Racism In Mark Twain's Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

The Path to Freedom

What makes us think that Adventure of Huckleberry Finn is a racist book? What words make lots of people think that this novel is about nothing less than racism? Mark Twain lived in a period of time and witnessed the massive racism, torture, and persecution toward African Americans in the south. Mark Twain in his novel uses the word “nigger” more than one time in his writing. He did not mean to insult or criticize African Americans, he wants to show the actual language that people used. Twain, the author of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is using Satire to show the racism between blacks and whites in the south at that time, but people misunderstood Twain’s message in this novel. This novel is about the freedom,

Mark Twain uses the word “nigger” so many times during his novel. Using this word at that time was considered an acceptable word because the white people in general used this phrase to refer to slaves. Twain in this book is showing an African American character, whose name is Jim. Twain always shows Jim as a good person; he illustrates his personality as innocent, undemanding, and trustworthy. According to Matthews, Jim, the escaped slave who accompanies Huck downriver on the raft, displays "the essential simplicity and kindliness and generosity of the Southern negro have never been better shown than here by Mark Twain” (Matthews). Here, Robinson writes to readers how Twain always does not show racism when he describes Jim’s characteristics. Therefore this shows that there are lots of white who are not racist to African Americans. Furthermore, Twain shows us another important scene in the book; it is when he mentions Huck, a white boy, and he is the narrator of the story, talking about Jim. Huck praises Jim and says how much he loves his family, cares about them, and wants to save them from slavery. According to Twain, Huck says, “I didn’t take notice nor let on. I knew what it was about. He was thinking about his wife and his children, away up Yonder, and he was low and homesick; because he hadn’t ever been away from home before in his life; and I do believe he cared just

Twain focuses a lot in this novel about the relationship between Huck, the white boy and Jim the black slave. Huck and Jim are both looking for freedom. Their friendship begins when they had some common events throughout the novel. At the beginning of the novel, they have such a complicated relationship between each other. They both have suffered a lot, but at the end of the novel their friendship changes to be as a relationship between a father and a son. Both of them have good reasons to make them friends because both of them are running away from the society in order to gain freedom. Both Huck and Jim have different causes to make them escape from their lives. Huck wants to get freedom and he wants to escape from the restriction of his father and the society. Jim tries really hard to run away because he does not want to be sold as a slave. Twain always tries to show Jim in a good image by showing how much he loves, trust, and cares about Huck. However, Twain always tries to show how Huck was bad with Jim in the beginning of the book because he makes lots of tricks to scare him off. “The first joke, when Huck and Tom hang Jim’s hat above him, causing Jim’s superstitious suspicions to rise immensely, establishes Jim’s foolishness and inferiority in Huck’s mind and provides a good laugh for the two