African Americans In Mark Twain's The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

First and foremost, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn elucidates the treatment of African Americans during the Southern antebellum. A succinct and ideal model of the treatment is when Tom’s aunt asked if anybody was hurt if a steamboat accident fabricated by Huck, who is pretending to be Tom, to explain why he was late, Huck states “‘No’m. Killed a nigger’” (Twain 328). The statement insinuates that African Americans at the time were not considered as human beings; rather, African Americans were considered as individuals that are subhuman. In the latter parts of the book, after Jim, a runaway slave, helps the doctor treat Tom, who was shot in the leg, “[The men] all agreed that Jim had acted very well, and was deserving to have some notice took of it, and reward. So every one of them promised, right out and hearty, that [the men] wouldn’t cuss him no more” (Twain 423). This so-called “reward”, is something most, if not all of the audience already has as a right, suggesting that Jim is considered a subhuman since he has to be rewarded with a right that many already have. Twain utilizes a plethora of actions to
The usage of such racial epithets was to give the audience a better context of the epoch, to express the dialect used in the book, and to better shine the light on the predicaments of the slaves in the era. The adversaries that are trying to avoid the derogatory terms are going to have a hard time dealing with this issue since racism has become one of the most ubiquitous topics in mainstream media nowadays. In fact, news channels, including, but not limited to, ABC News and U.S. News & World Report, even have specific, running pages devoted to the prickly issue. Sooner or later, the adversaries’ bliss is going be curtailed as they will face an imminent meeting with the reality that they did not want to