollars," Mensh (2000, pp.110-111). When most African Americans were depicted as fools, superstitious, ignorant and idiotic, Twain dares to initiate a diverse characterization in Jim, who, from being a humble servant, goes up to be the savior of both boys, traveling the distance with ease and kindness. "He embodies all the qualities-loyalty, faith, love, compassion, strength, wisdom-of the dynamic hero, and his willingness to sacrifice his freedom and his life for two young boys establishes him as a classic benevolent character" http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/id-20,pageNum-94.html Huck becomes the inheritor of Jim's worthy qualities, an entirely different angle where a white boy learns generosity and kindness from a slave black. Jim's ability to predict the storm shows the inherent simply cleverness, even though uneducated and roughly used. The runaway black slave, fearing for his freedom, with entire world against him, reveals several things about himself, subtly showing that slaves are human, as human or perhaps more human than their American owners, and value their freedom and yearn to be treated in a humanitarian way. The message is loud and clean that Twain wanted slavery to perish. An aggressive message would not have been so suitable. "The 'fury' is certainly an important element in Huckleberry Finn, but it is not itself patently active; it is subsumed into the whole critical and poetic view of the human condition so wonderfully resented in the book," Grant (1962, p.80). It is surprising to note how reader thinks more often about Jim and less of Huck, that too, when black identity of America was unidentified. Book is a revealer of black humanity behind the mask. Twain stereotyped Jim in 'minstrel tradition' with a clear view of humanity behind minstrel mask. His crying for his lost family is one of the most poignant moments in the book, and it represents the grief, humility and helplessness of these unfortunate once proud people in their own homeland. Twain knew that the main purpose of the book was Jim's freedom and arrives at it in the most wonderful way, perhaps the only possible way in those dark days of slavery. " Jim must be freed - the whole novel points toward that outcome; given the time, the place, the circumstances, no probable way to free him existsIt is absurd for Tom to 'liberate' a slave who is already free, but slavery itself is absurd, a monstrous imposition," says Lauber (1990, p.114). Jim is almost a spiritual father to Huck when he prevents Huck from looking at the dead face of Pap, with careful solicitude and natural affection for the boy, and his toleration of him even though he was responsible for the life-threatening snake bite Jim suffers. For Huck, Jim becomes a moral necessity and in their mutual feelings, race and color does not find any place. Huck almost represents the repenting side of America against slavery. "His self-damning is and self-debasement preceding this resolve indicate exactly how he was 'brung up'. His self-damning is a liberation from 'letting on' to give up 'sin' by endorsing the values of his culture," says Howe (1998, p.116). In his new role as moral teacher to Huck, Jim humanizes the wild Huck allowing him to grow morally and ethically without saying a word to that effect and throughout Huck reads the lessons from Jim's actions and their companionship is unique. "Soon after they see the young birds flying, sure enough, it rains: a huge, frightening storm that reasserts the dominance of nature over man. The river rises, and as was foretold in so many of their omens, the House of Death floats by. When Jim's omens come true he is no more a gullible supplicant to witches. He is a magus now, a magician in sympathetic converse with the spirits that govern--often by malice or caprice--the world of things and men" Smith (1963, p.103). Talking about the sway Jim had over his countrymen, and how proud he was about his adventures and how superstitious they were, writer says: "Niggers would come miles to hear Jim tell about it, and he was more looked up to than any nigger in that country. Strange niggers would stand with their mouths open and look him all over, same as if he was a wonder," Twain (p.24). Twain tries to show the innocence of the black without ridiculing it. While pitting the nobility of Jim even under very trying circumstances against the meanness and duplicity of Duke and King, Twain is trying to show that race does not make any difference in mentality and a white person need not be superior in any way from a black. The humanity that comes across when Jim talks about his daughter, ""Oh, Huck, I bust out a-cryin' en grab her up in my arms, en say 'Oh, de po' little thinhg! De Ord God, Amighjty fogive po' ole Jim, kaze he never gwyne to fogive himself as long's he live!' Oh, she was plumb deef en dumb, Huck, plumb deef en dumb - en I'd ben a-treat'n her so!" Twain (202). Huck and Jim's relationship begins to develop under difficult, but humorous circumstances. When they met, Huck was a morally unstable white and Jim was a runaway black slave. Throughout the novel, they grow together; each one affecting the other, clearing the misunderstandings and braving difficulties. In his decision to free Jim, Huck overcomes his 'conscience' that tells him otherwise, being brought up in conventional and traditional America and here Twain pictures himself. In their sojourn, he learns the generous and kind side of Jim, understands him as a human being. Twain was interpreting his own opposition to the barbarous southern slavery when Huck fights for rights of Jim and it is a significant and bold message to readers, which nobody could mistake. It might not be a militant message; still in its subtlety, it had great potential and had worked as talisman against slavery. Twain skillfully plays on the conscience of readers by placing Jim as a representative of black, suffering community on the conscience of the entire nation and it was a success, though invoked uncertain and extremely critical reception initially, which later exposed the hypocrisy of American liberty and freedom. BIBLIOGRAPHY: 1. Callahan, John F. (1995), The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison, Modern Library, New York. 2. Chadwick-Joshua, Jocelyn (1998), The Jim Dilemma: Reading Race in Huckleberry Finn. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1998. 3. Champion, Laurie (1991), Contemporary Criticism, Run, Nigger, Run, Greenwood Press, Westport. 4. Grant, Douglas (1962), Twain, Oliver and Boyd, London. 5. Howe, Lawrence (1998), Mark Twain and the Novel, Cambridge University Press. 6. Lauber, John (1990), The Inventions of Mark Twain, Hill and Wang, New York. 7. Mensh, Harry, and Elaine Mensh (2000), . Black, White, and Huckleberry Finn: Re-Imagining the American Dream. University of Alabama Press. 8. Smith, Henry Nash (1963), Black Magic, and White in Huckleberry Finn, Prentice Hall, New Jersey. 9. Twain, Mark (1817), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Harper & Row Publishers, New York. ONLINE SOURCES: 1. http://www.enotes.com/twentieth-century-criticism/adventures-huckleberry-finn-mark-twain 2. http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/id-20,pageNum-94.html 3. Read More