How Does Huck Finn Show Racism

The novel Huckleberry Finn is a controversial book that uses racist words, talks about racism, and how Jim was treated extremely poorly. Ever since the book has been published, there have been many instances of students, teachers, and parents feeling uncomfortable about the terminology being used, or the way one of the main characters, Jim, is portrayed. It can be a painful book to read, there are still debates about reading a novel that is written by a white author with constant use of the “N word” and constant degrading of the black race. How can we read such a racist based book and learn from it? Students have reported themselves feeling uncomfortable, feeling like they shouldn’t have to read a book as discriminatory as this. The discriminatory
word “Nigger’’ is used to show the sick society and time the novel was set in. Despite all this, this book is not too tainted to work as a novel, it shows themes of friendship, freedom, escaping from reality, and how cruel the world really can be.
Huckleberry Finn is one of the most significant and remarkable novels published, representing pure American Culture, and the conflicts of civilization and living freely. Huck meets Jim when he was on the run looking for food. Jim was on the run away from Miss Watson because he was afraid that she was going to sell him to someone from New Orleans. At first, Huck thinks Jim is a ghost, although he is not. Both characters had something in common, they were alienated from society. Huck Finn was raised to think that black people were lesser than whites. He did not know that he would form a friendship with Jim, go through struggles with Jim, and begin to even feel for him as a friend. Huck didn’t know he would need to rely on Jim as much as he did, and he ends up questioning his own views on slavery and racism. Huck uses the “N word” at times when he gets angry, or when he is casually talking about blacks, or even Jim. Huck and JIm were going through the Hunter’s bounty, and Jim claimed he did not like their adventures. Huck tells Jim stories about the Dauphin, and Jim refuses that the French don’t speak English. Huck thinks to himself, “ I see it warn’t no use wasting words- you can’t learn a (n word)
to argue. So I quit.” Huck clearly was implying that you can’t argue with anyone who is black, because they are simply very challenged and narrow minded. But Jim however, is not narrow minded and challenged. We learn he is smart, and a helpful human being. Jim builds the raft that Huck and Jim struggle to make and really needed to build, to drift down the river. While on the raft, Huck and Jim learn of such a simple peaceful life that Huck enjoys very much. At the end of the novel, Jim was captured and Huck and Tom had to figure out a plan to save him. He realized how much Jim helped him along the way of their journey, and what it would mean to lose him. Huck was reminiscing about whether he should turn Jim in as a runaway slave, and send him back to where he belonged, but he realized how much Jim meant to him as a friend. Jim had a huge influence on Huck’s development into a more knowledgeable young man, and changed him into really caring about him as a friend, as a brother, as a companion. In chapter 23, Jim shows that he cares about Huck when he lets him sleep even though it was Huck’s turn to guard. “ I went to sleep, and Jim didn’t call me when it was my turn. He often done that.” (p.30) Sometimes, Jim even had doubts about himself.
He distances himself from people, and gets down on himself when he thinks he cannot do something. At the beginning of the novel, Jim is viewed as gullible and almost going along with anything. But, he is a very intelligent person. Jim doubts in himself sometimes, just because of his race and the environment of slavery he was brought into. Jim was taken away from his family as a young boy and thrown into slavery, he did not have the concepts of family or how wrong his race was treated although he desperately wanted to be with his family, he knew he could not. Jim chose to be stubborn and silent at times when he needs to, because he knows that the way he was being treated was wrong. Sometimes, Jim gave into Huck’s racism and commentary, but most of the time they were carrying each other in a good
way. Jim is portrayed as a slave, who ran away from reality and civilization just as Huck Finn had. He is sometimes shown as knowing nothing, saying dumb statements, and as a stereotypical Southern Slave. He is seen as simple, practicing African voodoo and saying Christian prayers, just another slave and a waste of time. But if you read deeper into the text, Jim is uneducated because of the lack of educational support he has gotten, Twain still shows that he is very smart. Jim knows things that most typical slaves did not know. Jim is seen in many different lights by critics, or anyone who is reading the book. He says phrases that might be analyzed as stereotyping, because they are uneducated and blant, but he overall is an extremely smart and honorable character. Jim guides Huck, and is a role model figure to him by acting as a father figure for Huck, since Huck never had a real father figure, or at least one he appreciated. He protects and loves and cares for Huck, especially when he needs it the most. In chapter nine, when they find the floating house, there is a dead man on the house. Jim prevents Huck from knowing that the dead body was his father’s, because he did not want Huck to be in pain. Jim and Huck have clearly grown closer throughout the novel, and Twain is showing us how a white boy and a black boy could be friends during that time. Huck using the “N word” when talking to Jim, which is degrading and offensive, he is a very aggressive talker and thinker when it comes to talking about black people. We know that Huck uses these words because he lives in a racist time where whites targeted blacks with that word all the time. Overall, Jim is a very important and valid character in the novel, even though at the time he was considered not an actual “Human being”. We discover that he has feelings, an actual soul, and morals which were not values that blacks were even thought of as having traits or qualities relative to what Jim shows us. He demonstrates heroism, having a strong head on his shoulders, and not what whites thought about blacks and generalized them.