Thomas Mckellar Help received: Microsoft Word, Spell check, Satires and evasions, Johnathan Collings critical review
American Literary Traditions
11/25/2014
Research Paper FINAL
Huckleberry Finn is one of the most controversial novels in history, being constantly banned since its release in the 1880s. The sharp satire and criticism of the culture of racism and slavery made many people in the late 1800s want the book banned, while in modern day it is criticized for using language that many people find offensive or crass. This is debated by many authors over the decades. Was the novel Huckleberry Finn a satirical criticism, or an evasion of the topic of slavery?
Richard K. Barksdale is an illustrious author and teacher, having taught at many historically black universities. His paper History, Slavery, and thematic Irony in Huckleberry Finn takes the history of the culture of slavery in the Southern U.S. adapting it to show how it fit into Huck Finn and how Twain twisted it to politically satirize the entire institute of slavery. According to Barksdale, “By virtue of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, that state had joined the union as a slave state. Accordingly, any story taking place in Missouri before 1865 was set in a slave state.”(Barksdale 1). Because Huck Finn is set in a state with deep roots in slavery, where the institution is considered normal, when Huck attempts to escape the civilization, he is attempting to break free from the society with slavery. Because of this, this attempted escape from slavery gives “a deeper understanding of the meaning of life in a slave society such as the one Huck and his peers lived in. The actions of those who live there are conditioned by a principle of slavery since the very beginning.”(Barksdale 2). This setting of slavery sets the stage for Jim. The treatment of slaves in the mid-1800s would leave Jim exactly as portrayed in the novel, ignorant of the outside world. However, Twain depicts slaves as “willing to blot the memory of centuries of servitude.” (Barksdale 4). He depicts the salves as a decent, moral people. Guided by a sense of right and wrong. Barksdale postulates that Twain is using ironic fiction to show how in our sharply divided nation, “least of us, in the worst of circumstances, could forge a friendship between blacks and whites” (Barksdale 5). Therefore, why can society not forge these friendships among the upper echelons?
Carmen Subryan, however, takes a different approach in her discourse, Mark Twain and the Black Challenge. She starts with the ever hot issue of Twain’s use of the “n-word” throughout the novel, how “many people dismiss Twain as a racist and protest the use in Huckleberry Finn.” (Subryan 1). She argues that Twain, through satire, is attempting to heal the wrongs done to the blacks of the new world. According to Subryan, Twain did not always hold this sentiment of healing rifts. “As a young southerner Mark twain clearly did not feel positively towards blacks . . . as he matured as a writer, however, he began to display an ambivalence with Tom Sawyer, which then became a full outgrowing of racial attitudes with Huckleberry Finn.” (Subryan 2). This “coming over to the dark side” had a very young beginning for Twain, starting with watching his father whip a house slave as a young child, then a man kill his slave with a lump of iron (Subryan 3). This casual brutality begins Twain’s conversion to equality. His change, in full flower, utilizes the causal cruelty he experienced as a child to enforce the evil that is slavery. He uses Huck’s treatment of Jim, despite Jim’s whole heartedness and understandable logic, such as in the case of the language debate. “Jim reasons that if two animals speak different languages, and not understand each other, how could humans? Huck, at a loss, dismisses Jim as a dumb nigger, who cannot be taught to argue.” (Subryan 8). Because Huck assumes that Jim is dumb, yet the reader can see that Jim is right, the idea of slavery begins to implode upon its principle that blacks are sub human. Subryan, through her analysis of Twain’s past, and his referencing this past in his novels, argues that Twain was trying to undermine the lasting thoughts of slavery in the Old South, and the continuing mistreatment of black men and women.
James Leonard argues that Twain, at best, is ambivalent on slavery and racism, leaning toward the side of the whites. His paper, Blackface and White Inside, debates the fact that Jim is not portrayed as a black man should have been. Twain depicts Jim as he envisioned one of his favorite entertainments, a black face minstrel. Blackface minstrelsy involved a white man painting his face black, then acting in an embarrassing fashion, as a debase and unintelligent black man. According to Leonard, “Twain characterized Jim as a fool to be put upon, duped, and abused. He may be nobly innocent, but as a child is. He is shown as undeveloped to the world” (Leonard 2). While this is not putting down upon the black race, it was not designed to help them, to be a force for their cause. Twain maintains a forced ambivalence throughout the noel, according to Leonard. Twain “creates a false dilemma, by which no middle ground exist. That there will always be black “subhumaness” (and white supremacy), because Twain chose to use the white’s double consciousness.”(Leonard 3). Twain had the chance to write an “apologia” for racism, but because he maintained his neutral ground, keeping racism so firm in his story as a needed virtue, the novel is a “lesson in Twain’s betrayal” (Leonard 4).
Betty H. Jones dislikes Huckleberry Finn. Because modern society has begun to recognize the novel as a stanchion for the equality of man, despite the debates over the use of derogatory terms, the fatal flaws for the black man are overlooked. According to Jones, “Jim is a problematic character for black American’s as well as white readers. He possesses undeniable traits for nobility, but whatever progress he makes for the equality movement is tempered, and set back, by his constant acknowledgement that his is the nobility of the primitives. He does not command respect but pity and humor.” (Jones 1). This constant fouling of progress mires the novel, making it contradictory. Yes, Jim may be a noble, sweet hearted man but he is also a dramatic backdrop for the novel, used by Twain to give is noel panache, making it a more piquant novel rather than a dry discourse. Jim has multiple roles, “a minstrel show buffoon, a role that in today’s society would be burned in effigy, however this impression is lasting, making Twain’s novel more likely to ignite the very debates that rage around it.” (Jones 4). Jones, in her discourse, says that Twain was not trying to crusade for the blacks, rather profit off of their stance in society and further his own reputation.
Mark Twain’s piece Huckleberry Finn holds true to its reputation of starting debates, even today. The wide range of opinions and passions it inspires shows just how well Twain developed his literature. The most multifaceted and twisted book have the most lasting effects on the society they address. Twain had an effect upon the civil rights movement and the attitudes toward slavery everywhere. It showed a people so numbed to cruelty that they could not recognize it just how debase they had become. Twain was using satire to defend the civil rights of the black people, and argue for their equality in society.
Works Cited
Barksdale, Richard. History, Slavery, and Thematic Irony in Huckleberry Finn. 1923. Print.
Barksdale speaks of the culture surrounding Huck Finn, and how that effected the story itself. He also goes into the way Twain throws this culture to look horrible to those within it
Jones, Betty H. Huck and Jim: A Reconsideration. 1965. Print.
Jones crituiqes what she sees as the major fallacies of Huck Finn, and how Jim, left undeveloped, truly subtracted from the cause of the black man
Leonard, James. Blackface and White Inside. 1932Print.
Leonard, while not enamoured with Huck Finn, sees the intentions within it, and shows how it could have been developed to strike a full blow against racism instead of grazing it.
Subryan, Carmen. Mark Twain and the Black Challenge. 1973 Print.
Subryan speaks of how Twain uses his own personal experiences to add to the realism of the story of Huck Finn.