But, while Huck has to acknowledge his relationship with Jim, he can distance himself in other ways. But he is also drowning in history, in the question of what defines him. His nigger love? A nigger loving him? But his tone, which veers between polemics and special pleading, almost immediately distances the reader from what he is trying to do. Why does nigger generate such powerful reactions? Is it a more hurtful racial epithet than insults such as kike , wop , wetback , mick , chink , and gook?
Am I wrongfully offending the sensibilities of readers right now by spelling out nigger instead of using a euphemism such as N-word? Instead of trying to answer them—by writing about the moral and psychological repercussions that the word has for blacks and for whites—Kennedy simply accumulates data, data that never quite add up to an idea.
His book is aimed at a wide readership, and is intent on provoking debate, but it would attract little attention, for its writing or for its scholarship, were it not for the nearly pornographic weight of the six lower-case letters that are centered on the book jacket. The word appears in his book not as it is used within the complex fabric of epithets that blankets this country but as show-biz rhetoric, as a star turn that demands our attention rather than our engagement.
Nigger is derived from the Latin word for the color black, niger. According to the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang , it did not originate as a slur but took on a derogatory connotation over time. No one knows precisely when or how niger turned derisively into nigger and attained a pejorative meaning.
We do know, however, that by the end of the first third of the nineteenth century, nigger had already become a familiar and influential insult. Kennedy fails, however, to discuss the crucial links between the inception and growth of the word and the inception and growth of this nation.
The word was uttered and heard as an insult that designated an inferior or subordinate people. How could they rise above that classification? Only by generating a nigger class of their own in the New World. Slavery, an economic necessity in the new America, where cotton was the leading export and slave labor made the plantations possible, could be viewed as an act of mercy.
When the Constitution was drawn up, it was based as much on protecting slave-owners as it was on declaring the abstraction known as freedom. This is the first of many citations of the word in the Oxford English Dictionary, a source that Kennedy cites in his endnotes but makes little use of in his text.
He should have done more with it. The O. If those distinctions were to blur, if a nigger were to claim equality with the rest of the world, if Jim—Everynigger—were to buy his wife and children back, what then? Economic collapse; white women raped; former lords and masters humiliated and dispossessed. Does a slave look dissatisfied? The two women often take Huck aside for religious discussions, in which Widow Douglas describes a wonderful God, while Miss Watson describes a terrible one.
Huck considers this unlikely because of his bad qualities. The face, however, was unrecognizable. At first, Huck is relieved.
His father had been a drunk who beat him when he was sober, although Huck stayed hidden from him most of the time. Huck worries that his father will soon reappear. It turned out to be a Sunday-school picnic, although Tom explained that it really was a caravan of Arabs and Spaniards—only they were enchanted, like in Don Quixote.
The raid on the picnic netted the boys only a few doughnuts and jam but a fair amount of trouble. These chapters establish Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer as foils for each other—characters whose actions and traits contrast each other in a way that gives us a better understanding of both of their characters. Twain uses Tom to satirize romantic literature and to comment on the darker side of so-called civilized society.
In particular, Tom tries to emulate the romantic—that is, unrealistic, sensationalized, and sentimentalized—novels, mostly imported from Europe, that achieved enormous popularity in nineteenth-century America. Tom is identified with this romantic genre throughout the novel. Whereas Tom puts great stock in literary models, Huck is as skeptical of these as he is of religion.
Although Nissen maintains that this type of affectionate language must necessarily prove that Jim has romantic feelings toward Huck, there is plenty of room for other, more convincing, interpretations.
It is more plausible that Jim is instead viewing young Huck as his paternal responsibility and is treating him in a fatherly, affectionate way that prompts the use of these expressions of fondness.
When Huck is introduced to us, he has not yet realized the human value of Jim and treats him merely as an easily manipulated person of whom he can take advantage. Besides the numerous pranks Huck plays on Jim, Huck uses Jim as his personal fortune-teller and superstition adviser. Ultimately Huck and Jim come to share a unique relationship characterized by the affection and care between a father and child.
For Huck, this is another step toward gaining that valuable friendship and familial relationship with Jim. Samuele F. Berkeley: Counterpoint, Freedman, Carol.
Project MUSE. Hansen, Chadwick. Joshi, Vijaya Narendra. Google Scholar. Knoper, Randall. Nissen, Axel. Robinson, Forrest G. Shulman, Robert. Columbia: U of Missouri P, Google Books. Solomon, Andrew. Valkeakari, Tuire. Academic Search Premier. Shrum, H. Shrum, Heather M. There are countless opportunities for Jim to leave Huck during the tale, yet he remains by Huck's side so the two of them can escape together.
When Huck and Jim become separated in the fog, Jim tells Huck that his "heart wuz mos' broke bekase you wuz los', en I didn' k'yer no mo' what bcome er me en de raf'. When Huck is taken in by the Grangerfords, Jim waits in the swamp and devises a plan where both of them can continue down the river. Moreover, when Jim has the chance to be free at the end of the novel, he stays by Tom Sawyer 's side, another example of his loyalty.
Jim's logic, compassion, intelligence, and above all, his loyalty toward Huck, Tom, and his own family, establish him as a heroic figure. Previous Huckleberry Finn. Next Tom Sawyer. Removing book from your Reading List will also remove any bookmarked pages associated with this title.
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