Free Sample Essays > North American
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
object to laugh at and play jokes on, and slavery is represented as a natural institution. From this point of view, Jim is gullible and superstitious--a comic strip character rather than a human being with feelings and ideas” (Johnson 107). Huck’s best friend is Tom, and Huck takes his ideas very seriously. Many of the racist ideas that Tom has are absorbed by Huck because of his admiration for Tom. Huck says the word nigger repeatedly in the beginning of the book when referring to blacks or “the nigger Jim“. “Huckleberry Finn uses the pejorative term ‘nigger’ profusely. It speaks of black Americans with implications that they are not human” (Hutchinson 132). He says the word nigger because that is society‘s name for the African-American at that time. The use of a word for an entire race can only be gleaned from the people around you, the society you live in. Huck’s principles on racism are continually being formed, and when you think that he has learned something from his time spent with Jim, you learn that it is much harder to reject society’s teachings than it seems. This is made apparent when he talks with Tom’s aunt: “’We blowed out a cylinder-head.’ ‘Good gracious! anybody hurt?’ ‘No’m. Killed a nigger.’ ‘Well, its lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt‘” (Twain 167). Huck has at this point in the story traveled with Jim for a long period of time, and has again and again, when given the opportunity, not turned Jim in, but as Chadwick-Joshua states, “Huck’s insensitivity to the humanity of blacks is as ironically racist as hers” (116). Huck rejects society by helping to free a black slave, which is shown above as robbery, and doesn’t follow the moral code of the time. Then, when talking again to someone who is part of that society, without thinking he goes back to his extremely insensitive racist self. According to Goodin, Huck only says and treats the African-American culture accordingly with the society that he was raised in (2). In other words, Huck’s principles when dealing with racism are defined by society; he has no real control over it.
Huck tries to escape from society. He “kills” himself, so that he can run away and leave his father. In Howard’s opinion; “The underlying reason, however, is that he isn’t satisfied with the role that society confines him in.” This is his understanding of why Huck runs away from his father. He leaves because of his father on the surface, but really he leaves to escape society. Some of his racism is garnered from his father, who is extremely racist: “The intensity of Pap Finn’s blatant hatred and horrific racist dialogue reveals the import of the professors intellectual acumen, not to mention his voting right” (Chadwick-Joshua 37). This piece talks about Huck’s father’s reaction to a free black man who was allowed to vote. He tells this story to Huck; “’It was ‘lection day, and I was just [next page]