Реферат: Racism In Huck Finn Essay Research Paper

makes a conscious decision not to turn him in. Later in the story, Huck is

not able to understand why this man who has become one of his only friends

should be a slave. Through this, Twain expresses opinions of the absurdity of

slavery and importance of following ones personal conscious before the rules of

society. Remember that the novel is set in the South. Blacks were slaves with no legal

rights werefaced with high degrees of discrimination. Their status is lower than that of a

white person, and Huck grows up debating that reality. It is a barrier at first

between himself and Jim, which they eventually realize and overcome. By the

end of the novel, Huck and the reader have come to understand that Jim is not

someone?s property but an equal.

Another argument that has come up in this debate is how Twain gives Jim

an accent and uses many misspellings in his dialogue. An example of this is

when Jim says ?Drot your pore broken heart… what are you heaving your pore

broken heart at us f?r? We haint done nothing? (Twain 124). The use of an

occasional apostrophe and misspelling increases the level of detail in the novel,

it adds an element to the feeling of the characters, not a racist undertone.

If Mark Twian was such a racist, why would he constantly make the black

man look better than all of the whites? Quite visibly, Jim acts better than all of

the white characters in the book. Jim is loyal to Huck, he goes along with him

and protects him to the best of his ability. He also has a very clear plan, and

that is to go to Cairo, escape to a free state and make enough money to buy his

family or have the Underground Railroad free them (Fischkin 3). His loyalties are to

his family and friends. You can compare him to Huck, who is a good guy but

even he is running away from society and being a rebel. Other white characters

include the King and the Duke who exploit, cheat, and steal from anyone they

can find, having no morals whatsoever. Sheapardson, who is white, murders a

man in cold blood. Whites together in the book generally signify a lynch mob of

sorts. Other examples, such as the orphans, are so thoughtless that they

practically give away their money to their exploiters (Conn 1). Twain paints a sad