Jim is at the mercy of white characters in the novel, most of which are morally inferior to him.Jim becomes a father figure to Huck, although Huck doesn’t necessarily recognize it as such, sheltering him from the more disturbing features of their journey, including the death of Huck’s father. This is especially significant considering the abusive nature of Huck’s father. It’s Jim’s love for his family that affects Huck so strongly, causing him to realize that a black man is capable of loving his family as much as a white man.

It’s the thought of a permanent separation from his family that prompts him to escape. Jim, despite their separation, has one of the few functional families in the novel.Instead, he used irony, satire, and subtlety to make his points: Twain needed to sell novels, making at outright attack on slavery, racist Southern attitudes, and Jim Crow laws unwise. Twain, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, was not attempting to write an expose on slavery or even trying to give an accurate depiction of it.

Twain’s Depiction of SlaveryĪ look at slavery in Huck Finn focuses on the novel’s second major character, Jim. The abrasive language of Huck and other characters in the novel has, in modern days, undermined the anti-slavery message. The antislavery theme, the depiction of a slave as human, and the portrayal of Southerners as hypocrites caused a firestorm of controversy upon the novel’s release. It was completed in the 1880s at a time when Reconstruction, the federal government’s effort to provide equal opportunity for freed slaves, was failing miserably and was perhaps a call to equal treatment of the freed slaves. Huckleberry Finn is, therefore, not an abolitionist work, nor one that promulgated the continuation of slavery. The sequel would take on a more serious tone, focusing on slavery and the plight of a runaway slave.īy the time Twain wrote the novel, the Civil War had ended and slaves had been emancipated. This time the novel’s protagonist would be Tom Sawyer’s best Friend, Huckleberry Finn. One cannot understand The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn without understanding its historical context.Īfter the commercial success of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Twain felt creating a sequel would bring increased monetary success, so he did. Historical Context of the Novel: Slavery in Huck Finn

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