I am disturbed by the decision to publish an edition that elides the word. That said, I am concerned that the book is not taught as well or as effectively as it could be or should be.
We hear a lot about the word nigger and its multiple occurrences in the book. We tend to hear less about Jim’s portrayal, but certainly we could object to his stereotypical and racist depiction.
We also hear typical defenses to these objections—that the use of the racist epithet is an accurate portrayal of language and attitude, and that Huck’s attitudes toward black people is likewise typical.
But I think there is much more complicated stuff going on with this book, and that Twain was much more subtle than he is given credit for (and he is given credit for a lot). This does not mean that Twain was devoid of racist attitudes. I would argue that none of us are devoid of them. Nor do I mean to exonerate Twain for these attitudes just because he helped pay the college tuition of a black man or because Prudence Crandall herself wrote Twain a letter thanking him for all he and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn did for the advancement of African-Americans.
I won’t try to cover all the subtleties that I try to bring to the attention of my students when I teach the novel, but I will point out two that I think are extremely important.
One is the early discovery Jim makes that Pap Finn is dead. If you recall, Jim and Huck enter a gambling house that is floating down the river. There has clearly been a fight, and one man has been left dead. Jim does the fatherly thing by telling Huck to step aside and let him inspect the body. He then tells Huck not to look because the face is too “gashly.†At the end of the novel, Jim reveals that the dead man was Huck’s father. My general experience is that this incident is held up as an example of Jim’s fatherly compassion, protecting Huck from a horrific truth. But I think this oversimplifies the plot, and, more importantly, oversimplifies Jim. I tell my students that I think Jim’s decision to conceal the truth of Pap’s death is self-serving and manipulative. That Jim only did this so that he could take advantage of Huck because he needs a white man to help him escape, and since Huck is only fourteen he is easy to manipulate.
This interpretation goes against the grain of the typical interpretation of Jim as a kind, fatherly figure. But I don’t think Twain intended such a simple, stereotypical portrayal of Jim, a portrayal that would be more like that of Uncle Tom from Uncle Tom’s Cabin. If in fact Jim is manipulating Huck in order to help him escape and thereby help him to get his wife and children out of slavery, Jim becomes a much more complex, dynamic character, and so much of his stereotypical behavior can be seen as performative and part of his manipulation of Huck.
Consider what Huck says about the King and the Duke. Huck says that he figured out pretty quickly that the two men were frauds, but that Jim continued to believe they were really a king and a duke. How is it that Huck could see through this charade and Jim could not? Students will often answer that question by pointing out that Jim is ignorant and uneducated, but then so is Huck. If both Jim and Huck are ignorant and uneducated, then why is it that a fourteen year old boy can see through this deception but a thirty-five year old man cannot? Huck assumes Jim cannot see the ruse because Huck is still viewing Jim through a racist lens. When we accept Huck’s explanation, we are experiencing our own racist assumptions. And Twain has just caught us in a web of our own prejudice
The other scene I think is misread is the ending, when Huck paints a comedic resolution to the events of the novel. Tom has his adventure and his bullet. Jim has forty dollars from Tom, and Huck learns that Pap is dead and so therefore he is free. But I always tell students that this is not a happy ending but a tragic one, and that we are witnessing Twain at his ironic best.
Typically, we are told that the comedic resolution lies in the fact that both Huck and Jim learn that they are free. But Huck remains fatherless and Jim’s forty dollars is woefully insufficient to buy his family out of slavery or pay an abolitionist to free them. (Recall that Jim was valued at $800). I ask, if Jim has become a father to Huck and Huck now has no father nor any impediment to his money, why can’t Huck give Jim the money to purchase freedom for his family and why can’t Huck go live with Jim rather than light out for the territories? Because it’s not possible.
All that father-son bonding and the realization on Huck’s part of Jim’s humanity, and in the end Jim is free but his family remains enslaved and Huck is ‘free’ but without a family. Someone will point out that the tenor of the times would prevent the man and the boy from helping each other or living together, and so just like his use of the word nigger, Twain is merely being historically accurate in his portrayal. Which is exactly my point. And that fact should be profoundly more disturbing to readers than the mere occurrence of the word nigger. Likewise, the fact that we continue to portray Jim and the conclusion in such simple terms should disturb us, too.
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